It’s not Tracy Letts’s fault that his play, August: Osage County, has been breathlessly overhyped by the critics, from the Times’s Charles Isherwood on down. It’s also not his fault that compared to many other Broadway spectacles the play stands out as a polestar of humor and intelligence. Still, it’s difficult to disassociate the play from the deafening buzz; August: Osage County is being heralded as an Important Theatrical Event, when it’s really just a......

SHOP: Still looking for that perfect gift? The Brooklyn Historical Society is holding the 4th Annual NY Creates Craft Fair, and they may have just what you're looking for. Check it out today and tomorrow, and it will be back the 22nd and 23rd for the real last-minute shoppers. Friday and Saturday // Noon to 6pm // BHS [128 Pierrepont St, Brooklyn] ART: Too much is going on the First Friday of every month, so......

During the 80s golden era of Late Night With David Letterman, Chris Elliott was one of the people most responsible for the show's distinctively bizarre style. Playing characters like "The Guy Under the Seats" and "The Regulator Guy," Elliott's contributions were sometimes hilarious and sometimes baffling, but always memorable for their absolutely unadulterated weirdness. He went on to cultivate his peculiar "Chris Elliott" persona in cult classics like the TV show Get a Life and......

In Charles Mee’s Queens Boulevard (the musical) the titular traffic artery is no longer the “boulevard of blood” notorious for hit-and-run collisions. In fact, there isn’t a drop of blood in Mee’s colorful fairytale, which takes as inspiration the centuries old dance-drama style of Hindu theater called kathakali, among other things. In Mee’s eyes, Queens Boulevard is the symbolic common thread connecting New York’s myriad ethnicities and cultures, with Queens as the proverbial melting pot......

Oktoberfest has been over for quite sometime now, but that's never stopped us from enjoying good German beer and sausages. Which is exactly how we wound up at Austrian newcomer Cafe Katja last night. There's also something to be said for such hearty meat-laden fare as the mercury drops. And judging by how crowded the small dining room was when we left, a lot of New Yorkers felt the same way last night. While......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: Fatal jumper on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, a MOS (member of service) bitten by a dog at 48-36 47 Street in Queens, and a car vs. a building at West 27th Street in Manhattan. A-Rod may stick with the Yankees in a last-minute windfall deal that may be worth worth $280 million. Ira Levin, the author of "Rosemary's Baby," "The Boys From Brazil," and "The Stepford Wives" passed away......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Art in the Twenty-First Century (Sunday, 10:00 p.m., WNET 13) Four artists - Robert Adams, Mark Dion , Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle Ursula von Rydingsvard – who explore the intersection between nature and culture. Billy Crystal: The Mark Twain Prize (Monday & Thursday, 9:00 p.m., WNET 13; Saturday, 7:30 p.m. WLIW 21) Billy Crystal receives the tenth annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in......

Scotland’s Black Watch is an elite military regiment whose history stretches back almost three centuries. The regiment most recently saw action as part of the British Army’s deployment in Iraq, where seven members lost their lives – five of the men in the space of 11 days in 2004. The National Theatre of Scotland tracked down some of the Black Watch soldiers upon their return to Scotland and, over the course of several months......

Not quite outdoing her husband's 60th birthday bash at the Beacon last year (which starred the Rolling Stones and was filmed by Martin Scorsese), Hillary Clinton entered a new age last night. Choosing the same venue to celebrate her 60th in, the music was provided by Elvis Costello and the Wallflowers (apparently no one from her campaign song list was available), and Billy Crystal provided some humor. The AP reports that she likened herself......

The Comedians of Comedy are performing at Irving Plaze on October 27th at 6 and 10:30 PM. Both shows will be hosted by Patton Oswalt, who will be joined by Brian Poshein, Maria Bamford, Eugene Mirman, John Mulaney, and some yet to be announced special guests. Last year's surprises included performances by David Cross, Nick Swardson, Jon Benjamin, and Jon Glaser. With such a line up, the event is certainly a night not to be......

Being funny is a very valuable skill. Think about it, do you think Jerry Seinfeld's ever going to find himself lost in the woods with nothing but the stars and his wits to guide him to safety, or that Steve Martin's ever going to have to worry about not having enough money for the meter? No, of course not. And neither will if you read and memorize all of the comedy secrets contained within Comedy......

New York City was amply represented during last night's National Design Awards at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The Landscape Design award went to PWP Landscape Architecture, the firm that won the World Trade Center Memorial design competition (with Michael Arad). PWP Principal Peter Walker thanked Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki and described the last four years as "difficult," presumably for the number of redesigns and challenges with moving the project forward, but he......

The video of City Councilman James Oddo letting the f-bombs drop on a Norwegian TV comedian is getting mixed reactions - and a fair number of chuckles - from New Yorkers, but now it turns out that he wasn't meant to be a poor sap duped into answering stupid questions about whether Barack Obama is an American citizen and "Hillary Clinton's incident with a cigar." A spokesman for the Norwegian program "Rikers Rost" tells the......

Anthony Bourdain has repeatedly professed his undying affection for Fergus Henderson’s roasted marrow bones with parsley salad, and even considers the British chef to be his “favorite food person.” For eaters who willingly choose seared squab hearts over heart-healthy turkey burgers, Henderson’s offal-heavy cookbook The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating is considered a classic. It contains recipes such as Blood Cake with Fried Eggs, Tripe Gratin, and Crispy Pig’s Tail. Stuff like that. This......

