FAIR: The International vintage poster fair has arrived. It's time to take that ironic velvet Elvis off the wall and class up your joint. The fair will include "over 25 international dealers with more than 10,000 original vintage posters." More info here. more ›

THEATER: Gertrude Stein is regarded as an avant-garde intellectual whose adventurous prose has long overshadowed her plays – despite her Broadway hit Four Saints in Three Acts. (Who could forget?) A crack team of downtown experimental theater types are now hoisting six of Stein’s one-acts out of obscurity with a production in the East Village. The evening, irresistibly dubbed Steinese Takeout, boldly embraces Stein’s radicalism and runs with it. How radical are these plays? “How about no plot, no setting, and no pre-defined characters. Cryptic? Definitely. Absurd? Perhaps. Balderdash? Not at all.” – John Del Signore more ›

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. more ›

THEATER: Survey: Do women actually, um, enjoy Playgirl magazine? It’s a timeless question, and one that - according to former editor Ronnie Koenig - even haunted the boss herself. Her multimedia play Dirty Girl, now in previews, is about her “quest to find a woman who actually likes the beefcakes in the magazine.” The cast has been blogging and a book deal is in the works. (Brace yourself for The Devil Wears Nothing.) - John Del Signore more ›

FESTIVAL: Today marks the start of the Blip Festival. The arts fest that explores the medium "of the 8-bit scene - musicians and artists who use low-bit videogame and computer hardware as their creative tools. more ›

COMEDY: OMG, we get like so many creepy myspace friend requests but this one made us LOL. Actually, it’s two friend requests in one, from Braeson Herold and Alana Harrison. But they’re not just groveling for “the add”; they want us to come see their show called Fake Friends Tour! The title doesn’t really make sense, because they're not touring and whoever heard of fake friends on myspace? But the way they blog about it we think it could be hilarious, zany or, like, extremely annoying: “We are two separate solo shows that are joining forces to become the greatest night of introspective comedy EVER!!! We've got it all: dirty talk, gay jazz, celeb impressions and near death experiences! We even have a massage so shocking it will alter your posture for life! If you make us a hit, we promise to become your best fake friend FOREVER!!!” Add at your own risk. - John Del Signore more ›

Leah Allen is not from a town in Texas. She doesn't speak Hebrew either but her new bar, Abilene, is a paean to both. The word, in Hebrew, means grass, and on there are waves of the same on walls, under beautifully understated lighting. A native New Yorker and Carroll Gardens resident, Abilene is her first bar in Brooklyn but she's no novice- she opened Lolita in 1999. We had a drink with Leah and her husband who renovated the space, formerly the Red Room, together. Unlike Lolita, this place is never going to hold a reading series- this one is all about how comfortable people can be with board games and no one that is ever going to shush you, ever. Tuesday the bar hosted an Anti-Valentine's Day party and may bring in djs; the space is similar to the old Halcyon and we could see it working. more ›

Maybe it’s just us, but the days and weeks seem to have slowed down to less than a crawl lately, as though they were molasses and this were actually a cold January. That’s what good theater’s for, though – to transport you to another place and make you experience time differently. This week there’s a motley assortment of shows on offer to help. more ›

There are so many holiday theatre offerings right now, many of them closing when Christmas is still a week or more away, so we are going to be ornery and focus on non-seasonal stuff, of which there is plenty, as usual. One show that just caught our eye is Under a Montana Moon, performed by the mime Bill Bowers. We get a lot of puppetry on stages here, but miming, not so much, and Bowers is a top guy in the field, so this solo piece is very much worth catching. It’s comprised of various stories set in the West, where Bowers grew up, and aims to “use the Art of Silence to investigate the Idea of Silence.” This weekend he’s also performing his other main solo piece, It Goes Without Saying, to benefit the Rattlestick Theatre, so there’s more than enough opportunities to fit seeing this unique artist into your schedule. more ›

Did you make it to any of the festivals we mentioned a short while back? If you did, good for you, and you’ll know that these late fall smorgasbords have been putting some nifty stuff on stage; if you didn’t, this is a great week to make up for it, as the One Festival includes some very interesting pieces – all by solo performers, as the name implies. The range is pleasingly head-spinning: from Ryan Paulson’s white-bread Pentecostal Wisconsin to Wild Rice, Scarlett Lam’s portrayal of generational conflict between traditional Chinese values and modern New Jersey reality, to Joyia Bradley’s Soul To Keep, which weaves lives of African Americans from the past and present together, plus four other shows, there are bound to be some striking performances. more ›

Todd Levin/Bob Powers more ›