After coming out in defense of the First Amendment yesterday, in regards to a Florida pastor's plan to burn the Koran on September 11, Mayor Bloomberg is none too happy with reporters misinterpreting his statements today. He told Good Morning America he thought the book burning would be "boneheaded and wrong," and chided a Daily News reporter for suggesting he was supporting the burning: more ›

Our state government in Albany may not be able to pass a budget within one, two or three months, but our pork barrel spending is unparalleled. So unparalleled that chase scenes in the upcoming Angelina spy thriller Salt were filmed in Albany: Director Phillip Noyce told NBC Los Angeles that even though one sequence is set in D.C., Albany was a terrific substitute, "Due to excessive pork barreling over the years, the capital of New York has built up the most elaborate freeway system you have ever seen," and mentioned "one overpass to nowhere which just stopped... It was really convenient to one (movie) sequence. It's a tragedy (for taxpayers) but great for filming." more ›

Maybe Russian intelligence agent Anna Chapman has already sold her story, since we've had a growing suspicion that this whole ordeal has just been an elaborate viral marketing campaign for Angelina Jolie's upcoming spy thriller, Salt. The timing is just too perfect! Chapman, the attractive NYC party girl who passed information to Russian officials, shares a life story which eerily resembles the movie's plot, in which Jolie plays suspected Russian sleeper agent Evelyn Salt. Even they've got to realize the similarities, as the NY Post reports that Jolie has now asked local promoters to invite Chapman to the film's Moscow premiere next week. There's just one slight kink: Chapman's location is unknown. more ›

Yesterday Washington Heights fans of Brangelina and their brood got all worked up about the possibility of the family moving to their neighborhood. Today the rumors are dispelled, however. The Daily News reports that Angelina Jolie was spotted at luxury co-op building The Riviera (157th and Riverside Drive) to scout locations for her latest movie, Edwin A. Salt. A resident confirmed that the actress will be shooting there for a few days in March, but other locals wanted to believe the famous family would be moving in, noting the area is great for families and "there needs to be attention brought to this neighborhood. They could bring nice restaurants here and more things to do." Currently the family is renting a $60 million mansion on Long Island. more ›

After teaming up with Hello! magazine to shell out $14 million for photographs of Knox Leon and Vivenne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, aka Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's twins, People showed off the cover of their special double issue with the new additions to the Jolie-Pitt family tonight on their website. The issue will go on stands tomorrow (interesting, since People's latest issue was just went on sale Friday), and here's an excerpt from People:

"It is chaos, but we are managing it and having a wonderful time," Jolie tells PEOPLE of daily life at the Château Miraval in Provence, France, where the couple's four older children – Maddox, 6, Pax, 4, Zahara, 3, and Shiloh, 2 – have been enjoying a summer of outdoor play (hide-and-seek is a favorite) on the château's sprawling grounds. more ›

Angelina Jolie gave birth to twins yesterday in France. Her doctor confirmed the births of baby boy Knox Leon (5.03 pounds) and baby girl Vivienne Marcheline (5 pounds), saying, "The babies are doing well" and that the Cesarean section "went just perfectly...The mother and father are very, very happy." The paparazzi have been camped outside the Lenval Hospital, and one celebrity photo agency owner told the AP photos of the fifth and sixth Jolie-Pitt children could go for between $15 and $20 million and the only thing that "would possibly come that close is Britney Spears giving birth to an alien." more ›

Kaki King (MySpace) is a guitar player and singer-songwriter from Atlanta, Georgia. She lived in Brooklyn for 7 years until last summer, when music started taking her on a permanent tour around the world. Her upcoming album is called Dreaming Of Revenge and will be released March 11th on Velour Records. King was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Score for the music she played in the Sean Penn film Into the Wild, and Rolling Stone Magazine has declared her the first and only female "Guitar God." more ›

• Perhaps the big surprise (besides Juno getting nominated for Best Director and Best Picture) was Ruby Dee for her work in American Gangster (its only other nomination was for art direction)

