Results tagged “malcolmgladwell”

THEATER: Noah Diamond has worked as a licensed tour guide on all the major double decker bus lines in town, presenting his spoken word elucidation of New York in a near-continuous loop – ten hours a day for seven years. But when he finally quit the business, he found he could not stop guiding: “You wake up screaming, I'm not a tour guide! Then you do ten minutes on the General Slocum and go back to sleep.” He’s now found a way to recover, by performing a one man multimedia virtual tour of New York. 400 Years in Manhattan is a theatrical journey that takes not just one loop around town but rolls through four centuries of city history. - John Del Signore

Ira Glass is the brains, heart and larynx behind the wildly popular program This American Life; each show employs a theatrical, multiple-act structure to carve strange slices of life out of a unique thematic pie. The show began almost 12 years ago as a Chicago public radio program but has since mutated into an Emmy-nominated TV series on Showtime – a leap that prompted Glass and his team to relocate to New York City, bringing the radio version in tow. But Glass still keeps one foot in Chicago; he’s compiled a new book whose proceeds benefit 826CHI, the free writing program open to all students in Chicago. He’ll be appearing at Town Hall Monday night with Susan Orlean, Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klosterman, who have each contributed to the book, called The New Kings of Nonfiction. (Tickets cost $30; all proceeds benefit 826CHI.)

MOVIES: Don't forget, the Bryant Park movies start tonight! The movie won't begin until sunset - which is about the same time the rain and thunder are scheduled to begin. Tonights features in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller, The Birds. Be an early bird (heh) and get there at 5 for a good spot on the lawn!

Malcolm Gladwell profiles Cesar Millan, the "Dog Whisperer," in the New Yorker this week (the article is not online, but this Q&A Gladwell did with Ben Greenman about Millan is), and Gothamist cannot wait to get our issue from the mailbox. If you don't know who Cesar Millan is (like, you watched the South Park episode and thought he was made up), he's a total phenomenon. He communes with dogs, is able to walk huge packs of them, and even has a the Dog Psychology Center to study dogs who seem violent are really aren't (it's the humans' fault, Millan says). Everyone wants to know how to manage their dogs, so Millan is the go to man because of the way he speaks to them.

- A Gothamist tipper says that there are state troopers turning people away from the Comic-Con. Anybody know anything more?

, we never quite thought of Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling books as "movie material." Though interesting and filled with all kinds of fun facts about snap judgments, speed-dating, and the origins of the Hush Puppy madness, they lacked traditional plots or story outlines that could easily be adapted for the screen; they seemed more Discovery Channel material. But thanks to a skinny modelizer with big adaptation dreams -- Leonardo DiCaprio -- we can probably expect Blink, the “intellectual adventure story,” to soon hit theatres. According to Variety, Dicaprio's production company is currently adapting the bestseller, with DiCaprio (obviously) set to star and Stephen Gaghan onboard to write and direct. Supposedly, Gaghan's plans to include a writer character based on Gladwell and various characters out of the book, "woven together into a story." We can only hope DiCaprio intends to play the lead in a curly, Gladwell-afro inspired wig.

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 Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, they're on the list this year, but aren't they influential for an era, not just a year? What also is hilariously lame is that Time insists on its subscriber-only policy to access this content. News flash: No one really wants to read it unless they're in the dentist's office. Which reminds Gothamist, it's time for a cleaning.

As 2004 stumbles to a close, many of our blogger buddies have begun churning out their "Best of 2004" lists. For instance, Jason Kottke has already gotten up on the board twice. First, he penned his "Favorite Weblogs of 2004" (Gothamist just barely scraped in at #10; and aimless? For shame, Mr. Kottke. We have a clear aim: being occasionally awesome.) Always the overachiever, Kottke rang in a second time with "Best Links of 2004" (note to Gawker: Jason Kottke secretly loves... Malcolm Gladwell!) Anyway, Gothamist is super-competitive, so without further ado, our latest "best-of" list: the top ten blog posts featuring Thompson the cat: