A seven-part miniseries about John Adams based on the best-selling Pulitzer Prize winning book by historian David McCullough seems like something you used to find on PBS done in cooperation with the BBC, but you’ll find it on HBO, with parts 1 & 2 airing Sunday at 8:00 p.m. The miniseries tells the story of the first vice-president and later the second president of the United States. The big bankroll of HBO means this production......

Frank Bruni, the Times’s top restaurant critic, awards the new 2nd Avenue Deli one star today, which isn’t bad considering it is, despite all the history, still a deli. We popped in there for food and photos just before it reopened at its East 33rd Street location and found the sandwiches (pictured) as monumental as ever; a second visit turned up no sign of the free bowl of gribenes (chicken skin fried in chicken fat)......

Mr. Brownstone is reuniting this weekend with a show at Bowery Ballroom. The Guns n' Roses cover band is led by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah drummer Sean Greenhalgh (who makes for a pretty good Axl!) and touts themselves as the World's Drunkest Tribute to G n' R. We asked them to give us their Top 5 all-time best reunions list to commemorate the event. THE FIVE GREATEST REUNIONS by Mr. Brownstone, the World's Drunkest......

Jonny Greenwood was named the BBC’s composer-in-residence in 2004; during this time he debuted "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", a twenty-minute work for string orchestra inspired, in part, by the phenomenon of white noise and Penderecki’s "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima". Tickets are on sale for a two-night performance of the composition at The Church of St. John the Apostle in January as part of The Wordless Music Series; works by John Adams and Gavin Bryars......

A lot is being made of Mayor Bloomberg leaving the Republican Party - Could it be a prelude for a run for the White House? Officially, Bloomberg is saying that he won't be running for President and that he is serving out his term as mayor. Our reader poll yesterday was pretty divided, one question that needs to be asked is how Bloomberg would measure up in height if he ran for, and became President.......

Despite having been defeated in a City Council vote, where his chief of staff heckled Council Speaker Christine Quinn and threatened a black councilman with assassination, Councilman Charles Barron renamed a street in Brooklyn "Sonny Abubadika Carson Avenue" anyway, declaring that the renaming "is official whether they [presumably the city] take that sign down or not." Sonny Carson's name was struck from a list of people who would get honorary street signs earlier this spring.......

Today, many businesses are closed in honor of President's Day. Wall Street is closed, as are banks, government offices and schools. There's no regular garbage pickup, but the Department of Sanitation will be picking up garbage that has been stranded due to last week's storm. Alternate side of the street parking rules are suspended, and mass transit is on the weekend schedule - sorry, 7 train riders. President's Day is the day that celebrates......

In June of 1776, five men - John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston - began drafting the Declaration of Independence. A final draft was sent to Congress on July 1, and it was ratified on July 4. However, Congress had made some revisions, much to the dismay of Jefferson, the primary author. For posterity, he immediately made several copies of the original text, underlining the sections that had been......