A 37-year-old man ended his train trip atop a Metro-North car at the Pelham station, where he fell or was pulled from the train's roof, while on fire and suffering from burns after coming into contact with a high voltage power cable. Accounts of the incident differ, but do agree on the fact that the adventurer was named Eric Chavez, he suffered burns on his body, and that it was somewhat of a miracle that......

Following a Craigslist post from last week, a Bob Dylan video was shot yesterday in Williamsburg. Dylan wasn't there, but a look-a-like was on hand along with a ton of faux-hippies. The posting called for: - Men and women in their 20s-40s who are fans of Bob Dylan. Prefer people who embody the style of the 1960s, 70s or 80s (i.e. hippies, disco dancers, punks), but we are open to anyone who is a fan......

Blender has a list of 100 Days That Changed Music, and not surprisingly a good amount of them took place in New York. Here are a few, see any missing? 99. December 11, 1965: The Velvet Underground play their first show, which was actually at a high school dance in Summit, New Jersey. The following year however, the Velvets became the house band at Warhol's Factory. 96. December 14, 1977: "Saturday Night Fever debuts in......

From the tallest skyscraper in the City of Brotherly Love to Canadian tourism copywriting brilliance, here's what you should know from our -ist cities: This week, Phillyist took a gleeful listen to the White Stripes' exciting new release, watched in awe as their new tallest skyscraper was finally completed, found a cheaper way to get to Gothamist, invented a tasty new dessert, and brought back their Craigslist Round-Up feature with a bang. Bostonist watches......

Once (directed by John Carney) Have you ever had a certain beloved record so often on repeat that you start to think of it as the soundtrack to your life? That magical connection between music, emotion and experience is at the heart of the new musical Once and it makes for a truly unique movie. A vacuum cleaner repairman by day and a Dublin street busker by night, "The Guy" (Glen Hansard) is obviously nursing......

READINGS: Jonathan Lethem reads from his new novel You Don't Love Me Yet. In it, Lethem leaves Boerum Hill for LA "to recount the near-fame experience of a Los Angeles alternative rock band". A girl, a boy and a band - sounds like a hipster love story to us! 7pm // Barnes & Noble [33 E 17th St] // Free Saul Austerlitz talks about his book Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video.......

A look at some noteworthy televison this weel: Nature - The Best of Nature: 25 Years (Sunday, 7:00 p.m. WNET 13) Don't be fooled by the title, but this is a pledge drive clip show special. http://abcfamily.go.com/dukeboys">The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (Sunday, 8:00 p.m. ABC Family) If you liked The Dukes of Hazzard, you will probably like this made for TV movie. The Winner (Sunday, 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. WNYW 5) The buzz......

On the cusp of November, Music is a Better Noise opened up at P.S.1. The exhibit brings together musicians who make art and (you guessed it) artists who make music - or at the very least, use music as a creative motivator in their art. The exhibition is broken up in to two parts. The first part explores New York-based artists and musicians who emerged in the city during the mid-1970s to early 1980s, and......

Some New Yorker readers are getting not only elaborate, thick-stock advertisements, but an actual DVD of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth! The NY Sun reports that an unspecified number of DVDs were placed into this week's edition, with the tag line, "Own, Watch and Share It." While the New Yorker won't say how many readers will receive it, there are a couple possibilities: The special subscriber list of "1,500 influential members of business, government, and......

"Can you feel me? Can you motherfuckin' feel me?" Adira Amram belts out on her song "Wanna Make Out," which she sings while dressed in leotards, a Betsey Johnson push-up bra and suit jacket, or other attention-getting garb while pounding away on a keyboard or piano. Amram, the daughter of composer David Amram, started out as an actress but has taken to performing her hilarious “keyboard fantasy” songs at local comedy gigs. The 25-year-old performer......

THEATER: The Impact Festival and fall at the Culture Project get started in a big way with the world premiere of The Treatment, which starts previews tonight. Add together playwright Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues fame), stars Dylan McDermott and Portia, director Leigh Silverman, and a sharply topical play about a traumatized soldier who saw and took part in too much for his psyche to handle when he was a military interrogator, and you've got......

André 3000 and Big Boi bring their Grammy-winning mojo to the big screen this week with their much anticipated musical, Idlewild. Set in a '30s speakeasy complete with marcel wave hairdos and juke joint stepping, the movie also coincides with the release of a new OutKast record featuring songs from the flick. Hopefully director Bryan Barber has made something be more substantial than one terribly long, theme music video. Some might argue drinking lots of......

Busta Rhymes, also known as Trevor Smith, is in trouble with the law again. Since Rhymes refused to cooperate with the police regarding the shooting death of his bodyguard on the set of his music video for the song "Touch It {Remix}" earlier in the year the NYPD has been looking for an excuse to bring him in for questioning. They found that reason last week when a concert-goer was allegedly assaulted after spitting......

