MOVIE: Tonight the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series delivers two very different films. First up is The French Riviera, described as "a road documentary that follows a truck driver on a mission to earn enough money selling ice cream in the Icelandic countryside to go on a vacation on a French beach." Next up is About A Son, the "intimate and moving meditation on the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain, based on more than 25......

The Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual salary survey of the heads of educational institutions and the value of a college education is evidenced in the paychecks being cashed by institutions' presidents. More than a dozen heads of private universities took home more than $1 million during the 2005-06 school year. According to the New York Post, the dean of higher earning was Donald Ross, who took home $5.7 million--most in deferred compensation after......

As outrageous as this may seem, this sort of makes sense: James Lipton, he of Inside the Actors' Studio, used to be a pimp in Paris! ABC reports:The revered TV presenter, who has sat down with Hollywood's biggest names for in-depth chats about their life and work over the last 13 years, has revealed he once procured clients for French hookers.We'll have to go back and see how he discussed Moulin Rouge with Nicole Kidman......

Yesterday, the New School held a forum to discuss how New York City will save its public housing. The New York City Housing Authority, which is the city's primary sources of affordable housing to 400,000 residents, has an annual shortfall of $225 million. The Daily News reports that Sean Moss, the Regional Director for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the NY/NJ region, offered a suggestion that "prompted shocked murmurs." His idea: Sell......

Time Out NY has a list of PETA's most wanted in the city. The organization has 25,000 of its 1.6 million members based right here, and while we wish they'd have a crack team of those members targeting folks like Brooklyn's Cruella DeVil, here are some of the big offenders. • The Ringling Brothers circus is back in town in March 2008 and PETA is again questioning the way the circus treats its animals. The......

The prominent Democratic party donor and California fugitive Norman Hsu's connection to New York City's New School is examined in the NY Times today. Hsu donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to national Democrats like Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, to governors like Eliot Spitzer of NY and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, and NYC politicians like City Council members Christine Quinn and John Liu and City Comptroller William Thompson. Hsu, who had been wanted......

Thought Governor Eliot Spitzer and Senator Hilary Clinton appeared at a press conference to discuss health coverage of New York children, they had to answer questions about campaign donations they accepted from fugitive apparel executive Norman Hsu. Clinton received $23,000 from Hsu and announced that she would donate the money to charity after revelations that Hsu has been wanted in California for defrauding California investors since 1991. Hsu has fled to Hong Kong but......

The Princeton Review released its annual "The Best 366 Colleges" rankings, and NYC college schools make some interesting showings. The New School is number 1 for "Best College Town" (Barnard, Columbia, and NYU are also in the top 10), while Queens College is the third most sober. Here are some rankings for some area schools: Barnard: Best Quality of Life (16), Great College Towns (2), Nobody Plays Intramural Sports (18) Brooklyn College: Professor Get Low......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Rivington St. in Manhattan, a fatal stabbing on Malcolm X Blvd. in Brooklyn, and a stabbing on 102nd St. and Corona Ave. in Queens. Cobble Hill residents on Douglass St. will no longer be able to save on their electric bills by relying on the super-bright lights of American Apparel as their street-level reading lamps. The retailer is turning them off and neighbors must now fend......

Congratulations to everyone graduating this month! As NYU's commencement was today, with speaker jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, we decided to list the many NYC commencement speakers, with help from The Chronicle of Higher Education (if we've missed any or gotten it wrong, let us know in comments): Barnard College: Anna Deveare Smith, playwright-actress CUNY Lehman College: Representative Charles Rangel CUNY Brooklyn College: Roberta S. Matthews, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Brooklyn......

This May filmmaker/musician/actress/performing artist/writer Miranda July is going to unleash her book, "No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories", upon the world. She'll have several events lined up in New York, one with her biggest fan - David Byrne. In his online journal, he wrote: "I had recently read her book of collected short stories which is due out in about a month — No one Belongs Here More Than You — which......

EVENT: Charles Ray, who is thirty years deep in the art world, will be at the New School tonight for a Public Art Fund talk. The leader of the "conceptual realism" movement with a "lively, self-deprecating sense of humor" will discuss his "virtuoso craftsmanship" and his depiction of "familiar elements of everyday life and modern art in disarmingly altered ways." 6:30pm // The New School, John Tishman Auditorium [66 W 12th St] // $5 SCIENCE:......

Perfect for a Saturday in NY: A lovely, married head doctor accused of having sex with a prisoner! Psychologist Madgalena Sanchez was arraigned at Brooklyn Federal Court yesterday for having sex with an inmate under her care - and lying to the Department of Justice about it! The 35-year-old, who is married to a Lehman Brother equities trader and lives at Trump Place, was charged with "with sexual abuse of a ward who was “under......

It's officially spring, and that means lots of NY Times wedding announcements. Twenty-six, to be exact. Total Number of Weddings: 26 (including Vows column) Total Number of Same-Sex Weddings: 1 Youngest Bride: 23 Oldest Bride: 65 Youngest Groom: 25 Oldest Groom: 73 Biggest Age Difference: 21 years Number of Couples Where Bride and Groom Are the Same Age: 4 (30 31, and two couples at 27) Number of Harvard Graduates Married: 3 Number of Yale......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a slashing in Queens, building collapse in the Bronx, and a 10-75 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Twenty students from the New School and Pace got arrested yesterday after they occupied a US Army Recruitment Center on Chambers Street. Some good protest pix are also available. Our pal Tricia Romano devotes a full five pages to explaining the mysterious and seductive phenomenon that is Ultragrrrrl. Don't try to fight her......

