For those checking the New Kids on the Block website, hoping that rumors of the teen dream band making a comeback are true...you may find the ticking countdown clock scream-worthy. As reported by People magazine, the five-some will be performing on The Today Show this Friday, April 4th. Seriously, break out the acid wash, this is no April Fools joke. The reunion comes in time for the 20th anniversary of the band's breakout release, Hangin'......

Itching to jump back into Liberty City yet? The New GTA IV website has been launched, in preparation for the quickly approaching April release. The previews so far have been somewhat light on details, but the site finally sheds some light into what kind of trouble you can expect to get into while traversing a virtual NYC. To start, our virtual Queens is a land called "Dukes." Here, we've got a baseball team not so......

graffiti internet, by Rob Hoey at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an aircraft fire at JFK terminal 4 in Queens, a robbery on Central Park West in Manhattan, and a missing child on Pennsylvania Ave. in Brooklyn. Surf cams (permanently installed cameras monitoring surf conditions) are a great way to notify surfers of conditions, until one realizes that surfers don't want conditions notified for fear of crowds. No matter what you've ever seen......

Playwright David Mamet (pictured) will be maintaining a blog to promote his new Broadway play, November, which stars Nathan Lane as contemporary American president Charles Smith and Laurie Metcalf as his lesbian speech writer. What’s interesting, perhaps, is that Mamet will be writing the blog – which he says he’ll update for the duration of the open-ended run – as President Smith. Sample entry from Monday:CONGRESSIONAL PAGE SEX SCANDALS It seems to me that, at......

Shake Shack – that object of obsession for so many burger lovers within a 10-mile radius of Madison Square Park – reopens today for their first winter season. Gothamist commenter MaiaW articulated the passion and excitement best when we first reported the year-round Shaction last month: “OMG, OMG. Now I have absolutely NO excuse not to eat there once a week (calories shmalories). Woo hooooo!!” With typically disheartening lines stretching almost out of the......

Have you seen Sex and the City filming around town? Seems like some people are watching the cast of the 'ol show film the new movie every step of the way. The Times chronicled the madness and, OMG, talked to Carrie Bradshaw herself (who was hiding away in the basement of the Bryant Park Hotel). She had this to say of her on-the-job craziness: “I basically just look down between every take because it’s......

OMG OPRAH! After weeks of anticipation - and insane craigslist listings - a few thousand lucky fans got to watch the season premiere of Oprah from the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden. The show featured David Letterman and a performance from Lisa Marie Presley. And, yes, Oprah Winfrey did start off the show with "Hellloooo, New York." The Daily News reports that people were screaming "I love you Oprah!" during the commercial breaks. Winfrey......

From the tallest skyscraper in the City of Brotherly Love to Canadian tourism copywriting brilliance, here's what you should know from our -ist cities: This week, Phillyist took a gleeful listen to the White Stripes' exciting new release, watched in awe as their new tallest skyscraper was finally completed, found a cheaper way to get to Gothamist, invented a tasty new dessert, and brought back their Craigslist Round-Up feature with a bang. Bostonist watches......

Di Fara's pizza still isn't open, a week after it closed by health inspectors. Maybe all the mouse droppings have something to do with that? And to top off a very bad week for the De Marco clan, their other pizzaria, recently the scene of the Greenwich Village shooting, announced that it will be closing for good. Still no answer on the cause of the mysterious, high-pitched ringing noise in Brooklyn Heights. Our theory......

ART: Running through March 7th at Gavin Brown's enterprise at Passerby is "Radical Living Papers". Some of the passionate writers of forty years ago will have their words become a part of this exhibit, which serves as a snapshot of the Vietnam War era and a history of counter-culture and alt press. Publications (all from the 60s and 70s) include Rolling Stone, The Black Panther, Freep, The Seed and the Los Angeles Free Press. Friday......

In 1941, Encyclopedia Britannica put out a little educational film called "The Arteries of New York City". As you can guess, it describes how transportation to, from and inside of Manhattan, works. The narration is ever so literal, describing that, "the main job of transportation in the city, is to carry people between three points: where they live, where they work and where they play." The narrator also explains that ,"year after year, these arteries......

COMEDY: OMG, we get like so many creepy myspace friend requests but this one made us LOL. Actually, it’s two friend requests in one, from Braeson Herold and Alana Harrison. But they’re not just groveling for “the add”; they want us to come see their show called Fake Friends Tour! The title doesn’t really make sense, because they're not touring and whoever heard of fake friends on myspace? But the way they blog about it......

If you like emo and all that other music the kids are listening to these days, there's a free show at Radio City on September 23rd. All you have to do is sign up to be a volunteer, contributing four hours of volunteer service to a non-profit. After committing to the four hours 5,000 local youth volunteers will see "Today's Top Hip-Hop & Rock Artists": T.I., PANIC! AT THE DISCO, YOUNG JEEZY, TAKING BACK SUNDAY,......

- Sometimes people just want to get caught, like the subway flasher who wore a jacket with his URL on it - There's talk of putting a school in Tower 5 at the World Trade Center, which is good, since it'll help with overcrowding (in like five years, though!) - Ann Coulter's comments about September 11 widows ("I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.") and calling them "The Witches of East......

Break out a bottle of Haterade, because it's Santino versus the world! Since Andrae, aka the glue that held everyone everyone, left two episodes ago and then Nick, aka Daniel's BFF, left last episode, it just meant that there were less people to deflect Santino's lovably hateful ego. The other three Project Runway designers, Daniel, Chloe and Kara, immediately put themselves in the "we're not Santino" camp. Their challenge: To design an evening gown...and not......

OMG. Now, Gothamist knows that people are totally insane and make stupid decisions, but this story takes the cherry: The Post reveals that a tip about a bomb threat at LaGuardia last year was because a teenager wanted to make her flight to Atlanta - because she was worried her boyfriend there would fly to Minnesota to confront one of her ex-boyfriends. You cannot make this stuff up. Anna Tarasov made the threat while she......

AppleInsider reports that Apple is building a giant glass structure reminiscent of the discontinued G4 Cube as the entrance to its new store at the GM building: Construction workers last week began to assemble a giant glass cube, which will be set like a jumbo gemstone atop Apple Computer's upcoming flagship retail store in the underground concourse of the General Motors building in Midtown Manhattan. On Thursday workers operating a crane could be seen......

Gothamist loved the hot, steamy, PG-13 lesbian kiss on tonight's OC. However, we must note that the lesbian kissing on Buffy the Vampire Slayer was much hotter and more realistic.......

A good friend of mine just started a blog. Frankly, it�s kind of embarrassing. He comes across as kind of an idiot in the blog, even though he�s normally a perfectly rational person, and he�s started posting conversations we�ve had verbatim! I would ignore it, but he keeps asking for my opinion. Should I be honest, or should I lie and say I think it�s great? Jane, Upper West Side This is sort of a......