The Cold War is a pretense for hot sex in The Wooster Group's latest revival of North Atlantic, which was first staged back in 1983. Set aboard a unisex aircraft carrier off the Dutch coast that same year, James Strahs's opaque play concerns a group of Navy intelligence officers tasked with decrypting Cold War communications. But that's just a cover; their real mission is finding a way to release their nuclear-charged sexual frustration. And since this is showbiz, albeit of the avant-garde variety, what better way to blow off steam than through elaborate song and dance numbers? (The show's title is itself a winking nod to Rogers & Hammerstein's South Pacific.) more ›

What's a polar bear to do when it is 72 in January? Well, if you're a member of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, you stage a silent protest. The Times reports eight members of the club cancelled their Saturday swim, because the water was too warm. Perhaps more interestingly, the News reports it was nine members of the club and the Post says ten! According to Polar Bear Club treasurer Tom McGann, yesterday was the first time in more than a century that the club has cancelled a swim. Meanwhile, the News also reports that the real polar bears in the Central Park Zoo were largely unaffected by the warm weather. more ›

Tuesday's grey, and Wednesday too. Thursday it will rain upon you. Friday, I'm in love. Saturday wait. Sunday is looking great. more ›

While we wait impatiently for some real improvement in the temperature, theater companies are heating up the late winter with scores of new productions. A warning, though: maybe it’s just the mood we’ve been in, but everything that most appealed to us this week is pretty dark/serious. For that reason, we’ll start off with Ensemble Studio Theatre’s company of emerging playwrights, youngblood, which is having its annual “Asking For Trouble” series this week. Each playwright (10 of them) drew a cast and director randomly and had a short time to create a nine-minute play with them; the results are at the Kraine this week, and even if some of the plays are dark, as some undoubtedly will be, it will at least be uplifting to see new playwrights having their work produced. more ›

Blow up a long balloon half-way. If you leave the balloon alone the air pressure is the same everywhere within. Squeeze one end of the balloon and the air pressure will decrease on the squeezed end and increase on the unsqueezed end. A process analogous to squeezing and releasing a balloon occurs in the atmosphere over the North Atlantic and our weather is greatly influenced by whether the atmosphere is being squeezed or not squeezed (the atmosphere isn't literally being squeezed but Gothamist likes to think of it in that way). more ›

The curious Gothamist reader may have noticed a seeming contradiction in the recent entry about the forthcoming movie "The Day After Tomorrow". No, not allegations that NASA may have wanted to silence its scientists, but that one consequence of global warming will be a sudden deep freeze. The earth gets cold when it warms? WTF? more ›

Revered hurricane forecaster Dr. William Gray and his team at Colorado State have just issued their revised forecast for the 2004 hurricane season. Gray predicts 14 named storms for this year, including 8 hurricanes, 3 of which he describes as "intense." Due to "an increase in surface temperatures in the North Atlantic and a decline in surface pressure in the tropical Atlantic," we're in the middle of an unusually active stretch of hurricane seasons.
more ›