THEATER: For a limited run at HERE, James Scruggs and Kristin Marting are presenting RUS, a “multimedia psychosexual murder mystery”, that uses experimental “video puppets”, salsa and tango-inspired movement to “recreate the seedy reality that lies just beneath our everyday lives. Lost in a labyrinth of repeating memories, and trapped in a failing marriage, Rus, an African American man, yearns to feel something new, full and real. But when a car accident connects Rus to......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: hazmat condition on Wall Street and water main breaks in Soho and Tribeca. Just great: WNBC's Jonathan Dienst reports, "The FBI said it believes a violent fugitive who kidnapped his girlfriend and threatened to use his military explosives training to blow her up in a building may be now hiding out in Queens." Love it or hate it, the new New School building on the corner of 14th and......

VACATION: The Greater Fort Lauderdale visitors' bureau has brought the Sunshine State to NYC in the form of a 3,600-square foot virtual vacation. The space includes a palm tree-lined "beach", complimentary mini-massages and, of course, bikini clad models. Virtual fishing, golf and more, will make you forget the sudden drop in temperature. Through 6pm // The Bank Building [20 Union Square East] // Free READING: Nancy Reardon, who penned "On-Camera: How to Report, Anchor and......

May the television gods hear our and others' pleas! Last month, the Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan broke the news that Tim Gunn was not signed for a fourth season of Project Runway:Will he be back? Ever the modest one, he would only say he "makes no assumptions," but he would come back "in a heartbeat" if asked. There's no official word, by the way, that there will be a fourth season, but it seems more......

Twenty-nine workers died in construction accidents in New York during the 12 months ending September 30, marking a 61% increase over the previous year and a 5-year high, according to OSHA and the NYC Dept. of Buildings. Over half of the victims fell to their death, while falling material was the second most fatal cause. Non-union, immigrant workers employed by small contractors suffered worst. The Manhattan director for OSHA decried the lax safety enforcement......

READING: Head to the New School to join the New York Times and their moderator, critic William Grimes, as Carl Hiaasen reads from his latest crime caper, Nature Girl, which chronicles the exploits of volatile Honey Santana who meets a wild cast of characters while en route to the Ten Thousand Islands. Show up early for a good seat - Hiaasen is a popular draw. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras 6:30pm // The New School [Tishman......

A 21 year old New School student who loved fishing is feared to have drowned during a father-son fishing trip on Breezy Point in the Rockaways. Strong waves apparentedly swept 21 year old Karl Heinzen of Brooklyn off a jetty and into the water yesterday morning. His father tried to save him, but Jerome Heinzen was pushed by the waves as well and needed to be rescued by NYPD divers responding to the call. The......

READING: The New School's wonderful public lectures and reading series are back in swing as the school year revs up, and tonight, the ethereal Mary Gaitskill will discuss her book Veronica (a National Book Award finalist) with moderator Jeffrey Renard Allen. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras 6:30pm // The New School [66 W 12th St, room 510] // $5 THEATER: The Soho Think Tank is legendary for nurturing some of the freshest new work in town.......

Some readers have been asking about events related to the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Aside from the official city plans, which include moments of silence, reading of victims' names and time for the families to lay flowers at Ground Zero, as well as the lighting of Tribute in Light, a number of organizations and groups have events all weekend and on Monday. For instance, the September......

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......

It's that time of year when parents of high school seniors worry over their children just picking party schools to apply to, thanks to the listing power of the Princeton Review. The Princeton Review released its variety of lists, from Party Schools to the Most Politically Active. Where did the city's school show up? Well, Queens College was number 8 on the list for lowest alcohol and marijuana consumption, while NYU was number 1......

Mothers and fathers, don't just dream about your children being doctors (well, doctors might be passe, given malpractice coverage), lawyers or hedge fund managers: Have them set their sights on being the president of a major university. amNew York has a feature on salaries of NYC college/university presidents. The presidents are mostly charged with fund-raising, hence needing a real "performer" that gets a sweet compensation package, but the money they make can be pretty......

On the long list of New York’s culinary hybrids, how about this one: French-Japanese sandwich-shop–teahouse? Thé Adoré occupies an adorable two-story building that formerly housed a turn-of-the-century printing press. Upstairs you can take tea in civilized fashion, choosing among several varieties including hoji-cha and genmai. Downstairs in the cramped izakaya-style kitchen, the Japanese staff turns out an inspired array of sandwiches, for which stylish students (from nearby Parsons and the New School) line up at......

The New School's student speaker who spoke out against Senator John McCain during commencement exercises last Friday says she apologized to McCain afterwards. Jean Sara Rohe, whose speech about McCain drew a standing ovation, has been been in a pissing match on the Huffington Post with one of the McCain aides who wrote the senator's speech. Apparently McCain himself said he understood why Rohe had to make her remarks, and New School president Bob Kerrey......

- A Brooklyn girl was killed by a bus this afternoon; right now, it seems another student may have released the emergency brake - Senator McCain thinks New School students need a lesson in courtesy - The Empire State Building will be open until 2AM this summer (and then you can head to the 24-hour Apple Store on Fifth Avenue) - Former NJ Governor McGreevey's tell-all book is pretty explicit about what the Garden......