We already covered the Super Bowl half time show alternatives, but what if you're not a football fan or your team didn’t make it? What if you don’t want to sit through a football game to watch commercials or if you hate Joe Buck and Troy Aikman? Well, don’t worry, there are some television alternatives for you if you don’t want to watch either the game or the countless hours of pre-game shows. If crime......

We talked to someone who was at the Knicks game in Boston Thursday night and he told us he saw something he'd never seen at a sporting event before––a fan ripping off his team's jersey and throwing it onto the court in disgust. The Boston crowd loved it. The gesture came as the Knicks were trailing the Celtics by 50 points in what would come as the team's second-worst scoring performance in the history of......

Kate Gilliam heads up Trees Not Trash, a group whose name pretty much explains it all. Gilliam builds planters, plants trees and makes her industrial neighborhood a little more green each day. Oh, and she's a seed bomber, too. We're betting East Williamsburg could use a lot more patches of nature, so help out by volunteering or going to their benefit show this Saturday. When did Trees Not Trash begin, and what prompted its inception?......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: The Kill Point (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., Spike TV) The debut of a hostage drama miniseries starring John Leguizamo as a leader of a group of bank robbers who’s plans went wrong and Donnie Wahlberg as the Pittsburgh Police negotiator tasked to deal with them. Saving Grace (Monday, 10:00 p.m., TNT) Another cop show with a twist, this time Holly Hunter stars as an Oklahoma City Police detective......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: Mystery: Foyle’s War: Invasion (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., WNET 13, Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., WLIW 21) The fourth series of this great British World War II period mystery drama makes its way to this side of the pond. The first of four episodes has Detective Foyle and his team investigation a murder on an American base. The 4400 (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., USA) This sci-fi series about people who were......

Chung chung! NBC and producer Dick Wolf have hashed out a deal to keep Law & Order on the air for the next four years. Variety reports (subscription only) that as part of the deal, Law & Order: Criminal Intent will be moving to USA. Yes, USA (which NBC owns) will now have the first run episodes of Detective Robert Goren's histrionics, and then NBC will air repeats of L&O:CI. Interesting! NBC Universal head......

- New Yorkers for Parks is having a Daffodil Photo Contest for their Annual Daffodil Project - A look at the lobby of 2 Columbus Circle - and the Museum of Arts and Design wants to think about other things - A traffic cop was hit by a car in the Bronx - Law & Order moves to 9PM, but that's when Veronica Mars and Lost are on! What do we do!!! Oh, yeah,......

Hilarious media analysis from Variety: It seems that since there are so many version of Law & Order out there, the overkill is hurting ratings on cable and NBC! The article is subscription-only, but here are some of the facts and figures: - The 7PM airing is down 29% in adults 18-49 this year so far (TNT argues that it's up against CSI on Spike and L&O SVU on USA) - The 8PM airing is......

Gothamist was a bit underwhelmed by this year's Golden Globe nominees, and we were thinking of not liveblogging. But, gosh darn it as we watched the E! preshow and saw the starlets sparkle their way down the red carpet, we realize it was hopeless, so here we are. Let it be known that: - Keira Knightley looks gorgeous in her white Valentino - and there's something surprisingly youthful about the dress, even though there's that......

Next season, the classic voice of Marv Albert will return to the New York area. A deal, te be announced today, makes Albert the voice of the Nets on the YES Network starting next season. The Times reports that the contract is for two years at $750,000 to $800,000 per year. The Nets are expected to Nets move to Albert's hometown of Brooklyn, as early as the 2007-08 season, but more likely to be the......

As if America didn’t have enough going on today, the 2004/2005 NBA season kicks off tonight with a doubleheader on TNT (how’s that for some election coverage counter programming?). The local teams don’t get started until tomorrow when the rebuilt Nets will take on Shaquille O’Neal and the Miami Heat at the Meadowlands and the Knicks travel to the Twin Cities to take on last year’s MVP and the Twolves. Both the Knicks and Nets......

We posted a few days ago that Marv Albert was out as the Knicks play-by-play broadcaster. What has transpired in the last few days since then has created an intense debate in the New York sports landscape. Gothamist is here to catch you up to speed. WFAN was first to report the departure of Marv Albert, they also reported that as soon as the negotiations had started to breakdown with Marv and the Garden. Marv......

Yesterday, Marv Albert and Cablevision parted ways, ending his affiliation with the New York Knicks and Madison Square Garden, both owned by Cablevision. In the process of negotiating a new contract, the two sides seemed to disagree over the value of Albert's contract and over his criticism of the Knicks. The Post reported that management was fed up with Albert's criticism and Albert was fed up with the complaints, while The Times reports that Albert......

