MUSIC: If you aren't at your local hometown bar this Thanksgiving-eve, drinking with old high school buddies -- we suggest a sonic alternative. Tonight The Hold Steady and Art Brut do their best at making Terminal 5 feel a little bit cozier this holiday season. Buy tickets here. 7:30pm // Terminal 5 [610 W 56th St] // $30 MUSIC MOVIES: If you're sick and tired of the bands playing around town, go check out two......

THEATER: The Summer Play Festival is at full blaze over at the Theater Row complex on 42nd Street. At $10 a ticket it’s your cheapest way to catch new work by playwrights whose heat index is rising. Tonight you have your pick of four plays; insider theater blogger Surplus recommends Cipher, which concerns two clerks stuck in a secret location monitoring the thoughts of suspected terrorists. “When their assignment gets tough, they begin to ask......

MOVIE: The L Magazine kicks off their summer movie series, Summerscreen, tonight at McCarren Park Pool. We're pretty sure we'll be attending most of these this summer (even though we feel there is a lack of horror filcks on their schedule). So bring something soft to sit on and head over tonight for the cheerleading film that introduced us all to spirit fingers, Bring It On. In two weeks: Dazed and Confused! Alright, alright, alright.......

This week in the Times, ">Bruni revisits Tom Colicchio's Craftsteak, upgrades the restaurant from one star to two. He says, "The improvement in the steaks has made it easier to appreciate the restaurant's other virtues… the unassailable quality of its raw bar selections; its gigantic, crunchy onion rings, some of the best in the city; its fried bone marrow appetizer, a decadence-squared dream." He still thinks the menu is overcrowded, though, and doesn't like the......

Those music know-it-alls over at The L Magazine have declared the Top 8 NYC Bands to watch for this year. Who's in the class of '07? Here's our Top 4 of their Top 8 (we sort of wish they'd put a rock show on with all of them): • White Rabbits This band played our Movable Hype show in February (video) and nearly rocked the house down, and speaking of houses - all six of......

PARTY: The L Magazine celebrates their fourth year and 100th issue tonight at their Fourth-Annual Centennial Party. There will be complimentary tequila and goodies from Brooklyn Industries and Crumpler. Come, drink, celebrate and don't think about the hangover you'll have tomorrow. 8pm // M1-5 [52 Walker St] // Free THEATER: This weekend concludes Stone Soup Theater Arts’ double bill of Edward Bond’s 1976 short play Stone and The Maguffin, an original farce that imagines a......

It's time go over this weekend's NY Times Weddings Announcements! Total Number of Weddings: 24 (including Vows column) Total Number of Same-Sex Weddings: 0 (but the Styles section had a feature about "Dinah Shore Weekend," aka "The L World") Youngest Bride: 22 Oldest Bride: 38 Youngest Groom: 23 Oldest Groom: 42 Biggest Age Difference: 11 years Number of Couples Where Bride and Groom Are the Same Age: 3 (25, 32, and 35) Number of Columbia......

THEATER: A mysterious production is in previews at the DR2 theatre near Union Square. Dubbed “Esoterica”, it is described as a multi-media exploration of matters “philosophical, metaphysical and arcane” by actor, magician and mentalist Eric Walton. On his website, www.ericwalton.com, this description piqued our interest further: “Walton is sort of what you'd guess the devil would be like if he had his own nightclub act." It could be we’re just curious about what a “mentalist”......

READINGS: Brooklyn-based writer and publicist Jennifer Gilmore reads tonight at Coliseum from her buzzy debut novel, Golden Country, which follows the intersecting lives of three Jewish American families from the 1920s through the 1960s. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras 6:30pm // 11 W. 42nd Street [across from Bryant Park] // Free EVENT: Michael Gray, the Duke of Dylanology, will school us in Bob tonight. He "uses a surprising selection of great records and rare video footage......

MOVIE: Get a little more in depth on the whole border crossing controversy with Woodstock in the City's screening of Crossing Arizona at +Art%2C+Dance%2C+Music+and+Film888The+Arts+%2D+Events888Makor+%2D +Film888Makor+Film+August888&productid=T%2DMM5FA06">Makor. There's a Q&A with the filmmakers Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo and a reception following the screening hosted by Indiepix.net. Roger Ebert said after the film screened at Sundance, “On the last day or two (of Sundance) you hurry between screenings, trying to catch films everybody tells you not to......

THEATER: The River to River Festival isn't just about outdoor concerts, and Canadians not only have great indie bands, they also have theatre troupes breaking into the experimental downtown scene. Bluemouth Inc.'s What the River Said, which is in both R2R and the Sitelines series, is a case in point; the play, which evokes "the struggle for acceptance in the calm before the family storm" is the third part of a trilogy originally performed along......

-- The L Magazine sent us this recipe for cold green pea soup with smoked trout-- but why? -- A porch and flowering meadow on the 7th floor? We're dying of envy. -- Ousmane Zongo's family is getting $3m dollars for his wrongful-death. -- When it's a van vs. a bike store, the van usually wins. -- The Apiary has some great photo coverage of the UCB concert in the park. -- A sad......