ART OPENING: The Martinez Gallery presents SELF-PORTRAIT an exhibition that "puts the artists behind the graffiti movement on display, challenging stereotypes about both the form and its practitioners. This collective self-portrait, which includes the work of twelve contemporary graffiti writers, exposes a history that the institutional art world and politicians, ignore and even censor." Featuring CASE 2, COCO 144, GIZ, JA, KEZ 5, LES, NATO, NOXER, RATE, SKUF, TRACY 168 and VFR. - Jason Laning......

Gothamist is very grateful that we didn't have to witness Bloomberg's Hip Hop Press conference yesterday. OK, well, actually we kinda do wish that we'd been there, if only to see Bloomie chatting it up with Ice-T and Russell Simmons, but considering some of the soundbites that made it into today's papers we suspect that even that charm would have quickly worn off ("Welcome to City Hall, or my crib, as I like to......

- Romona Moore's mother filed suit against the NYPD for racial discrimination and negligence in dealing with her daughter's murder- back in July 2004. - The Falls owner talks at the Post. - The couple currently being charged with beating their 4-year-old daughter to death 16 years ago have six other kids. Who not shockingly had no idea they had a sister. - Even on a Saturday we just can't understand the logic of......

Way back in 2004, the city announced its super duper special NYC Tax Credit Program for film and TV producers (as well as commercial, music video, etc.) in order to motivate productions to happen here, versus Los Angeles or (gasp) Toronto. And it worked really well: Lindsay Lohan made a movie, Martin Scorsese shot a set-in-Boston movie mostly here, CBS brought us Love Monkey (then cancelled it), there's another Dick Wolf TV, plus countless......

We reminded you last week to vote for the Plug Awards, and now is your chance to check out the actual awards ceremony. The awards are tonight at Webster Hall and will include a sampling of some of our favorite bands: Performances by: * BEANS w/ HOLY F**k (representing WARP's nomination for Label Of The Year) * CHAD VANGAALEN (nominated for 2 PLUG Awards - New Artist & Male Artist of The Year) * CELEBRATION......

Videoblogs seem to have reached critical mass. Last week, the New York Times did a long piece on RocketBoom, Amanda Congdon and Andrew Baron's amazing 3-minute daily newscast. Vimeo, the Flickr-like video-sharing site, also seems to be exploding with new content and features. Browsing the site this week, we found hundreds of fun clips (definitely bookmark the NYC-tag!). Our favorites were Kristen's very moving music video, and ImprovEverywhere's suicide-jumper docu-comedy. Now seems an opportune......

yamaholiday! Becky Yamamoto is a super stand up performer for sure, but she is also an awesome audience member. Her laugh is loud and infectious and puts performers at ease because her enthusiasm for her peers is so genuine. Which is why we think the holiday show Becky is hosting at Galapagos [70 N. 6th St., Williamsburg] on Friday will be full of noggy cheer and also goodwill toward men and peace and stuff. A......

Frank Lesser, Multimedia Satirist...

CONTEST ALERT: We're part of a joint blog contest thing that we don't completely understand, but here's what you need to know: FREE iPod Nano! Filled up with the soundtrack from Elizabethtown. You can enter here, and you should. Seriously. Do it. ART: "For the first time in history, Skewville, America's most subversive street art twins, will be unlocking their doors and allowing the public to explore their secret laboratory..." of their own brand of......

World Leader Pretend...

Gothamist spends every weekday in DUMBO, a generally laid-back, if not sleepy, neighborhood occasionally graced by the presence of a big-name actor filming a movie, or a rapper making a music video. But when we heard the rumor news U2 were going to be around the corner from the office playing a free show, we were glad to know our employer would insist we attend. For those of you unable to escape the confines......

Gothamist loves movie soundtracks. Paying attention to them has led us to learning about new composers or new artists, whose own albums we realize we must rush out to buy. French critic and film director Olivier Assayas loves the music in movies too and he's programmed a series at BAMcin�matek of his favorite film soundtracks called "I Can Hear The Guitar: Selected by Olivier Assayas," which begins today. Starting out as a writer for the......

It's a bit of a musical gamble: a girl, her voice, and her harp. But the folks at Drag City records are betting on Joanna Newsom. Newsom is a young, twenty-something harpist from San Francisco. The music is lush and delicate, and as refined as you'd expect given her over 10 years of training on the instrument. Her vocals, on the otherhand, are a tougher sell: girlish and soft at times, but fluctuating to what......

Randy Kim, NBA.com...

Chicagoist has the scoop on the R.Kelly video shooting on the Chicago River, which involved a boat, lots of scantily clad women, and some bumping music. Gothamist can just imagine the director's pitch, "It's Big Pimpin', but in Chicago - dig it?" This makes Gothamist wonder why there aren't more videos in NY on Circle Line Cruises, the Staten Island Ferry, or the Water Taxi. For some reason, it's always a flatbed truck that goes......

OK, so I used to be much more of an anglophile than I am now - you know, listened to Blur, Pulp, The Stone Roses, and all that pretentious rock of the Nineties. After having spent a week in Manchester and trying to find a decent restaurant of any cuisine -- any -- and after having realized I was more likely to find a Zionist in Pakistan than fresh fish and vegetables in the UK,......