MUSIC: Merkin Concert Hall is reopening, and to help celebrate some of the piano greats will be on hand for a free, six hour concert. Philip Glass and John Medeski will be amongst those who will perform. Get more details here. 2 to 8pm // Merkin Concert Hall [129 W 67th St] // Free We had a chance to catch Marla Hansen (pictured) last year, and the Brooklynite silenced the room with her hushed compositions.......

TIP: Starting tomorrow Opera-For_all begins the first of three nights of performances. For cheap! The New York City Opera is selling tickets to every seat in the house for just $25. Over the course of "opera season" 50 or more seats in the front orchestra will be priced at just $25 as well. As for this week, here's the sched: Thursday, September 6the OPERA FOR ALL Concert, with party to follow (this will showcase the......

If you watch the reality shows, you probably wonder at the random, more boring, points of your day: Whatever happened to so-and-so from Project whatchamacallit? Or more likely, you don't. NY Mag examines the sad, "near-fame experience" of being a Bravo reality star. Somewhere right below the D-list is the space the not-quite almost-famous Bravo TV stars occupy. Though the Bravo competition reality shows generally rely on actual skills, the article's first cautionary tale is......

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing! Gothamist headed into the Memorial Day weekend with a number of tasks accomplished. They worried about Long Islanders giving New Yorkers a bad name. They tried......

EVENT: The Brooklyn Kitchen is hosting a series of live in-store cooking demos with local rockers to help celebrate the release of Kara Zuaro’s new book, I Like Food, Food Tastes Good.. Tonight, Les Savy Fav frontman Tim Harrington will school us all in ceviche while likely wearing one of his very own aprons. 7 to 9pm // The Brooklyn Kitchen [616 Lorimer St] // Free MUSIC: The Wordless Music series is pretty self-explanatory. Some......

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: You’ve got just three more weekends to experience one of the wildest and most entertaining late-night theater extravaganzas to hit New York this century. The Curse of the Mystic Renaldo The defies description – what begins as a fake silent movie (ostensibly unearthed during the construction of 3 Legged Dog’s sleek new theater center) quickly dashes off in countless delirious directions at once: There’s live rock, hilarious vaudevillian slapstick, both high and low art,......

DISCUSSION: The one and only, legendary Kirk Douglas will be talking with Columbia undergraduate film studies director Annette Insdorf tonight. The 90 year old has a thing or two to say about life, and some stories about his own (the man survived a helicopter crash, for goodness sake), so listen up youngins. 8pm // 92nd St Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall [1395 Lexington Ave] // $25 THEATER: Curtains, the murder-mystery musical comedy by John Kander and......

Graphic designers tend to be an even-keeled lot, unless you mess with their precious Futura typeface plans. So at Monday night’s The Art of the Book: Covers With Dave Eggers, Chip Kidd and Milton Glaser, moderated by designer Michael Bierut at the 92nd Street Y, we weren’t surprised that book jacket designer and author Kidd made nice with Panelist Four – a man well into his senior years who boosted the show from the first......

EVENT: Want to get all of your holiday shows conveniently mashed up in to one night? Then join Mickey and Minnie Mouse tonight to help light the Holiday Tree at Lincoln Center. While there you will also see "performances from The Metropolitan Opera's new holiday production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, a selection from George Balanchine's The Nutcracker by the New York City Ballet and students from......

Comedy Legends Live: The inimitable Carl Reiner speaks with Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Susie Essman. Reiner—comedian, actor, novelist and director— was a creator, writer and producer for The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1999, he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the Kennedy Center and was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. Come check out a legend. Tonight // 8:15pm // Kaufmann Concert Hall [ Lexington Avenue at 92nd St] //......

Crain's reports that Frank Gehry will be designing jewelry and tabletop items for Tiffany & Co. This is a big deal, as it's the first new designer Tiffany has "hired" in twenty-five years (Paloma Picasso was the last), but Gothamist is thinking one thing: Uncomfortable. While we expect Gehry to design something pretty awesome-looking like a hammered metal necklace or a warped vase ("Mr. Gehry...will work with precious metals, stones and wood"), we're not so......

Bob Saget, Matt Stone and Arianna Huffington walk into a room...it sounds like the beginning of a joke. Oh but it's not. It's only part of the panel set up for tomorrow nights discussion at the 92nd St Y entitled "Punch Lines and Politics: A Seconding the First Forum". The panel includes Paul Provenza, Bob Saget, Dan Glickman, Matt Stone, Harry Shearer, Joe Scarborough and Arianna Huffington, Joe Pantoliano and Tony Goldwyn / Lawrence O’Donnell......

News that the Frank Gehry designed Disney Concert Hall was causing problematic glares for Los Angelenos, prompting Gehry's firm to say they were prepared to sandblast it, makes Gothamist wonder about our NYC architecture. The Disney Concert Hall glares glares have affected not only drivers but also condo owners who have views of the rather dazzling building. Now, Gehry's design for the Brooklyn Nets Arena in Brooklyn would incorporate some titanium, and the last thing......

The rotting-decaying piers of yesteryear along the West Side of Manhattan are becoming unwitting pieces of art, according to the Times. Artists and city officials love them, like the pier that landscape architect Thomas Balsley affectionately calls, "spaghetti pier," at West 62nd. Reporter Fred A. Bernstein also notes that the "random" deformation of the piers brings to mind modern architecture that tries to achieve that spontaneity of form via computers; Frank Gehry's new Walt Disney......