Photo courtesy Carol Rosegg. Elmer Rice's 1923 play The Adding Machine is an expressionist parable about a miserable bean counter named Mr. Zero who, after twenty five years at the same desk, is replaced by the titular technological marvel. For Rice, the roar of the twenties was the sound of capitalism crushing workers' souls; his play would go onto inspire Tennessee Williams and presage Death of a Salesman. Now a musical adaptation of Rice's play,......

ART: Unhappy with your old point and shoot? Today marks the opening of the National Krappy Kamera Competition, proving that even inexpensive cameras can snap good shots. "The exhibit features images that are produced using equipment from the lowest end of the technological scale. The concept underlying this show is that an artist can use any piece of equipment to create engaging photographs. Cameras generally range from the well-known Diana, Holga and Lubitel to......

Photo: Carol Rosegg I hate going to Broadway shows: fighting through the mobs in Times Square, being herded into the theater like livestock, cramming into a tiny seat while feedback from hearing aids and hacking coughs reverberate on all sides. Admittedly, I’m a world-class grouch when it comes to these things, so it’s no faint praise that I’d eagerly subject myself to it again for Passing Strange, the multidisciplinary rock musical that just blazed onto......

MUSIC: George Clinton and, yes, the Parliament Funkadelic, are bringing their legendary grooves to Warsaw tonight. Tickets are still on sale! Come help bring that funk back, etc. 7pm // Warsaw [261 Driggs Ave, Greenpoint] // $45 MOVIE: The “really alternative film festival,” CineKink NYC, kicks off tonight. Entering its 5th year with a Gala, the celebration will be followed by almost one weeks worth of movies that "range from documentary to drama, camp......

ART: This past Friday The NY Times dubbed the new MoMA exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind "exhilarating". Now opened, as of yesterday, we highly recommend stepping inside and delving into the world of flying cars, future software and 200 examples of "successful translation of disruptive innovation, examples based on ongoing research, as well as reflections on the future responsibilities of design." You can also check it all out online. 10:30am to 5:30pm //......

Today marks the third annual Informal Presentation on the Art of Dance, a dance event put on by the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Dancing Through Barriers Ensemble. The two troupes converge each year in a most unconventional space: The State Supreme Court of Manhattan! Arthur Mitchell (himself a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet in the '50s and '60s) co-founded DTB after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, and the......

MOVIE: As the Oscars approach, take a look back at one of the past films to be granted a golden statue. Tonight Agatha Christie's classic mystery Murder on the Orient Express leaps from the page to the big screen when the 1974 movie is shown at Film Forum. Starring Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall and Anthony Perkins, the movie will help you hone your crime-solving skills (and possibly make you think twice about taking Amtrak).......

READING: Never got around to reading that Burt Reynolds autobiography? Tonight the stars are out read it to you at Celebrity Autobiography ("the long running L.A. comedy sensation, as seen on Bravo TV, finally comes to New York"). Cheyenne Jackson, Kristin Johnston, Richard Kind, Jackie Hoffman will read from autobiographies the aforementioned Mr. Renyolds, Loni Anderson, Kenny Loggins and Liz Taylor. 7:30pm // The Triad [158 W 72nd St] // $35-45 THEATER: Phoenix Theatre......

MOVIE: If you've never seen anything from Matthew Barney's Cremaster series, then cancel all plans tonight because you've got new ones. Barney's Cremaster 2 is screening tonight (no need to see these films in order), and you will be visually dazzled. While it's not plot-heavy, the Guggenheim describes it as "a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system." 8pm // Austrian Cultural Forum [11 East 52nd St] // Free THEATER: Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935......

PARTY: Perhaps as a nod to Warhol, or simply as a reason to party, PBR has been on an Art Tour. Come check out their 18 PBR-inspired paintings, and more importantly drink free beer from 7 to 8 tonight as the tour hits the Knitting Factory. Music provided by DJ Awesome Derek, Cody Ranaldo, and Rezound. 7pm // Knitting Factory [74 Leonard St] // Free EVENT: The Women's Expressive Theatre storms the Angel Orensanz......

Photo Credit: Dixie Sheridan. Director, playwright, actor and outcast surrealist Antonin Artaud is perhaps best known for the manifestos set forth in his book Theater and Its Double, which envisioned a new form of radical performance he dubbed “The Theater of Cruelty.” Artaud intended to shock audiences out of complacency by replacing the familiar comforts of naturalistic psycho-drama with a surreal, sensually graphic theatricality, one that traded escapism for confrontation and – Artaud theorized –......

MUSIC: Come enjoy the Whitney after dark tonight as the museum's live showcase series invites Dan Deacon (pictured) to the stage. If you haven't seen Deacon before, get ready for some Casio keyboard electro-rock compositions and an art dance party. Friday // 7pm // Whitney Museum [945 Madison Ave] // Pay what you want EVENT: The Moth Story Shop presents “The One that Got Away: Stories from South Street Seaport” tonight. The following storytellers will......

READING: Jeff Garigliano, Condé Nast Portfolio senior-editor turned author, will be reading from his debut novel titled Dogface. The story follows a rebellious 14-year-old boy who, like so many before him, gets sent off to a camp that specializes in "whipping mixed-up teens back into shape". 7:30pm // Barnes & Noble [396 Sixth Ave] // Free EVENT: The Secret Science Club is back tonight with the President of New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Dr.......

Photo: Courtesy Nordland Visual Theatre. Moritz Rabinowitz was a Norwegian Jewish tailor who, after emigrating from Poland in 1911 to escape pogroms, rose from near-poverty to operate one of the largest clothing empires in Norway. Settling in the small fishing village of Haugesund, Rabinowitz, the only Jew in town, spent his few off-hours feverishly writing columns that warned against the danger of an increasingly anti-Semitic Germany. His portents were largely dismissed by everyone except the......

ART: The Bronx Museum of Art is getting on board the First Friday bandwagon. They'll be opening their doors every first Friday of the month for free, and add a little something extra each time. Tonight their theme is “Say it Loud! I’m Black & I’m Proud” in celebration of Black History Month. There will be a tribute to the late James Brown, and a showcase of independent artists paying tribute to black music. Friday......

LECTURE SERIES: The Nation forges on with their series of Tuesday evening lectures tonight. Nation columnist and Columbia Law professor Patricia J. Williams will be on hand to discuss her montly "Diary of a Mad Law Professor" column. Expect to examine the law in whole new light. 6pm // Library of the General Society [20 W 44th St] // $15 MUSIC: Peasant, who played our Gothamist House during CMJ, is back in New York and......

Alex Ross has worked as the music critic of The New Yorker for over a decade. Somehow he still had time to churn out a book though, his first, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, hit shelves late last year. The tome delves into the cultural history of music since 1900, and even has Björk touting: "Alex Ross's incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone's fire for music." Tonight he'll step away from......

MOVIE: Delve into the mind and life of H.L. “Doc” Humes (pictured) in a documentary by his daughter. Titled Doc, the 96-minute film focuses in on the counterculture icon. "In the 1950s and early '60s, Doc co-founded The Paris Review, wrote two acclaimed novels, and was a gregarious fixture of the cultural scene in Paris, London and New York. Doc was a 1950s NYC intellectual, a 60s free speech militant, and a 70s visionary crazy......

Photo by Alastair Muir. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 black and white spy thriller The 39 Steps has been given a vividly colorful stage adaptation by a troupe of four British actors who’ve brought their madcap show to Broadway after an award-winning run on the West End. Adapted from a 1915 novel by John Buchan, the movie concerns the dashing but vague Richard Hannay, who gets ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse after shots......

THEATER: Wolf Lane Productions presents Victims of the Zeitgeist (The Tragedy of Martin Luther King, Jr.), written & directed by Ellwoodson Williams. The production "offers an exciting and telling insight into just who Martin Luther King, Jr., was as leader and simply as a sensitive and intelligent human being who loved life and who had a sense of humor, a deep understanding of the human condition - its strengths and weaknesses - and a profound......

In Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play Happy Days, a decidedly upbeat woman named Winnie spends Act One striving valiantly to make the best of her sticky situation: she’s irrevocably buried up to her waist in a “low mound.” True, Winnie has her reticent companion Willie for company, but she cheerily defies the barren void by holding forth for a seemingly nonexistent gathering of spectators. And Act Two finds Winnie still determined to make a go of......

THEATER: Under the Radar, arguably New York’s most exciting theater festival, begins today at The Public Theater and a few other odd locations like the Whitehall Ferry terminal. (There are also a few shows at the Classic Theatre of Harlem, P.S. 122 and The Kitchen.) One of the most buzzed about site-specific shows is Etiquette by the London company Rotozaza. It was a surprise hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival; here the experience takes place......

When Harold Pinter’s masterpiece The Homecoming first premiered on Broadway some four decades ago, the dramatized hostility was met with equal hostility from the bourgeois audience, as witnessed by the playwright himself: One of the greatest theatrical nights of my life was the opening of The Homecoming in New York. There was the audience. It was 1967. I'm not sure they've changed very much, but it really was your mink coats and suits. Money. And......

THEATER: The salty, electric dynamo that is Elaine Stritch shows no sign of waning – about to turn 83-years-young, the show biz legend has kicked off 2008 with a reprise of her Tony-winning cabaret show. Backed by a six-piece band and performed in two acts for a dining audience at the newly restored Café Carlyle, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, co-written with the New Yorker’s John Lahr, is a hilarious, old-fashioned ride through star-studded post-war Broadway,......

READING: Olympia Dukakis, who you know from such films as Moonstruck and Steel Magnolias, will be at Barnes & Noble tonight. She'll be reading from a brand spakin' new edition of Bertolt Brecht’s play Mother Courage and Her Children. She recently put down the Oscar and picked up a pen to write the forward to the antiwar classic. 7pm // Barnes & Noble [1972 Broadway] // Free EVENT: Tonight the Raw Word Reading hits Galapagos,......

SKATE: Free skating at Bryant Park just got...more free! Now you can get free rental skates every Wednesday provided you are one of the first 100 people to get over to The Pond Exhibit Area. 6 to 7:30pm // Bryant Park // Free MOVIE: If you have 5+ hours to spare, catch the uncut version of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, which he called “the sum total of my life as a filmmaker.” The original......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Gothamist. Cloverfield, the new JJ Abrams movie where a skyscraper-sized monster descends upon New York City. In theaters on 1/18. No Dice, with an extended run at the Soho Repertory Theatre. The Whitney Museum, host of Kara Walker's amazing "My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love" show. Rubin Museum of Art, the only place for Himalayan art at sea level. New......

MOVIES: A lavishly restored print of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s visionary film The Holy Mountain has been making the rounds this year; it’s back again this weekend at IFC Center for a pair of midnight screenings. First released in 1973, The Holy Mountain has grown into a cult classic for its surreal, psychedelic imagery and a serpentine, metaphysical storyline, which takes as inspiration, among other things, "The Ascent of Mt. Carmel" by St. John of......

On a recent weekend, we saw Jacques Torres loading boxes of delectable treats from a van into his new store Jacques Torres Chocolate store at 285 Amsterdam Avenue, near 73rd Street, leaving us impressed at his commitment as a small business owner. Today, the chocolatier and the store are mentioned in a NY Times article that examines the emergence of Amsterdam Avenue as an option for retailers, who have traditionally been attracted to Broadway and......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Gothamist. No Dice, with an extended run at the Soho Repertory Theatre. The Whitney Museum, host of Kara Walker's amazing "My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love" show. Rubin Museum of Art, the only place for Himalayan art at sea level. New York Dish, offering a chance to win a $50 American Express Gift Card. Hoovers, where you can find company......