Make sure you’re sitting down before reading further: Today TV bloggers formed a virtual picket line to support the Writers Guild strike. We’ve been refreshing Ramblings of a TV Whore all day, hoping for some blogging scab to post something! All this strike activity is becoming quite the trend; CBS News writers are expected to join their more gifted and talented “creative” colleagues who are entering week two of the strike. The CBS News scribes... more ›

It is time once again for the first Manhattanhenge sunset of 2007. Or not. amNY is saying that tonight's sunset will be perfectly aligned with the east-west grid of Manhattan streets. However, NewYorkology received the dates from Neil deGrasse Tyson's office at the Hayden Planetarium and they are saying Manhattanhenge doesn't occur until tomorrow night. deGrasse Tyson is the astrophysicist who coined the term Manhattanhenge. Viewing the phenomenon is best from the east side, which takes advantage of the long fetch of streets, from 14th Street and above. But, remember, staring at the sun, even a setting sun, is not a smart thing to do. more ›

What's going on in Yankee land? Alex Rodriguez is getting curtain calls and Derek Jeter has set a career high for errors at this point in the season. Through 12 games, Jeter has a whopping 6 errors. The Daily News did some digging into his career and, thanks to the Elias Sports Bureau, found that in his career Jeter, through 11 games, had never more than 2 errors. Even more insane is that he didn't reach the 6-error mark until his 50th game last season. Half of Jeter's errors came on ground balls, while the other half were throwing errors. more ›

Oh, man, Gothamist's head is spinning this afternoon. We just read the New York article about near future weather and climate changes the city is facing. We cringe whenever we see the words "freakish" and "weird" in any story about the weather as their use usually means the author doesn't have a firm grasp of the subject matter. This case is no exception as we found numerous little errors and misinterpretations. Despite these errors the article mostly gets the big picture right: There's a mild El Nino (which usually indicates a mild winter), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is in its warm phase (greater hurricane frequency), and longer-term global temperatures are continuing to rise (more intense hurricanes). more ›

Yes, I have, but I'd rather not say since I won't be able to surprise people and I won't be able to top the last one. more ›

Carl Lennertz is a true publishing insider, and he's got the blog of the same name to prove it to prove it. On the HarperCollins blog, he shares details about both the business of bookselling, as well as random news of contests, poetry, credit card advice, memories, and other miscellanea, or, in his words, "books, music, movies, the big picture, and absurd rants." A thirty-year veteran of the book industry, the 53-year-old Long Island native has worked at various bookstores, as well as Book Sense, Knopf and Random House, before landing at HarperCollins, where he serves as VP of Independent Retailing. more ›

Ex-Gawker editor Jesse Oxfeld joins New York just in time for the magazine's big story on where celebs are in the city! Well, he's only quoted (as is current Gawker editor Jessica Coen), but given that yesterday's Post went ga-ga over Brooklyn celebs and where you might see them, forget the locusts, it's the day of the celebs. For the record, Gothamist's favorite star-sighting is not seeing Harrison Ford (with, ugh, that earring!) have dinner at Cafe Luxembourg or Nicole Richie at Balthazar Bakery (so tiny - and with DJ AM!), but it was seeing Elaine Orbach at the Vitamin Shoppe on Broadway and West 72nd Street. It was just the combination of famous, obscure, and Jerry Orbach-related that makes us tick. more ›

PS 217 in Ditmas Park is under the microscope as parents wonder if the police should be called in on unruly children. The most recent incident involves Jonathan Modesto, a 6 year old who has ADHD and had the cops called on him after he "threw a tantrum in his kindergarten classroom, allegedly kicking a paraprofessional and an assistant vice principal." And there were two other incidents where children were sent to hospitals for evaulations - an 8 year old (with ADHD) had a tantrum and a 5 year old who "was nipping at teachers' ankles" and "taken away in a stretcher." We imagine student tantrums are tricky situations for teachers and school administrators to handle. The biggest problem is most likely what kind of liability the teachers and school bear if someone is hurt (the child having a tantrum, other students) if they try to restrain them or don't call in extra help. Many schools do not seem to have the resources to deal with children who might act up, but calling the police or sending them to a hospital sounds pretty harsh. more ›

Excuse us while we geek out on you for a second. So the office of Comptroller Thompson released it's annual claims report for the 2004 fiscal year yesterday and it is chock full o' fun numbers which will be feeding news story statistics for the next year. more ›

When you look at the big picture the weather and climate of the Earth is quite simple. Energy in the form of light comes from the Sun. When it arrives at the Earth sunlight is either reflected back to space or or absorbed by the oceans, land, and plants. All that absorbed energy eventually makes its way back to space. Because the absorbed and emitted energy varies over the surface of the earth there a places with an excess of energy and places with a deficit energy. Mother Nature doesn't like energy excesses or deficits and tries to balance out those differences by putting the atmosphere and ocean into motion. That is, we get weather and climate. more ›

Some fun Guest stuff for all you bastard people: A Fame Audit from Fametracker, an interview with Movie City News and Caryn James' feature on the retrospective in today's Times. It seems that Guest has always wanted to just do only three "mockumentaries" and that he doesn't really like TV except The Office. And Gothamist once shared an elevator with Guest when he was promoting Almost Heroes (Matthew Perry and Chris Farley as 18th century explorers - not being shown in the tribute). Guest asked us what we thought of his seersucker suit, and Gothamist couldn't help ourselves when the words "It's kinda Matlocky" came out. But we didn't mean Matlocky in a bad way! more ›

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Priscilla Grim, Membership & Advocacy Director AIVF more ›

L.A. Times entertainment reporter Patrick Goldstein looks at the California recall nuttiness in his column, The Big Picture. After analyzing Arnold's win ("."), Goldstein goes through a few candidates he thinks might have the stuff to run against Arnold. Here are a few and they are hilarious: more ›

Squawking 'Bout Gawker
Elizabeth Spiers goes on another vacation and the blogosphere goes into a tizzy.
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In the world of "girls trying to make it in the city" journalism, Gothamist has been reading Amy Sohn's Naked City column in New York magazine for a while, with a bulletproof formula of sex, personal musings, more sex, New York context, maybe a big picture idea but not necessarily. Lately, we've noticed the Post has its variation on the them in Bridget Harrison. Both seem to be positioning themselves as the 21st century's Candace Bushnell, whose Sex and the City column in the Observer launched, well, you know: The show, the attitude, the enabling of shoe obsessions, Patricia Field as fashion authority, etc. more ›