Rudy Giuliani may have exited the presidential campaign, but that doesn't mean he's disappeared. For starters, we hope those Rudy Giuliani campaign staffers who gave up their paychecks feel good about this: According to the Washington Post, Giuliani's campaign paid his firm Giuliani Partners $60,000 in rent and paid Giuliani Security & Safety $300,000 for security. We don't understand why he stopped running - it's a perfect way to convert donations into revenue! Well,......

Members of the Writers Guild of America have been striking in Los Angeles and New York this past week over details of a basic contract between writers and producers - one of the biggest sticking points is the amount of residuals writers get from DVD and new media distribution. The NY Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd asked Seth Meyers (who we spoke to on Tuesday) to give her a weekend update about the strike:......

Why Brendan Keefe Left WCBS Last week we mentioned that Brendan Keefe, late of WCBS, is now and anchor at the ABC affiliate in Cincinnati, WCPO. He started this week and he revealed to the Cincinnati Post some of his reasons for leaving New York for Ohio. He told the paper, "We wanted a place to raise a family that we could call home for a long time." He also gave a slight dig to......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an armed robbery on East 91st St. in Brooklyn, a confined space rescue at JFK Airport in Queens, and a pedestrian was struck at East 23rd St. and Lexington Ave. in Manhattan. A dump truck jack-knifed and rolled over, crushing the car next to it and killing the car's two occupants in Brooklyn. Jay Leno is auctioning off the set of The Tonight Show and donating the proceeds to......

Fred Thompson was never an actual Manhattan District Attorney, he just played one TV. He used the same medium to announce that he was running for President by pursuing the Republican nomination Wednesday night on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Unlike California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who announced his gubernatorial candidacy by appearing on The Tonight Show in person, Thompson made his announcement via a taped message that Leno aired. Speculation about the possibility of......

In February rumors started to fly about Jimmy Fallon becoming the next Late Night host when Conan O'Brien leaves his current spot to take Jay Leno's spot. It's an after-hours game of musical chairs! (Though no one knows where Leno will end up, it is said he'll likely stay in the late night game.) NBC chief Rick Ludwin says that Fallon is now at the top of the short list for possible Late Night hosts.......

Last night Beverly Sills lost her battle with lung cancer, she died at her home in Manhattan at the age of 78. While she was a lifelong non-smoker and only found out about the cancer a few weeks ago, this wasn't her first experience with it - she underwent a successful surgery for cancer in 1974. Sills, born Belle Miriam Silverman (and called "Bubbles" in her youth), was a Brooklyn-born soprano, and one of the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a large snake was reported on West 118th St. in Manhattan, an assault in transit on the Brighton Line in Brooklyn, and an armed robbery on Whittier St. and Lafayette Ave. in the Bronx. The Splasher's identity is revealed! Scroll down to the bottom of our post on the anti-street art vandal for his name and picture. Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro wants security cameras installed at a......

Bradford Reed is the inventor and probably the only player of the pencilina, an instrument that he describes as "an electric ten-stringed collision of the hammer dulcimer, slide guitar, koto and fretless bass with six pickups of varied types" and looks something like a surf board caught up in a fishing net. He has played with King Missile, the Blue Man Group band and has composed for film and animation. He has appeared on MTV,......

If you are stuck inside all day because of the snow, here's a great trove of TMBG videos to help you pass the time. Some of our favorites include the balls-out insane version of Birdhouse in Your Soul from the Tonight Show (performed with the full Doc Severinsen band!), Why Does the Sun Shine from Conan in 1993, and this version of Dr. Worm from Penn and Teller's Sin City show. [Related: there's a ton......

2:04 AM - The media is being told they have to wait a while before the TWU will talk. So with that, Gothamist is going to bed to get ready in case there is a strike - we're going attempt to check out the Brooklyn Bridge in the morning, which is supposed to be really cold tomorrow morning. Dress warm and dream of the strike being resolved by the time you wake up. Thanks for......

01:18 - Okay, Gothamist is going to sleep. We need to be fresh when we wake up in a few hours to review the tense yet Waiting-for-G-Train like pre-deadline hours and confusing (and boring) post-deadline hour. Thanks for commenting and keeping us company - see you in the morning! 01:06 - Hmm, FOX 5 has a scroll saying that trains and buses will run tomorrow, even without a contract. But that's FOX 5. And is......