The weather is a mixed bag this weekend as we stick around the city this weekend (we're glad we won't need to follow Gawker's rules of conduct for getting to the Hamptons - we've seen people getting on and off the Jitney and it looks worse than the school bus we had to take). We've been trying to think of what we want to do, and have come up with some ideas that we'd like......

In the second round of the NBA Playoffs tonight, the Nets take on the Detroit Pistons (game time is 8 p.m. on TNT). The two teams were even during the regular season, going 2-2 in head-to-head games. New Jersey comes into the series winning 14 straight Eastern Conference playoff games, including a sweep of the Knicks this season and the Pistons last year in the conference finals. With improvements on both the Nets and Pistons,......

Leave it to the Times' Alessandra Stanley to give Gothamist a reason to even think about watching Call Me: The Heidi Fleiss Story, with Jamie-Lynn "Meadow" DiScala, on USA tonight. Stanley writesDiScala interprets the role of the 27-year-old brothel owner with coy vacancy, and her flat affect seems part of a broader postmodern approach to the material. "Call Me" is less a made-for-television movie than an extension of the 50's French nouveau roman; Fleiss's immorality......

The SAG nominations have been announced, and while the usual suspects of late appear, the biggest surprise is the strong showing for The Station Agent, with Peter Dinklage and Patricia Clarkson getting lead nominations and the cast receiving an ensemble nominations. The SAGs are voted on by actors, so these are usually a pretty decent indicator of who will be nominated for the Oscars' acting categories. We would like to see Johnny Depp get an......

Happy Birthday, Jerry! You are our favorite 68 year old man by a long shot. Not only is Aaron disappointed in us, Gothamist is very, very ashamed we didn't post about this at the top of the day. We are addressing this problem by programming the little Jerry Orbach information we have into into our computer, PDA, cellphone... and we will watch Law & Order on TNT tonight, all night.......

Why does the State of California treat its recall like a Bingo match at the local retirement home? Even the AP says it seems more like a Vegas Keno match. Apparently its a way to "erase the estimated 5 percent advantage a candidate gets from being at the top of the ballot," and Secretary of State Kevin Shelley says that the State does it before every election but "no one ever comes." Well, when......

How could people think that a cable movie version of Caesar would be a good idea? Just looking at photos of Chris Noth as Pompey in TNT's Caesar makes Gothamist seriously rethink the idea of a Roman Empire. And Jeremy Sisto, is he the new go-to man for TV and cable biopics about leaders many millennia ago? Tom Shales describes Chris Noth as looking "like a cross between Dean Martin and Sylvester Stallone, both drunk."......

It was only a matter of time before artists would start absorbing Law & Order into their subconsciousness and create works of art inspired by Dick Wolf's ubiquitous (in only the very best sense of the word) franchise. Artist and entrepreneur Brandon Bird put together Law & Order: Artistic Intent, which recently ran in a Santa Cruz, CA gallery. According to a Metroactive article, Bird got the idea after watching Law & Order on TNT.......

Harrison Ford, where art thou? You're our Han Solo, our Indiana Jones...hell, our Jack Ryan (we need a good CIA hero in this day and age, we suppose). It seems you've been going through a three-quarter-life crisis. In love with Calista Flockhart? The earring? The crappy movies? It's so sad to Gothamist that you have to star in a movie with Bedhead (as for Hollywood Homicide, A.O. Scott likes it, Manohla Dargis doesn't). Yes, you're......

Aaron at 601am inspired us with his suggestions for an indoor Memorial Day weekend for guests. Since lousy weather makes getting past the front door even harder, we have included many things that are great stay-at-home activities: - Go see a movie (Sweet Sixteen, A Woman Is A Woman, Matrix: Reloaded again to better defend position) - Watch Sex and the City and the Jack Ryan Collection on DVD - Clean out the closet -......

Law & Order turns 300 tonight, and over the past few years and after successfully extending the brand, everyone has been tripping over themselves to explain exactly why Law & Order been so successful. The Los Angeles Times has a pretty comprehensive piece about its staying power. Brian Lowry's gives Gothamist interesting observations, like how L&O subverted the movie-of-the-week genre and a subhead that says, "The by-the-book crime show has undermined TV movies, figured......

Law & Order
In the lives of New Yorkers, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the makers of Law & Order, who consistently churn out topical, interesting, and entertaining programming; and the Law & Order fans, who eagerly watch the show and its offshoots on NBC, TNT, USA, and wherever else possible. These are their stories....