Meet Sam Ellis, Broadway’s esteemed “technical wizard”, who is in charge of all the myriad effects in Young Frankenstein, which is rumored to have cost between $16 million and $20 million – about twice the price of the average Broadway musical. A big part of that budget was poured into making the adaptation “more zowie!” than the movie. According to a profile in Christian Science Monitor, some of Ellis’s responsibilities include overseeing: A Tesla coil......

We'd been eyeing the huge book, New Art City, which is about American artists hitting their stride in the mid-20th century New York City. However, we were concerned that at 665 pages, we would throw out our back carrying it back home from the store (or cause UPS to slip a disc) and then it would break out coffee table. John Updike reviewed it this weekend in the NY Times Book Review, and he assuaged......

As we sweat our way from office to subway, subway to home, front door to the air conditioner's dial, let us remember another hot day in NYC's history: The Blackout of 1977. We're about to start reading Blackout by James Goodman, which reconstructs moments of the blackout, as well as ponders why the riots occured. Con Ed has been saying that we should be okay in terms of power for this summer - Gothamist hopes......

The publication of the Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker (there are two CD-ROMs included with the 9 pound book that hold all 68,647 cartoons ever published) reminds Gothamist of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine can't figure out what a New Yorker cartoon is about:Elaine: Look at this cartoon in the New Yorker, I don't get this. Jerry: I don't either. Elaine: And you're on the fringe of the humor business. George comes in George:......

Last Friday's death of a contractor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was ruled an accident. The ME's office said the 60 foot fall from the glass ceiling that Marcin Kielar had been waterproofing was the cause of his death; other sources say Kielar was not wearing a safety harness. The Post, which used "Temple of Doom" as their headline, noted that there are "catwalks and rigging" for workers to maintain the area and that......