Results tagged “christmascarol”

READING: Dave Eggers has delivered two (out of three) great novels, and tonight he reads from last one (which is just out on paperback), What is the What. He'll be at the Strand discussing the book and he'll also give a slideshow presentation from a recent trip he took to Sudan. More info here. Friday // 7pm // Strand Bookstore [828 Broadway] // Free EVENT: We love a good pillow fight, and tonight there's a...

The Holidays have fallen upon us like a pack of ferocious ice weasels, so we'd feel appropriately guilty if we didn’t suggest some relevant theater options. Of course, if you’re seeking a diversion for out-of-town visitors, The Radio City Christmas Spectacular is (literally) a no-brainer, provided they’ve got deep pockets: Tickets to the glorified burlesque show can cost up to $250 - per rube.

It might be hard to get to a theatre in time to see any of these picks, but here goes. Even with our fairly averse attitude toward holiday-specific performances, it’s hard not to notice that the current crop of shows is pretty heavy on the fractured fairytale side of things. Except for kids, there’s almost no straightforward telling of a Christmas- (or other holiday) related story. We’re not complaining, but it does make it harder to pick out something as the zaniest take on the genre. Broken Watch Theatre Company’s A Broken Christmas Carol (a 21st century, NC-17 version) and the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre Company’s Christmas Carol, Oy Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa, Happy Ramadan (a version “with Old World accents and New World inclusiveness” – Scrooge would not approve) show that Dickens’s story is still the go-to touchstone for holiday theatre. Maybe because it’s so omnipresent, we can’t help but be a bit more drawn to Jeffrey Solomon’s one-man Santa Claus is Coming Out (or, How the Gay Agenda Came Down My Chimney) which is playing three nights at Queens Theatre in the Park. Solomon takes on a dozen plus characters in this reprisal of mockumentary about the jolly red guy with the giant belly. Oh, if the people howling about a “war on Christmas” could see all this now…not that they’d expect much more from us NYC heathens, of course.

ART: papermag.com celebrates it's 10th year with Manhattan! We recently had a chance to stop by this group exhibition which features over 75 Big Apple-based artists from past to present, and have never enjoyed a gallery show more (of course, it was the opening and they were passing out champagne with Red Bull in it.) The loose theme of the show is "People of New York." To the right is the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Nick Zinner's untitled work, taken in Brooklyn in 2000.

There's nothing like a library to awaken our love of reading. Tomorrow night (11/30), our beautiful Main Branch of the New York Public Library (Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street) is hosting a conversation between novelist Alice Walker and Times critic Margo Jefferson. The panel costs $15 and starts at 7:30.

Jim Holt's article about the idea of parallel universes (an article we starting to try to summarize but got very confused...read it for yourself) struck a chord in Gothamist because we constantly wonder "What if" and "There's got to be another version of us out there doing worse." While an early instance of wondering about another life one could live is A Christmas Carol, it's also very Choose Your Own Adventure. That's probably why we like the Bizarro Jerry episode of Seinfeld. Or any number of films that offer other possibilities: Sliding Doors, The Double Life of Veronique, and one of Gothamist's favorites, Groundhog Day.