FOOD: Those with a taste for expensive ham and the means to pay for it will be tantalized by tonight’s one-night-only 5 course tasting menu at Suba, a Spanish restaurant on the Lower East Side. Chef Seamus Mullen has obtained the prized “Rolls Royce of Ham” – Jamón Ibérico – and will be offering it tonight with Ossabaw Island hogs and Iberian wine. There are just a few seatings still available for tonight's event, which......

EVENT: Come feel the love at the hotel QT tonight, as the Love party returns. Get those swimsuits out of storage, because there's a pool! And don't worry, the open vodka bar (8-9) will help you warm up. Friday // 7pm to 2am // Hotel QT [125 W 45th St] // Free MUSIC: There's a lot of music options for your Friday night. First up, at Bowery Ballroom, Brooklynites A Place to Bury Strangers and......

EVENT: Julian Schnabel will be screening clips from his latest flick, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tonight. Lou Reed, who Schnabel recently documented in Lou Reed’s Berlin, will also be on hand. 7pm // Apple Store [103 Prince St] // Free READING: The Desk Set's "Drinks with an Author" series continues tonight at Greenpoint's WORD. This evening chat with Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer, authors of How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter......

CRAFTY: The holiday season is upon us, which means getting that perfect gift for whoever's egg nog you'll be gathered around this year. Why not try a little D.I.Y.? Every other Monday the Church of Craft meets up and will "provide contact, craft support, advice, knowhowto, instructions, directions, tips, tricks, inspiration, and the blinding love of craft to all who seek it." 7 to 9pm // Rapture Cafe [200 Avenue A] // Free EVENT: Have......

THEATER: Eugene O’Neill’s early one-act plays get a rare blast of daylight in The Pioneer, a new production that stages four of his nascent gems plus a whimsical monologue O’Neill wrote from the point of view of his dog. The plays boast O’Neill’s signature assortment of furious, flailing characters that would come to dominate his full-length work. Writing for the Times, Rachel Saltz notes that the plays range from “interesting” to “wonderful” and concludes that......

ART: Secrets of Coney Island Creek opens at the Brooklyn Public Library tonight. The exhibit of photographs by photog/author/Coney Island native Charles Denson goes back to the 1960s "when the waterway was at a low point, surrounded by industry and suffering from neglect and pollution. Since then, portions of the creek have been reclaimed, drawing both wildlife and residents to its shores. The photographs in Secrets of Coney Island Creek document those early decades and......

MUSIC: If you see a lot of guitar-toting ladies and gents around the Puck Building right now, that's because CMJ has officially begun. This means there is a ton of music happening (including at our own Gothamist House starting tomorrow). Tonight we suggest hitting up Brooklyn Vegan's show at Bowery Ballroom: Voxtrot, The Rosebuds, Dean & Britta...and so many more. 6pm // Bowery Ballroom [6 Delancey St] // $16, or free with badge THEATER: A.R.......

THEATER: Temporary Distortion’s Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) juxtaposes lushly photographed cinema with hypnotic live performance. Positioned within a small but elaborately designed boxlike installation, the actors draw the audience into their blood-stained world with a stillness that approaches meditation. When fused with the rich film projection above their heads – which furthers the abstract plot of the road movie/love story – the show draws you into an intimate embrace, as if the characters......

EVENT: We're sponsoring, and our publisher is hosting, the NYC Photobloggers event tonight. Come over to the Apple Store to see a dazzling display of digital images and the faces behind the photos: Eliot Shepard, Jay Parkinson (yes, that Jay Parkinson) and a whole lot more will be on hand. There will also be a special presentation by Jen Bekman of 20x200, Hey Hot Shot, and the Jen Bekman Gallery and an after party at......

THEATER: The National Asian American Theatre Company is known for creating adventurous theater with an all-Asian American performing plays that often have little to do with Asian Americans. Their newest production is Blind Mouth Singing by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas; it uses a watery set and live music to tell a story of an “overly strict matriarch; her young son Reiderico who sneaks out of the house to visit his best friend who lives at the......

THEATER: We like our comedy like we like our women: black and absurd. So it’s promising that the press release for a new play by Kevin Mandel uses those two irresistible words to describe A New Television Arrives, Finally. The strange story concerns “an American couple visited by a charismatic man presenting himself as a television set. Is the handsome stranger a charlatan or a guru?” Emmy award-winning actor Tom Pelphrey [Guiding Light] leads the......

EVENT: What do Bob Dylan and the Brooklyn Bridge have in common? They both get a year older today! Bob turns 66 and the Bridge turns 124. To help celebrate the latter, there's a bike ride across the structure. There will also be cake and historical stories to keep you physically and mentally satiated. Related: There's also a walking tour of the Bridge on Saturday. 7 to 9pm // City Reliquary [370 Metropolitan Ave,......

THEATER: Len Jenkin's Kraken imagines the details of an actual 1856 encounter between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville, his Moby-Dick long since met with a critical “meh”, was in the midst of a spiritual journey to Jerusalem – a trip that would, two decades later, yield the back-breaking, 2 Volume, 18,000 line Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. En route he stopped to visit his old Berkshire homey Hawthorne, now the......

EXHIBIT: Apparently there's an exhibit of Anna Nicole Smith photographs starting tonight. We can't find much info on it, but What's Up NYC says there's a "reception and exhibit of portraits and candid photographs of, wait for it, Anna Nicole Smith." 6 to 8pm // Gallery of Fine Arts [511 W 25th St] // Free PARTY: It's Prom time at Unisex Salon. Tonight put on your best formalwear and head to the basement of the......

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:......