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The center of the paparazzi universe might be the Waldorf Towers at 100 East 50th Street. That's because Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and their brood of children are renting a $100,000/month apartment at the hotel. The Post reports that the Jolie-Pitts "began recently living in a newly renovated, roughly 6,000-square-foot apartment" that has "five bedrooms plus a library that they have converted into a sixth, up to six baths and a huge gourmet kitchen." And there are terraces (plural!). more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a fall victim on Davoe Terrace in the Bronx, a bank robbery on 2nd Ave. in Manhattan between 62nd and 63rd Sts., and a missing person on 180th St. and Clinton Ave. in the Bronx.
• Jay-Z is a significant partner interested in moving the Nets to Brooklyn, but the rapper apparently is also interested in the naming rights to the team's current Meadowland arena.
• Insurance broker Noel Lauria pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment in a deal that will have him avoid jail time for errantly letting arrows fly from his compound bow on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
• Angelina Jolie looks incredible leaving the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Manhattan, but she was crying as she related the story of two Syrian refugees.
• A Staten Island mother slapped the sunglasses off the young man who allegedly stole her son's iPod, and then stabbed the portable player purloiner with a shard of glass from his shades.
• A Manhattan mover pleaded guilty to pinching two Picassos from the apartment of an elderly man when he died intestate.
• This NYC skyline should be of some interest to graphics and image tweakers.
• This isn't New York's subway, but we still enjoyed this performance by a group of subterranean, beatbox-performing a capella artists.

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• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a possible grenade is noticed and reported on 33rd Ave. in Queens, an armed robbery on East 61st St. in Manhattan, and a carjacking on 133rd St. and Neptune Ave. in Brooklyn.
• City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is employing the celebrity skills of Matt Dillon to help save St. Brigid's Church in the East Village.
• Eastbay is marketing Converse All-Star high tops that appear pre-worn and fairly dingy as the "Ramones All-Star Hi". We would've gone with "Ramones Rock 'n' Roll Hi Tops," but that's just us.
• Perhaps realizing that publicity trumps dignity any day in her line of work, Angelina Jolie has rescinded demands that interviewers sign a contract restricting them from asking about her personal life. She even offered a paparazzo a lift in her car when the bike-riding photographer popped a flat!
• Students at private high-priced elite NYC high schools are dropping the club drug "Foxy" and paying to be driven around in a school bus and treated like babies in the phenomena known as "Sindergarten".
• Not even the actors in the cast of "The Sopranos" know what the seemingly anti-climactic ending of the HBO series was supposed to signify.
• Drug users are still shooting up in Tompkins Square Park, and a local organization is providing users with the anti-opioid Narcan to save the lives of people who OD.
• A 45-year-old homeless man was injured when a falling light pole struck him in the head outside the main branch of the New York Public Library at 42nd St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan.

NYMag reports on the hard times hitting McSweeney's after their distributer hit their financial bottom: "McSweeney's book distributor filed for bankruptcy six months ago, and the indie-cooler-than-thou publisher has now realized it's out some $130,000, which it kind of needs." McSweeney's says: more ›

Internationally beloved Angelina Jolie and her less philanthropic beau, Brad Pitt, are in town. They're making headlines, too, with things like wearing inexpensive clothes and going to the doctor. Fine, we'll bite... more ›

A Bourne, a Cloon and a pirate, oh my...with the Memorial Day holiday this weekend, we're entering the prime summer movie season and it's time to get psyched. Psyched! Here's just some Hollywood flicks we're awaiting between now and Labor Day. With all of these things to see, it's probably time to spring for the econo tub of popcorn and a bucket of soda to get through it all. more ›

MOVIE: Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island is...a real movie! With a plot and everything! Wanna hear it?: "Jack Jones, a pledge in Zeta Alpha Rho Fraternity must battle homophobia and a killer clown during his fraternity's Hell Night." Sounds pretty deep. more ›

Wallace Shawn has long enjoyed a fruitful career as a character actor in mainstream movies (Clueless, Princess Bride, Chicken Little). He also happens to be one of the world’s most significant dissident writers. His plays The Designated Mourner, Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Fever – to name just a few – have garnered much praise (and controversy) for their unflinching examinations of brutality. Shawn’s plays are political but not polemical; through his writing he questions everyone’s complicity – liberal intellectuals especially – in the horrors unleashed out of sight and out of mind. more ›

