As of last night, Pier 54 became a temporary home for the band Cartel. Haven't heard of them? That's probably why they opted for this reality show/publicity stunt thing. Through June 12th they'll be recording their second album inside a partially transparent bubble. The stunt is brought to you by MTV, Dr Pepper and Epic Records - surprisingly David Blaine had nothing at all to do with it. You can check in live with the......

GAME ON!: NY Games presents Capture the Flag! We love this game. If you love it too, come be a spectator - or join in! Team Caution plays Team Danger...which will you root for? 7:30pm // Washington Square Park (waterfoutain in the center) // Free MUSIC: With ¡Forward, Russia! playing last night and Band of Horses playing tomorrow night, what does tonight - the meat in the blog buzz sandwich - bring us? How about......

COMEDY: Sara Schaefer's latest show is at UCB, following up her long running series "Sara Schaefer is Obsessed With You" with a new show called "Video Gaga". The night features Schaefer counting down funny music videos for you (we've been told that tonight will include The Fresh's Myspace video), a live musical act (tonight it's Erin McKeown), special guests and glittery dance numbers! (We hear she has her own version of Fly Girls!). 9:30pm //......

MUSIC: If you aren't going to a 06.06.06 party tonight, and if we are in fact all here and the apocolypse hasn't happened...we suggest getting over to the Delancey. Why? Because it's the first Beg Yr Pardon party and there will be free red velvet cupcakes and brownies! There will also be all you can eat BBQ if you're into that sort of thing (for an extra $5). Oh, and music! There is also music.......

LITERATI and GRAFFITI: Smith Dalek, Sasha Jenkins and Darin Rowland (one of the authors of the book "Freight Train Graffiti") discuss the nature of the relationship between graffiti and art, and how a city fad broke out worldwide. A reception and book signing with the graffiti artists on hand will follow. 7 to 9pm // Chelsea Art Museum [556 West 26th St near 11th Ave] // Free ART: Witness a Gordian knot of artistic/intellectual conjecture......

KARAOKE: Tonight is the MCFGHT, a LVHRD event. Michelle Collins is the master of ceremonies, presiding over a roomful of people cheering on those who take part in the nights karaoke showdown. If you've never seen Brian Battjer do karaoke, and we're guessing most of you haven't, you do not want to miss this. He'll be one of the contestants tonight. Check out the flyer here, and buy tickets here. They're $20 ($11 if you're......

BBQ: The BBQ season has officially begun. Luckily, there's always an option for the non-carnivores in town. Today that option is the Annual Summer Vegan BBQ Extravaganza run by Books Through Bars. This organization is a volunteer group that donates reading material to prisoners all over the country. Not an organization geared towards drinking and reading in bars. 4pm // ABC No Rio [156 Rivington St between Clinton and Suffolk] // $5 MUSIC: German death......

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. I tried to find a less clichéd way to put it, but it really is apt to describe Julia Jordan’s new play Dark Yellow as an emotional rollercoaster – both for the audience and, clearly, for the actors. As with any rollercoaster, there are a few......

Here at Gothamist theater, we tend to let the weather affect our views on shows to see more than is perhaps logical, though when there’s so much to see, at least it gives us some way of deciding. Anyway, this being the case, naturally outdoor shows have a special place in our heart, and this week one of (if not the absolute) the first outdoor shows is on: the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s The Bass Saxophone,......

So, as noted earlier this morning, the distance to Broadway’s mostly predictable yet hotly coveted trophies just got a little shorter for this year’s crop of shows, with feel-good musicals taking the lion’s share of recognition, though the reason for a theater climate in which History Boys so easily get beat down by Jersey Boys might also be that there are so few other History Boys. But we digress. So, turning back to our regularly......

Along with producing shows by up and coming playwrights, one of the things off-off-Broadway does best is to resurrect plays first presented ages ago that have hardly been seen or thought of since. One such is V.R. Lang’s Fire Exit: A Vaudeville For Eurydice, which is nominally a modernization of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth but in actuality, at least in this incarnation, is more an opportunity for some majorly bizarre antics by a brave, eager cast.......