MOVIE: One Ring Zero is a lit-rock fans dream come true. The band features Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers and Margaret Atwood’s lyrics set to the music of trumpets, theremins, claviolas, and metallophones. Director Joe Pacheco captured the band on film and presents it now as a documentary, As Smart As They Are: The Author Project. Here's a song/video with lyrics by Michael Chabon: 7pm // Barbes [376 9th St, Park Slope] // Free......

THEATER: John Fugelsang, the son of an ex-nun and a former monk, declares war on right-wing evildoers in his one man comedy All the Wrong Reasons. Targets include sex, politics, Klansmen, stem cells and the drug war (which Fugelsang recently skewered on the Huffington Post.) Theater blogger What’s Good/What Blows raves: “…once he settles in to tell the story of trying to get through Orlando airport with an 1/8th of weed in his sock and......

EVENT: Bluestockings is a great little place on Allen St, if you haven't already checked it out. Tonight the UnCoolKids tell us this bookstore (and more) is having an event called "Where Have You Been? Conversations on Travel": ”New Yorkers go all over the world, but the city has a way of swallowing their homecomings. At “Where Have You Been,” three intrepids share stories with other travelers as well as those of us who don’t......

READING: Jonathan Franzen reads at the Bam Cafe tonight, but not after a buffet that include wine from the Pine Ridge Winery and other treats. There will also be a live acoustic performance and a Q&A; with Franzen. The hefty price tag includes dinner, wine, tax, and tip. 6:30pm // BAM Cafe [30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn] // $45 THEATER: The first annual FRIGID Festival is breaking ice in the East Village at the Kraine, the......

THEATER: It’s “go time” for The Butane’s Group’s Operation Ajax, which ingenuously sets the CIA’s 1953 overthrow of Iran’s first democratically-elected government in the context of a casino. “Constructed from no less than 25 text sources (memoirs, documentaries, plays, poetry, novels, films, reality tv shows), the densely-layered performance explores how the addiction to risk and gambling has become a potent metaphor for U.S. foreign policy.” (For an enhanced theater experience, explore the show’s thorough bibliography,......

VALENTINE PICK: Let Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio) and Scary Mansion serenade you and your valentine tonight. Glasslands is advertising the night as a Valentine's Dinner. The venue was opened last year by artist Brooke Baxter and commercial real estate broker Rolyn Hu, who have created the perfect art-centric space/venue. 7pm // Glasslands [289 Kent Ave, Brooklyn] // Price TBD ANTI-VALENTINE PICK: It's not Valentine's Day without an "down with love"-esque sort of party.......

VINYL SALE: If you're looking for some rare vinyl, you might want to check out this monthly event: Shakey's Record Fair. A meatpacking district locale seems...a little off, but as FreeNYC points out, if you're "looking for that super rare old school funktified 7"...Shakey's Record Fair is probably the only place you'll find it." 8pm // APT [419 W 13th St] // Free THEATER: Rules of the Universe is a new site-specific play performed in......

MUSIC: Once we saw Men, Women & Children open up for Gang of Four and were pretty unphased. We then saw them play the Annex, and we couldn't stop smiling. Not really our type of music - but they put on quite a show, to say the least. Tonight they headline Bowery with Army of Me, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad and The Guts. Watch the below video to get an idea of what you're......

THEATER: Should we be trying to protect our children from the man in red? That’s the premise of Jeff Goode’s much-performed The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, in which Santa’s vices are exposed by those on the receiving end of his lash. A scandal erupts when Vixen accuses Santa of sexual harassment; in the subsequent media frenzy, the other members of the sleigh team demand to share their perspectives, and a sordid tale of corruption comes to......

THEATER: It’s Friday night, and what better way to cut loose than an evening of interactive theater – set in plague-ravaged New York City! In All Fall Down, a savage battle rages for the dwindling supplies of the vaccine, but soon a question arises: "Is the cure worse than the disease?" Theatre Recrudescence vows to explore our “post 9/11 hysteria with elements of carnival, clowning and rock and roll.” (All Fall Down is in previews,......

THEATER: The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s production of Antigone begins previews tonight. They’ve chosen the French dramatist Jean Anouilh’s adaptation of Sophocles’ classic tragedy, “which challenged 1940s Vichy France with an enduring story about resistance: a young girl defies a king in order to honor burial rites for her brother. This ancient tale of one person’s stand against the unjust policies of the State resonated then, and continues with fresh relevance now.” - John Del Signore......

READING: What do you do after you've outed Deep Throat? Well, David Friend, editor extraordinaire at Vanity Fair and general writer-about-town, has put out a new book - Watching The World Change - obervations on the post-9/11 world, and he's reading from it at the ever-popular Half King in Chelsea. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras 7pm // The Half King [W 23rd St at 10th Ave] // Free TALK: Director of "Requiem for a Dream" and......

THEATER: In September 2005, theater director Peter S. Petralia embarked on the Trans-Siberian Railway, connecting with artists from around the world for as long as the train stayed in the station. He would give them an art "package" and they, in return, would send something back to him. His collection of art objects and stories have culminated in Invisible Messages, currently running at P.S. 122 through Sunday. The multimedia work uses Petralia’s art-experiment as a......

THEATER: Emergence-See! is a new one-man show in previews at the Public Theater. Conceived and performed by Daniel Beaty, the work imagines what would happen in present-day New York if, say, a slave ship were to rise out of the Hudson River in front of the Statue of Liberty. Beaty portrays 40 New York characters and uses slam poetry and song to examine the toll that centuries of slavery have taken on the human psyche.......

THEATER: Teflon war criminal and Nobel laureate Henry Kissinger made news again this week with the revelation that Dr. Strangelove has secretly cautioned against any troop withdrawal from Iraq because, just like ‘Nam, such action would “become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more troops come home, the more will be demanded.” Kissinger’s breathtaking contempt for democracy is matched only by his Machiavellian genius; both attributes are skewered to great effect in this......