Results tagged “danbrown”

While the jury is still out on whether Mayor Bloomberg's improvements to the public school system have really worked, he, along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and School Chancellor Joel Klein, announced new initiatives to help middle schools improve academic performance and provide better resources for students, parents, and teachers alike - plus $5 million to fund them. The money will go to the 50 lowest-performing middle schools, so they can staff up with guidance counselors, offer mentoring programs to less experienced supervisors, and offer Regents-level classes.

The conspiracies are swirling, the evangelical Christians are frothing at the mouth, it can only mean one thing: Ron Howard's opens this weekend. Will you get sucked in to the Hollywood thriller madness? It's not even Memorial Day yet but Gothamist already has summer blockbuster fever.

There's an interesting Metro article about the NY Masons, who convened to see a new Grand Master elevated. Basically, the Masons want people to spruce up their image for the 21st century.

“We’ve been too sheltered,” said Bidnick, a 52-year-old Brooklynite who now lives in Rockland County. “People think we’re strange with our aprons and rituals.”

Continue reading "Masons Just Wanna Be Understood"

We spied somone (from the TatsCru, we think) spraying an image of the Mona Lisa on Mulberry Street earlier, and we thought, oh, cool, maybe there will be a series of old paintings. But we were too naive, because when we approached the ladder, the graffiti artist was examining the picture he was supposed to copy...and there's a mention of The Da Vinci Code movie! Augh! Gothamist read The Da Vinci Code, and you know what, it's just like Dan Brown's earlier book, Angels and Demons, except it involves the Louvre and Jesus, so we never quite understood the Da Vinci Code fever. But today has been a day of Da Vinci Code media onslaught, from Tom Hanks' ode to his make-up guy in the Times (he doesn't discuss his hair, though) and how the judge in the Da Vinci Code (book) case encoded some message in his ruling. This confluence of synergy must mean we will have to see the movie, or else we'll have secretly bad hair when we're in NoHo.

The first hints of summer still make us think of final exams as much as ice cream and sundresses. Lingering anxiety would have us believe that before you give in to sunnier amusements, you must put your intellect through its paces (the better to enjoy afternoons spent snoozing in the park with a copy of the Styles section spread over your face). Whether this is true or we’re just neurotic, there has been some lively commentary on the Nature of Literature this week…we dare say we’d perk up for it even if it was July.

Aaron at 601am inspired us with his suggestions for an indoor Memorial Day weekend for guests. Since lousy weather makes getting past the front door even harder, we have included many things that are great stay-at-home activities: