ART: The Bronx Museum of Art is getting on board the First Friday bandwagon. They'll be opening their doors every first Friday of the month for free, and add a little something extra each time. Tonight their theme is “Say it Loud! I’m Black & I’m Proud” in celebration of Black History Month. There will be a tribute to the late James Brown, and a showcase of independent artists paying tribute to black music. Friday......

In 2003, Sopranos star Michael Imperioli opened the intimate Studio Dante theater with his wife Victoria, who designed the elegantly formal space. In his capacity as director, producer and actor, Imperioli has been busy turning the theater into a well-regarded hotspot for new plays. The current production is a solo show by Glasgow native Russell Barr entitled Sisters, Such Devoted Sisters. In the largely autobiographical play, Barr plays Bernice, a drag queen who herself portrays......

MOVIE: Nessie's taking off from the Marine Park salt marsh in Brooklyn, but you can catch the creature on the big screen. The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep stars Emily Watson and Ben Chaplin and traces a boy's discovery of a mysterious egg that hatches into the sea creature of the Scottish legend. Way better than finding a sea monkey. Various times and theaters, details here MUSIC: If for some reason you just couldn't......

MOVIE: In the unlikeliest of scenarios, rapper (and jeweler) Paul Wall, his grills, Reggaetón king Tego Calderón and Wu-Tang's Raekwon traveled to Sierra Leone. The outcome is an informative documentary called Bling: A Planet Rock which focuses on "the flashy world of commercial hip-hop jewelry played a significant role in the ten-year civil war" in West Africa. 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm // BAM Rose Cinemas [30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn] // $12 ART: Photographs by Lisette Model,......

TIP: Starting today and running through the 16th you can see some of Off-Broadway's best for only $20! Go here for more details about the 20at20 deal. READING: Clintons + book stores = long lines, so start heading to Union Square now for tonight's reading. Our former president will be giving everyone a glimpse from his new book "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World." Read more about the book, which is out......

EXPLORE: Last call to visit the historic Governors Island this season! Free ferry rides depart hourly right next to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. Sitting 800 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan and about 400 from the Brooklyn waterfront, it isn't often you can get a view of the city and a house like that one to the right all from the same place. All Weekend // Governors Island // More info here READING:......

I Dig Doug, a new production in this year’s Fringe Festival, concerns a status-obsessed uptown debutante who decides she should so get involved in presidential politics. When the farcical story begins, the unnamed teen (Karen DiConcetto, called Girl in the program) and her equally self-absorbed friend Nicole (Rochelle Zimmerman) are coasting along on their parents’ money, only mildly concerned about their imminent college application essays – Girl is smart enough to know that if they......

THEATER: Described as Damn Yankees meets Ed Wood, the screwball musical LOST IN HOLLYWOODLAND is a goofy retelling of the Faust myth, with a lowly production assistant’s assistant standing in for the good doctor. (Naturally, a film producer serves as the devil.) The fun begins when the peon signs away his soul for fame and fortune. Having killed ‘em in Buffalo, the production now takes Manhattan via the New York Fringe Festival. - John Del......

Back before the turn of the century, and concurrent with the spread of air conditioning in Off-Off Broadway theaters, theater buffs John Clancy and Elena K. Holy seized a golden opportunity to exploit the only brief lull in New York’s raging theater scene – when conventional wisdom held that no slob stuck in town during mid-August would want to get stickier in a stuffy theater up two flights of stairs. And so The New York......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

THEATER: Continuing through the 29th, the East to Edinburgh Festival is showcasing some of the most adventurous American theater productions before they blast off for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Tonight’s your chance to witness one of the more colorful and timely selections: LA FEMME EST MORTE or Why I Should Not F%!# My Son. It’s a contemporary Phaedra adaptation that satirizes America’s celebrity obsession in the midst of war, featuring live music, “frenetic dance, fierce......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unusual sexual assault on Broadway in Brooklyn, an unstable building on Sutphin Blvd. in Queens, and a shooting on West 142nd St. and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan. Central Park's Sheep Meadow was the first park location to upgrade its wifi Internet connection to high speed. The new 15-megabits-per-second service is five times faster than the previous connection. Madame Tussauds wax museum in Times Square wasted no time in......

Banner week for SFist as the site's new editor introduced himself -- hooray for Brock! While the NY Times weighed in on SF's mayoral race, only SFist had the (insert tongue firmly into cheek) hard-hitting latest on candidate/activist Josh Wolf. Coverage of a protest vs. gentrification spawned a fantastic debate amongst SFist's readers. Finally, from the sublime to the ridiculous: video of a man that confused a Board of Supes meeting with "open mic......

READING: Jonathan Franzen reads at the Bam Cafe tonight, but not after a buffet that include wine from the Pine Ridge Winery and other treats. There will also be a live acoustic performance and a Q&A with Franzen. The hefty price tag includes dinner, wine, tax, and tip. 6:30pm // BAM Cafe [30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn] // $45 THEATER: The first annual FRIGID Festival is breaking ice in the East Village at the Kraine, the......

MOVIE: The First Time I Was Twenty is playing tonight as part of the New York Jewish Film Festival. According to Paper, French director Lorraine Levy "tells the story of a smart, chubby Jewish girl who endures rampant sexism and anti-Semitism in order to fulfill her dream of joining her high school’s all-male jazz band. Pretty in Pink it is not." 6pm // Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center [165 W. 65th St] // $10......

Starting tonight, the Under the Radar Festival of new theater will be cleared for take-off. The three-year-old festival is produced by indie theater impresario Mark Russell, who, as Executive Artistic Director of P.S. 122 for over two decades, nurtured the venue into the alt-performance epicenter it is today. This year’s lineup runs 11 days and features performance, playwriting, puppetry, solos, and "classics re-considered" by artists from around the world. All but four of the 15......

THEATER: Adventures in Mating uses the “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel device to stage this comedy about “a girl, a boy, and their stunning inability to make even the most basic of decisions. Miranda and Jeffrey are on a blind date... a magical date? A disasterous one? Only you, the oh-so-fickle public, can decide.” The show opens tonight in New York after a successful debut at the 2005 Minneapolis Fringe Festival. - John Del Signore......

READINGS: A handful of good readings on the slate for you tonight - Claire Messud reads from the highly anticipated Emperor's Children at Barnes & Noble [see this upcoming weekend's Sunday review, too]; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reads from her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun at 192 Books; and finally, over at McNally Robinson NYC, political reporter Thomas Edsall reads from his new book, Building Red America: What the Conservative Realignment ­Really Means. Too......

Will Franken grew up in Missouri where he huffed Freon, took acid, and aspired to be famous. He came to New York, became disillusioned, and went to San Francisco to make a name for himself. He's been named "Best Comedian of 2005" by San Francisco Weekly and performed his one man show at the New York International Fringe Festival and The Comedy Central Stage in LA . Now he's coming to NYC. Tell me about......

Flight of the Conchords (FOTC) are Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. You may have seen them on their acclaimed HBO One Night Stand and you'll be seeing a lot more of them soon because HBO just picked up their series for twelve episodes. In this interview, FOTC discuss hologram pants, trying to wrangle up audience members at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and radio comedy. Tell me about your HBO series. Brett: It's about the......

THEATER: The Fringe Festival is over and pretty much every stage in town is dark tonight, but the Abingdon Theater Co. is producing a reading of Stephen Cone's Lacrimosa, about an famed evangelist and his wife who seclude themselves in their big mansion, thinking the Second Coming is near, but instead a strange girl arrives, and the evangelist's volatile brother, and with them all the problems and craziness of our mixed-up world, jolting them from......

THEATER: The end of the Fringe Festival draws near, and the dilemma sharpens: what should you not miss? Of the shows that are still on, a good bet is Chris Harcum's http://www.chrisharcum.com/ Some Kind of Pink Breakfast, a solo comedy (but multi-character) with music by Debby Schwartz that melds '80's songs and movies with events from his own experiences, making for a hilarious yet poignant retro performance that should be a perfect way to end......

THEATER: Both the Fringe Festival and the wildly successful, but once Fringe-y, 24 Hour Plays are celebrating their tenth anniversaries this year, so why not do it together? Starting tonight, some of the original cast members and plays from the series that proved that a gimmick (conceive, write, rehearse and perform a play in a day) can produce fresh theatre, reunite in five totally different sets of five. - Mallory Jensen Lucille Lortel Theater [121......

THEATER: Among the many great things about the Fringe Festival is that it makes theatre available on Mondays, when almost all venues are usually blacked out. 34 different shows are on today, to be exact, including Armageddon Dance Party, David L. Williams' inspired, hilarious take on our precarious times, in which a couple does what comes naturally when they hear the end of times is nigh: invite people over and crank up the music to......

Today in the Fringe Festival 89 of the 200+ shows for 2006 are on view. There is most assuredly something for everyone – just have a look at the listings. And here are five more reviews (see also seven from last weekend and four from yesterday), of Suicide, the Musical, Fatboy Romeo, The Yellow Wallpaper, Their Wings Were Blue, and Armageddon Dance Party, the last of which is going straight to the top tier of......

The productions covered in this installment of reviews from the 2006 New York Fringe Festival http://www.fringenyc.org are pretty far removed from those in last week’s dispatch -- which is just as it should be, since the Fringe is all about the new, the different, the craziness from every direction of the compass and layer of the mind. Plus, in today’s selection there are two can’t-misses: Big Doolie, by Richard Thompson, and David Isaacson’s Letter Purloined.......

It's hard to believe if you've already taken in numerous performances, but the Fringe Festival is just picking up steam. Some productions haven’t even started their 5- or 6-night runs yet, including The Burning Cities Project from Dreamscape Theatre (a multimedia collage about the experiences of people who have seen their cities burn – a touch of comedy is promised); The Goods are Odd, by Julie Sharbutt and Liz Wisan (about two Alaskans looking for......

MOVIES: Seriously, like there is anything else to see this weekend besides Snakes on a Plane. C'mon, you know you wanna. Everytime // Everywhere // $10.75(ish) THEATER: One of the few things the Fringe Festival doesn't have, somewhat surprisingly, is a full-fledged outdoor production. If you want to take advantage of good weather this weekend, check out Pulse Ensemble Theatre's urban adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Directed by Alexa Kelly and performed on a small......

MOVIE ART: Young artists with wtf?-attitudes come together to bring us "Risky Business" - a showcase of mixed media, including video, sculpture, collage, painting, and photography. A parents-out-of-town themed art party will follow the opening. 6 to 8pm // Tonight through August 18th // PPOW [555 W. 25th St] // Free THEATER: It wasn't just the Fringe Festival opening this weekend. Waterwell's Marco Millions (based on lies), which is actually based on a not-very-famous play......

Reviewing shows in the very first days of the Fringe Festival is always a little hazardous, what with so many kinks that need to be worked out (if not in the show itself, in the Fringe management). But we wanted to report to you early on about what to see and what not to see, overlooking glitches as best we could, at least as far as they appeared to be early-run problems rather than real......