New York magazine brings the funny this week with a cover story about Conan O'Brien as well as some other NYC-comedy features. The Conan story delves into his "unsuave" persona and the possibilities of bringing his style to the rest of America when he takes over the Tonight Show (he says, "I’m open to going to L.A. Mostly because it won’t be my choice."). Gothamist highly recommends you read it, but we have pulled out......

Dave Rubin, Comedian ...

In a re-election year stumping opportunity, the Mayor visited Conan O'Brien's talk show last night and asked him to bring the Tonight Show back to NYC. And Gothamist says, "Please, do!" The AP says that Mayor Bling "jokingly tried to make a deal," offering to give O'Brien a park permit for the Late Night softball team if he stayed in NYC. Conan said, "It's not up to me, I work for the man. If......

Hoping to get rid of some of the Bernard Kerik stink, Rudy Giuliani was on the Tonight Show last night. We didn't catch the whole segment (Gothamist is a sucker for Chappelle's Show repeats we've seen 41 times already!), but he vaguely said he'd be into running for office again. But, as noted in today's Observer article, Rudy has been making a pretty penny as a civilian, like making $80,000 during a tsunami benefit......

The AP is reporting that Johnny Carson, the gold standard for modern day talk show hosts, has died at 79. Many of us grew up watching Carson smoothly lob jokes at celebrities, dress up for skits, and give many rising stars a chance...or we'd pretend we understood why Charo was there. Again. But who couldn't love Carnac the Magnificient? He had kept a low profile after retiring his Tonight Show gig in 1992, but it......

Gothamist is still excited about the prospect of Conan O'Brien being the new Tonight Show host - though we'll have to wait until 2009 for it to happen. Since we ate up the Letterman-Leno saga when Johnny Carson stepped down from the Tonight Show, we've been obsessed with this news and found this Business > Media & Advertising > O'Brien to Succeed Leno on 'Tonight' Show" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/business/media/28nbc.html?hp">tidbit from Bill Carter's NY Times article fascinating:But the......

Thank the forces at NBC-Universal: Conan O'Brien will take over The Tonight Show in 2009, when Jay Leno will retire. When Jay Leno resigned a fat contract earlier this year, O'Brien openly wondered what that meant for his plans at NBC, especially since CBS, ABC, and FOX are looking for some late-night action, so the suits at NBC-U must have seriously hustled. Gothamist's only request is that Conan stays in New York City. There's......

President Ronald Reagan passed away today at age 93. Native of Illinois, son of Hollywood, and father of modern America, Reagan managed to be a galvanizing and charismatic leader during his two terms as president. While his policies and dealings ("Reagonomics" and domestic policy, "Star Wars," Iran-Contra) have a number of pros and cons, Reagan remained one of the most popular presidents. He certainly looms large in Gothamist's mind because he's the first President we......

Lauren Antler, Comedian...

In an effort to thwart the still-in-development gay cable channel, Bravo continues to make stridest to be the gayest network on TV. No, not by airing America's Top Model or Sex and the City or Melrose Place in syndication - by signing Ross Matthews, Tonight Show intern, to his own show, "The Ross Show!," silly! Gothamist loves how Ross says "THE ROSS SHOW! is going to be the most fun ever. Are you ready? I......

The exciting news about the oldest known fossil that is clearly a male is not only exciting to scientists, but Gothamist imagines that comedians have sharpened their pencils in anticipation of such a story. Apparently, the fossil of a 425 million year old ancestor was found in Britain, revealing not only its gills and advanced circulatory system, but also a defined penis. The scientists named the old school water flea, "Colymbosathon ecplecticos," aka which means......

My favorite late night talk show is Late Night with Conan O'Brien, but usually I fall asleep before then, and I watch the rerun the next night on Comedy Central - thank God for repurposing. During the 11:35PM timeslot, I usually tend towards The Late Show with David Letterman over The Tonight Show with Jay Leno - I am more in tune with Dave's New York crankiness over Jay's Everyman niceness. I feel that Jay......