"I have an inborn hatred of injustice and tyranny that I cannot express." It is ironic that the speaker of these words, former President Millard Fillmore, was himself the victim of great injustice at the hands of tyranny. But this tyranny stemmed from the most unexpected of places: academia. For too long truth and liberty have stood idly by as one of their greatest crusaders had his name maligned by historians and layman alike. It......

Obama Girl is back, not digging dudes with iPhones, and crushing on some U.S. soldiers. The latest video salutes the troops, and Ben Relles, creator of BarelyPolitical.com, says "this time, humor isn’t the primary goal. Our ambitions are a little bit higher and a little bit different. We wanted to do something that was honoring the troops but also honoring the wives and husbands and girlfriends." The video was made for $10K and shot entirely......

"I don't think I'm in any position to tell someone what they should or shouldn't do, what's cool or what's not. I don't fucking know. I don't even know for myself. I just do what I like to do unconditionally, and if somebody has a problem with that, then whatever." Lesley Arfin has done it all, wrote it down in her journal, and now she's revisiting it and the people she wrote about in her......

W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism Brooklyn Academy of Music Repressive political regimes and free-wheeling cultural expression can go together hand in hand, and the flowering of film in Yugoslavia during the '60s is a great example of it. BAM Cinematek is devoting a series this month to this Black Wave, a film movement that combined "artistic, sexual, and ideological freedom with a sense of humor." One of the major features in this group of films......

Isn't it sweet (or cliché) when you go to a baseball game and the jumbotron flashes a marriage proposal? It's such a nice personal event that the couple is sharing with thousands of other people. While we secretly hope that someone says no, this prank proposal at Yankee Stadium takes things to a whole new level. Some background: two College Humor guys have been engaged in a "Prank War" starting earlier this year. The......

Nigeria is a so-called “developing” country saddled with a corrupt government, crushing international debt, appalling slums, guerilla warfare, malaria, kidnappings, environmental disasters and an average life expectancy of 47. It’s not as bad as other African countries; of course that’s not saying much. If you’re like me, it’s a place that’s just not very high up on your list of vacation destinations. Thing is, we go there just about every time we fill up the......

Hardly content with his career as one of the most fascinating actors in the business today, John Turturro continues to make his mark as director of a growing catalog of boldly independent films. His searing debut, Mac, drew deeply from his experiences in a Brooklyn family cast adrift after their father’s death. Six years later, Turturro reveled in his love for theater with Illuminata, which Salon called “a heartbreakingly beautiful tragicomedy about art, love and......

When Ilan Hastor, a Jewish Israeli, wrote Masked in 1990, he was a left-leaning college student opposed to the occupation. But despite his personal politics, his widely-produced play avoids any dogmatic depiction of Palestinians as innocent victims and Israelis as ruthless oppressors. What concerned Hastor then was what made the anguish of Israel universal; how three brothers are inexorably reduced to brutes by the duress of occupation. Change the names and dialects and Masked......

The Bourne Ultimatum (directed by Paul Greengrass) Matt Damon's super assassin with a grudge Jason Bourne is back in a top-notch third installment of the action-packed movies based on Robert Ludlum's novels. It's not often that a trilogy of movies gets progressively better with each film, but that has been the case with the Bourne movies. When last we left Jason, the amnesia victim who has discovered he's actually a CIA spook, he'd just apologized......

MOVIE: This week's Bryant Park movie is All the Kings Men.... The movie follows the rise of politician Willie Stark from the rural country to the big city spotlight. "Along the way, he loses his initial innocence, and becomes just as corrupt as those who he assaulted before for this characteristic." Romance, women, intrigue, power...it's all there. 5pm seating, Movie at dusk // Bryant Park // Free READING: Alison Weaver (re)tells the story of family......

The laptop as guest - and sometimes the centerpiece - at dinner parties gets the Observer treatment today. We're all too familiar with friends staring at their Blackberry/iPhone/ Sidekick devices during social situations, but some might tell those toting a Macbook to a dinner party to just stay at home...or not? After all, they do come in handy when a debate is being settled (say, how many degrees of Kevin Bacon is Alan Thicke?). As......

Extras: Season 2 On British television an average series may run only six or so episodes, but for the program's fans on this side of the super-sized pond that can seem piddly indeed. Fortunately for followers of all things Ricky Gervais, the new DVD version of his HBO series Extras, which is out this week, contains over 100 minutes of additional material to enjoy. If you missed the initial airing, the second season of Extras......

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......

DANCE: Since the Copacabana is closed for now, get your dance on under the night sky. WhatsUpNYC tells us that every Monday through July 23rd (though the NYC Parks site says through August 13th), the Parks and Rec department will conduct Dancing Under the Stars. Get dance lessons from the experts at American Ballroom Theater, then grab a partner and tear up the dancefloor. 6 to 7:30pm // Directions here // Free MOVIES: It's a......

Stephen Colbert can now check "create comic book series" off of his to-do list. Before that he's successfully branded a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor (mmm...Americone Dream), had a minor-league hockey team mascot named after him (Steagle Colbeagle the Eagle), nearly had a Hungarian bridge named after him and...might as well credit him for getting the bald eagle off the endangered species list, too. As for the comic book, EW has more on Stephen......

PARTY: It's hot out, so what better way to cool down than with a pool party? Impetuous Theater Company is having a fundraiser tonight on the roof of the Holiday Inn Midtown. Scenes from the upcoming aquatic theater festival will be performed, there will be free beer and wine from 7 to 9pm, and there will be a pool in which to fully submerge yourself (who needs a/c?). 7pm to 12am // The Holiday Inn......