SummerScreen (you know, like sunscreen) is The L Magazine's addition to the already successful summer of McCarren Park Pool events. The outdoor film series will take place every Tuesday (starting next week) through the end of August. The films start at sundown, and before that...there are bands! Oh, and it's free. Here's the schedule: July 25: Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) with the Cold Hands Collective August 1: Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996)......

ART: Tonight Dreamland: Coney Island 1905-1925 opens. The exhibit is opened through August 19th and features "original drawings, blueprints, and vintage photographs of New York City’s favorite amusement park, Coney Island." Opening Reception 6 to 8pm // Ricco Maresca Gallery [529 West 20th St] // Free THEATER: The year's not half over, but we'd bet good money that Men Eat Mars Bars While Touching Their Penis, which opens tonight, would win the prize for most......

An L train subway operator suffered a seizure and crashed an L train as he was trying to park it at the Canarsie railyards yesterday morning. Luckily, no one was injured seriously, and the operator and two other workers were taken to the hospital. The MTA also said there was a contractor installing advertising, but there are no reports he was injured. The Daily News describes the derailment:The train hit a set of metal poles......

San Francisco is proud host of a new reality show called "How to Get the Guy" that's unfortunately not a descendant of Will and Grace, Queer Eye, The L Word, American Idol etc. Also a biodefence lab is coming to the East Bay and SFist teaches wine pairing. Getting on the wrong train sucks. Getting on the wrong train and becoming the victim of what will later be described as a "stabbing spree" really sucks.......

Judy McGuire, Advice Columnist...

The L Magazine has a lot of romance-themed articles (once it's a new year, marketing for Valentine's Day starts), including asking cab drivers when their first kisses were (aw) and some bars to get some Valentine's Day drink on. Basic stuff - until we read the article about the worst makeout sessions bartenders have seen. This was particularly frightening:Juliana Where she presides: Rodeo Bar, Murray Hill Favorite Drink: Bourbon, straight up I’ve seen people actually......

Continuing to show that it don't know Jack, Infinity Broadcasting announced that 92.3 KRock is moving to an all-talk forma, confirming the rumors that were around last week. Moreover, David Lee Roth will be hosting the morning drive show! Yes, that Van Halen lead signer and certified EMT David Lee Roth! Gothamist can't wait for stories about getting busted for buying a dimebag in Washington Square Park and how crazy Eddie Van Halen is. The......

The MTA is going to ignore an arbitrator's ruling that conductors must be on the automated L train at all times and the agency is going to continue with only one crew member (an engineer) running the show. The agency is also considering an appeal to what it thinks is an overly "technical" reading of a labor agreement. Hold on: The technical part is that the labor agreement said only trains under 300 feet in......

This week being Gay Pride week, Gothamist thought for about parading then realized, well, that sounds suspiciously like exercise, and we'd rather drink anyway. So we wondered if there is such a thing as a gay drink? What makes it gay? We asked at an ostensibly straight bar, Lolita, at the party for Elizabeth Merrick's novel Girly (Ms. Merrick ran the Cupcake reading series with Lauren Cerand until April 2005). We spoke to one co-owner,......

The first conductorless L trains were up and running yesterday, as the MTA moves to a more modern (and cost cutting - so they think) form of subway service. The One Person Train Operation is only for weekends and nights, and L riders have mixed opinions. "Frankly, with a bicycle you don’t really get much help from operators anyway. It’s pretty much up to you. But it’s not good in terms of security." - Subway......

Experience has taught us many things. The L train will usually be late; cart meat tastes yummy only the first time around (ewww…too far?); and buying wine by the bottle is usually better - in value and taste - than wine by the glass. Of course there are exceptions to the rules, but our experience of drinking our way around Manhattan, parts of Brooklyn and Queens (well, just the beer garden but we’re pretty sure......

Gothamist knew there was a reason why we loved Brian Williams so much. Besides being hilarious and loving pizza, the NBC Nightly News anchor apparently loves sexy TV, too. Rush and Molloy report that when stars of The L Word (think Sex and the City without the men and the New York, but with more ladies) were at Michael's, Williams said, "On Sundays in my house, it's all about the lesbians of 'The L Word.'"......

Rachel Korowitz, Improv Comedienne...

The L train will get the city's first computer-controlled trains this summer. And as with any new technology not with the words "iPod" or "Mac" attached to it, there's a bit of controversy. It turns out the computerized trains ("Communication-Based Train Control") will only have one MTA employee manning them, not two as previously discussed. This employee will be in charge of monitoring the controls, opening and closing doors, and "tending to passengers' issues," which......

Margaret Harper, NYC Public School Teacher...

Everybody loves broccoli, right? The great green vegetable is a cool weather crop. It prefers growing temperatures from 40-70 degrees Fahrenheit. Most of the commercial production in the U.S. along the foggy central California coast. The L.A. Daily News reports that two researchers have succeeded in breeding heat tolerant broccoli. Their hybrid survives temperatures in the high nineties and has tolerated heat spikes of over 110 degrees. As one of the researchers put it, "Our......

Rachel Kramer Bussel, Smut Editor/Writer...

Jonny Diamond, The L Magazine...