EVENT: Carnegie Hall's Neighborhood Concert Series brings Kristoffer Saebo and Arthur Sato to the stage tonight. The two "collaborated on this interactive, educational concert that will feature music of the Baroque era and of various folk traditions." It's a great excuse to go to the Angel Orensanz Foundation. 7:30 p.m. // Angel Orensanz Foundation [172 Norfolk St] // Free READING: Tonight Dave Eggers and Peter Orner present Underground America at 826NYC. This is the latest......

Sure, you know Dave Eggers as the celebrated author and founder of McSweeney's, that plucky independent book-publishing house in San Francisco, but were you aware that back in the day he was on track to be an art curator? While it’s been a long time since he’s organized an exhibit, he’s in town now to put together a show at apexart that explores, in Eggers's words, “a very small and specific type of artmaking exemplified......

One Ring Zero is an unusual Brooklyn band headed up by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, with a troupe of musicians and lyricists filling out their ever-morphing sonic tribe. Their lyrics have been written by some familiar names: Jonathan Lethem, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster and Dave Eggers are amongst them. This year they enter their 10th year of making music, and this Friday they'll be at Joe's Pub celebrating on stage. Join in on the......

COMEDY: In November, shortly after the WGA strike sent SNL to reruns, the cast took the UCB Theater stage for an off-air show. If you missed that one, there's a chance to catch some of the cast doing stand-up at Comix tonight. The site says "sold out" but the people at the venue say they just added more tickets! So give a call and enjoy "An Evening with the Writers and Performers from Saturday Night......

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......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

BEER: This one is pretty simple...there will be lots (58!) of New York beers, and a few bands to soundtrack your drinking them, at the Seaport tonight. Go, imbibe, enjoy! Friday // 5 to 10pm // South Street Seaport // $55 THEATER: Paso Doble was a sold-out hit at the 60th anniversary Festival d’Avignon last summer; for one weekend only sculptor Miquel Barceló and dancer Josef Nadj have brought their messy spectacle to St. Ann’s......

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: As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000—actual earnings that were simply erased. Due......

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... Last night at the premiere of A Mighty Heart, Jolie wore a, gasp, $26 crushed velvet dress from a thrift shop! Of course, she then paired it with crystal-heeled Christian Louboutin shoes. As for what Angelina accessorizes with her brain, earlier in the......

MOVIE: One Ring Zero is a lit-rock fans dream come true. The band features Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers and Margaret Atwood’s lyrics set to the music of trumpets, theremins, claviolas, and metallophones. Director Joe Pacheco captured the band on film and presents it now as a documentary, As Smart As They Are: The Author Project. Here's a song/video with lyrics by Michael Chabon: 7pm // Barbes [376 9th St, Park Slope] // Free......

DISCUSSION: Noam Chomsky will be taking questions on US foreign policy tonight, following a screening of Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. Get your questions ready, smartypants. You can watch the video of Pinter's speech here, too. 6pm // Columbia University, Miller Theater [Broadway @ 116th St] // $5 THEATER: Isabella Rossellini with be playing Lotte Lenya in a one-night only performance at the New-York Historical Society called Kurt and Lenya: Two Great Artists......

Earlier this week, we reported on the 92nd Street Y event where New York magazine co-founder Milton Glaser attributed the low number of high-profile female designers to the fact that women who have children and stay at home with them are less visible professionally. First, some clarification (for The NY Times’ Tom Zeller, Jr. ): the comment came during the Q&A session following lectures by Glaser, Chip Kidd and Dave Eggers. An audience member asked......

Graphic designers tend to be an even-keeled lot, unless you mess with their precious Futura typeface plans. So at Monday night’s The Art of the Book: Covers With Dave Eggers, Chip Kidd and Milton Glaser, moderated by designer Michael Bierut at the 92nd Street Y, we weren’t surprised that book jacket designer and author Kidd made nice with Panelist Four – a man well into his senior years who boosted the show from the first......

It’s fair to assume a certain amount of healthy caution in approaching Dave Eggers’ new oeuvre. It is, after all, coated in a thin outer layer of the meta-tastic postmodernism for which Eggers is (in?)famous. Who else would you expect to produce a novel entitled What Is the What: An Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, A Novel by Dave Eggers? So, that healthy dose of skepticism is well-founded. Eggers’ foray into the book world was......

READING: The reclusive "Lemony Snicket" (known to grown-ups and non-believers as Daniel Handler) will be showing up - hopefully in a cloak and mustache disguise! - at Barnes and Noble tonight to celebrate the release of The End, the aptly-titled final chapter to his best-selling Series of Unfortunate Events. Expect the place to be rammed with excited screaming children, and maybe a suspiciously tattooed foe or two. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras Friday // 4pm //......

This week's literary events kick off tonight (1/24) at Housing Works Used Books Cafe (126 Crosby St.), with a reading from Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonorated, edited by Dave Eggers and Lola Vollen. The reading will be followed by a Q&A and a signing, starts at 7PM, and is free. Then tomorrow night (1/25) on the Lower East Side, don't miss the First Fiction Reading Series at Bluestockings (172 Allen between Stanton and......

Dave Eggers and Paul Auster start a band...it sounds like the beginning of a joke. For better or worse, it's not. Joe Pacheco's documentary, As Smart As They Are: The Author Project documents how the McSweeney's in-house band, One Ring Zero, collaborated with some writers to make Lit Rock. The documentary includes live performances, studio sessions and interviews with the writers and musicians, while exploring relationships between music and literature. The featured players are Dave......

It's quite the red letter week for us bookish types, with the prestigious, sometimes baffling, and oft-maligned National Book Awards dinner and awards ceremony tomorrow night where trophies will be bestowed, granted, totally robbed, whatever, at the Marriott Marquis. To that end, critic A.O. Scott has an interesting article about the contradictions and complications inherent to the awards, Medal Fatigue (registration required). Garrison Keillor is the Master of Ceremonies which, frankly, is why Gothamist wishes......

After years of teasing, the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are is finally moving forward. The NYTimes reports that Being John Malkovich's Spike Jonze (called “the strangest little bird” by author Maurice Sendak), is set to direct the “odd” screenplay he wrote with Dave Eggers for Tom Hanks’ production company. So far, the film will extend beyond the children’s classic simple plot to delve into Max’s journey home (semi-minor change: Max escapes......

Tonight David Sedaris is hosting an evening at 826NYC (we know, we know...you don't like Dave Eggers, but 826 is a great place none-the-less). The evening will be made up of a selection of readings from the book of short stories Sedaris edited called Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. The book and the evening are both in support of the Writing Lab at 826NYC. The Writing Lab is a free lab and tutoring......

Tomorrow night (Monday May 9th) comedian Colin Quinn (who, if you're like us, you know first from MTV's Remote Control) will headline an evening of stand-up comedy with Todd Barry, Greg Giraldo, and special guests. The evening will be hosted by the comedy duo and Saturday Night Live writers Slovin & Allen. All proceeds from the evening will benefit 826NYC’s writing lab for children. 826NYC was founded by Dave Eggers - it's a nonprofit tutoring......

Time releases its Time 100 list of influential people for 2005, and it's pretty much the snore it was last year. Much like other magazines whose "most influential list" reads more like a "Who's popular?" or "Who's pretty?" list from high school, Time focuses on names that people have heard of. Sure, some of the people truly make a difference, like Jeffrey Sachs or Javier Solana, but Jamie Foxx and Clint Eastwood? Boring. And the......

Today kicks off the New Yorker Festival and if you haven't snagged your tickets for some of the events yet, here's our list of last minute events we think are more than worthwhile...that still have seats left! Friday (night) Seymour M. Hersh interviewed by David Remnick Hersh has been writing about foreign policy and politics for decades and will be discussing the aftermath of 9/11 and the Bush administrations actions since then. Saturday (day) Literature......

Since this one usually sells out quick, we wanted to give you a heads up that tickets for The New Yorker Festival went on sale today. This year's festival takes place October 1-3 at various New York City locations. There is quite a bit going on throughout the weekend. Friday night is dubbed fiction night and features discussions between Sherman Alexie and Dave Eggers, Nicole Krauss and Salman Rushdie and Jonathan Safran Foer and......

Dale Peck, Writer...

826NYC has had some good events in the past, and they keep on comin'. Up next... Tin House and McSweeney's team up for an evening of reading and music to benefit 826NYC, with music by David Byrne and David Gates and His Enablers, and readings by Robert Coover, Susan Choi, Dave Eggers, Elissa Schappell, Rick Moody and host Jonathan Ames. Tickets can be purchased in advance by calling (718) 499-9884 during business hours. June......

John Hodgman, Writer...

Literary hipster Dave Eggers spoke at Harvard and gave his thoughts on the state of Major League Baseball: �I fucking hate the Yankees,� Eggers offered at one point, winning raucous applause. �It seems like IBM is fielding a baseball team.� Eggers, you're just bitter because Magowan got rid of Dusty Baker. Go sell some pirate stuff. [Via Gawker]......

After being caught in development hell for three years, it looks like Dave Eggers' autobiography, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, is on its way to the big screen. Universal Pictures is picking up rights to the book from New Line, and Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) will be developing the project. Interestingly, Nick Hornby and D.V. DeVincentis (screenwriter of Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity) adapted the book. If the NBC-Vivendi Universal merger goes through,......

Alexandra Jacobs, who used to write at Entertainment Weekly, dismisses the book, Branded, which is about the overmarketing of the teen demographic, in spite of some merits. Jacobs' review is pure Observer - snarky and smart. This description is great: "the increasingly insufferable McSweeney�s clique, with its homemade, Bento-box approach to publishing." It's totally true, but it doesn't mean I don't covet the books Dave Eggers designs. Jacobs recommends Lauren Greenfield's Girl Culture over......