We love stories about public school teachers and sick days: There was the guy who wanted some time off to serve a jail sentence, the principal who was actually conducting an orchestra, and, our favorite, the teacher who took sick days when performing as a wrestler for the WWE. But we would never have dreamed that Lynne Stewart, the controversial lawyer who was convicted of aiding terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman while he was in......

THEATER: At the end of December 2003, with her daughter in an induced-coma brought on by septic shock from a fatal bout with pneumonia, Joan Didion’s husband John Gregory Dunne unexpectedly died during dinner. Her struggle to navigate the subsequent minefields of grief formed the basis for her best-selling memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. She’s now adapted the book into a one-woman play of the same name, directed by David Hare and starring Vanessa......

December is a special time for comedians. Not only are they trying to scrape together enough money from the commercials and VH1 shows they booked this year to buy presents for their family, but it’s also Aspen audition time. The U.S. Comedy Arts Festival held in Aspen is a Mecca for comedians. Auditioning and being chosen for the USCAF and mingling with the comedy elite (past performers have included…basically everyone famous) is a career maker......

Mario Stipinovich, Designer...

Ooh - the Politicker says that Mayor Bloomberg is in Bermuda. The Mayor, who is notoriously secretive about what he does on his weekends, was spotted at a golf course. We hope that pictures on him on the beach don't surface. Happy Purim, Mayor B, Happy Purim. The Mayor opened the city pools last year and thankfully didn't take off his shirt.......