The Citizens' Committee for Children issued a report yesterday showing a marked increase in girls entering juvenile detention. Between 1990 and 2005, the percentage of girls going into juvenile detention rose from 11% to 20%, while the the number of boys going to juvenile detention, though, has dropped (4,023 entered last year, compared with 5,769 in 1992). more ›

It's been announced that Angelina Jolie will play the role of Dagny Taggart in the film adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. Braveheart writer, Randall Wallace, will adapt the novel. more ›

When the world's most photogenic celebrity family heads to India, you can be sure even a rickshaw ride will be documented. Now we know that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have deemed that Maddox is old enough to enjoy rickshaw rides in the Indian town of Pune, while Zahara and Shiloh are perhaps too young. The jetsetting actors are in India to film A Mighty Heart, a film based on the memoir by Mariane Pearl about the kidnapping and murder of her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Angelina will be playing Mariane Pearl (Dan Futterman is playing Daniel Pearl) while Brad is producing the film. And, yes, there have been skirmishes between photographers and the bodyguards. more ›

The upside to a three day weekend is that waiting for the new Project Runway goes back so much more quickly. The downside? Not being able to write about it till the day of the new show. So to prepare you when you watch the rerun of last week's jetsetting episode: more ›

and why indie movies and New York go as well together as peanut butter and jelly. more ›

- Some Greenwich Village residents are worried that plans for 36-40 Gansevoort Street will mean sleepless nights. Fashion brand Theory (Angelina Jolie wears it!) is converting a five-story building into offices, complete with a rooftop garden, which conjured up Hotel Gansevoort nightmares for people living on Horatio Street. Theory has met with residents and Theory's president Andrew Rosen told the Times, "We're not a bar. We're a day business. Our only objective is to be a credible, positive influence in the community. We intend to be there for a long time, so our commitment to the neighborhood is significant." Or form a group of fashionistas who really want the Theory store in the neighborhood. more ›

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Ah, there's nothing like coming on a Saturday night and to be treated to a CNN Breaking News alert that Angelina Jolie had given birth to her child with Brad Pitt. (We'll wonder why no one called or text messaged us later.) Baby daughter Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born in Namibia, and already, there's speculation about what Shiloh means ("personal appellation for Christ", "his gift" or "he who was sent", the Civil War town). Whatever - it's no Moxie Crimefighter or Pilot Inspektor. People.com has it's Baby Shiloh Arrives! site up and ready, although it's just packages of previous Angelina-n-Brad -n-Maddox -n-Zahara photos - which Gothamist cannot get enough of, we hate to admit. The next waiting game: To see which tabloid - and how much - was paid for the baby pictures - remember when New York magazine sorta punked people with their cover story about Brangelina baby pictures (just the bidding war)? more ›

JC: ALL RIGHT! I just took extra Vitamin C - I'm waiting for some food delivery. more ›

Just in time for restless New Yorkers to cut loose (men to dress in drag, women to dress as sluts - hey, we're not judging, just observing), it's a surprisingly mild Halloween today. While there were a fair share of parties over the weekend (we took the subway with naughty nurses, ballplayers, witches, and angry New Yorkers!), tonight is the real deal, with the Village Halloween Parade getting started at 7PM, as revelers walk along Sixth Avenue from Spring Street until 23rd Street. This year's parade is New Orleans-themed, with 15 year old Glen Hall III, a third generation musician from New Orleans, acting as the grand marshal, which is amusing as many of the costumes are definitely R-rated. We do, though, suspect some people will try to look like conservative Golden Girls - you know, Harriet Miers - as well as dress up as Angelina Jolie and Brad PItt (Wellingtons and men's shirts), Paris HIlton (no underwear), Tara Reid (no breast coverage) and Dick Cheney (on a gurney). Let us know what you're dressing up as tonight. more ›

-Not surprisingly (though the Post seems to think it is), many New York would like to sleep with Angelina Jolie. more ›