Uh oh - there's definitely a little drama for five well-known performers as the Albany DA's office continues its probe into steroid trafficking. The Times Union reported yesterday that Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Timbaland, Wyclef Jean and Tyler Perry were "among the thousands of customers of the pharmacies" DA David Soares' office has investigated. Oh. In other words, the celebrities are just the bold-faced names, and the sources say there isn't evidence that they......

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and......

Yesterday Merv Griffin lost his battle to prostate cancer at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles at the age of 82. He received his first treatment for this in 1996 and in late July of this year it was publicized that the cancer had come back. In a statement on Merv.com his son Tony said: "My father was a visionary. He loved business and continued his many projects and holdings even while hospitalized. We take......

Trading Places & Coming to America (directed by John Landis) Norbit (directed by Brian Robbins) After Eddie Murphy's Oscar nomination for his supporting role in Dreamgirls last year, there was a long (and seemingly unauthorized) profile on Murphy's career in Entertainment Weekly. Looking at the whole span from the highs of his days on SNL to his mega-fame from 48 HRS and Beverly Hills Cop to the lows of Vampire in Brooklyn and that ill-conceived......

April 14: Denise Landis at Broadway Panhandler Join Denise Landis, recipe tester for The New York Times, as she shares recipes and expertise from her newest cookbook, Dinner for Eight. Free tasting and book signing to follow the demonstration. Broadway Panhandler, 65 East 8th Street (between Broadway and University), 3 PM, free. April 16: A Menupoems Reading April is National Poetry Month and Alimentum is joining in the celebration with Menupoems. During the month, participating......

Charting the New York Times bestseller list for the third consecutive week is a memoir by the 42 year-old Las Vegas chef Jeffrey Henderson. Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, from Cocaine to Foie Gras, is Henderson’s tale of becoming a teenage drug dealer in South Central Los Angeles, getting caught and going to federal prison, and of how Henderson ultimately flourished in restaurant kitchens as a chef, something that changed his life. When......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an ideal......

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association voting pool for the Golden Globes only consists of 83 members, but every year their mainstream tastes become one of the potential early prognosticators for the Emmys and the Oscars. Over in Beverly Hills today, the stylists are putting the finishing touches on the stars' couture, that long red carpet is being laid and some assistant is double checking the seals on the envelopes. Here in New York of course,......

We just came across a video that's a part of the T-Bird Show (which appears to be a lot of, "What is the deal with Hipsters?") The host ran into Adrian Grenier on the street in Williamsburg and gave him a little impromptu interview, which you can watch above. Best quote from Grenier on how Williamsburg differs from Hollywood, "...no manicured lawns, things are a bit more grimey, a little more real. I was......

Aaron Spelling, one of TV's most influential producers, passed on yesterday. Holding the world record for most prolific television producer, he was 83. Though he was hardly a critic's darling, Spelling managed to produce some phenomenally popular and lucrative television series including, but by no means limited to, "Dynasty," "The Love Boat," "Fantasy Island," "Charlie's Angels," "Melrose Place," "Beverly Hills, 90210" and "7th Heaven." At one point it was joked that ABC might as......

Newsday has feature about a new book that looks at set designs of favorite TV shows - Sitcom Style by Diana Friedman. Apparently Friedman was obssessed with the Bradys' California split level as a child - the same way everyone else probably was (for instance, why were there only two bedrooms for the kids - and Greg's attic bedroom doesn't count) - and pulled together facts and trivia about the sets for lots of show,......

Jason Schwartzman, Actor, Shopgirl...

Mark Levin & Jennifer Flackett, Writer/Director, Little Manhattan...

Hey all you would-be Broadway composer types: Gothamist has just heard that the New York Musical Theater Festival has just started accepting submissions for this year's festival, with a submission period going from Jan. 10 until March 11. The festival itself will run Sept. 12-Oct. 2 at various venues here in lovely NYC. Gothamist caught several good productions at last summer's innaugural festival and saw real potential in what these folks are trying to do.......

While Bruce Ratner is in the news because of his Brooklyn Nets project, he's got a new Manhattan project: Forest City Ratner Companies is the new partner in developing East River Plaza, a project that would bring a "big box" shopping center to East Harlem. The NY Times reports that FCRC took over the interest in the development from a Beverly Hills based real estate group; Blumenfield Development, the other partner in the project, told......

The Post decides to lead its article about how gays feel about new all gay all the time Harvey Milk High School with: It's the most talked-about school since Jason Priestley and the gang graduated in "Beverly Hills 90210." Huh? Really? The most talked about school? Actually, Gothamist would have expected Columbine High School to rise to the top. Or even Stuyvesant. But West Beverly High from the good old Bev-Niner? If you're going to......

The new Coen Brothers movie, Intolerable Cruelty, stars George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Intolerable Cruelty is supposed to be a throwback to screwball comedies of the 30s: A slick Beverly Hills divorce lawyer (Clooney) frames the wife (Zeta-Jones) of a client to get him released from the marriage without a settlement. She vows to get revenge by marrying the attorney, aiming to take him to the cleaners in their own savage divorce, but what she......

Jason Lewis will be playing Kim Cattrall's boyfriend in the upcoming season of Sex and the City. Jason Lewis is a model and sometime actor (Beverly Hills 90210), but his biggest role recently has been as fiance (now ex-fiance) of Paris Hilton.......

It's the end of an era: "Singer-actress Nell Carter, best known for her role as the matronly housekeeper in the 1980s television sitcom 'Gimme a Break', died on January 23, 2003 of natural causes at the age of 54, her publicist said. Carter collapsed at her Beverly Hills home in the early morning and was found by one of her adopted sons, spokesman Roger Lane Carter is seen at the Women In Film Crystal......