One Ring Zero is an unusual Brooklyn band headed up by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, with a troupe of musicians and lyricists filling out their ever-morphing sonic tribe. Their lyrics have been written by some familiar names: Jonathan Lethem, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster and Dave Eggers are amongst them. This year they enter their 10th year of making music, and this Friday they'll be at Joe's Pub celebrating on stage. Join in on the......

MOVIE: Delve into the mind and life of H.L. “Doc” Humes (pictured) in a documentary by his daughter. Titled Doc, the 96-minute film focuses in on the counterculture icon. "In the 1950s and early '60s, Doc co-founded The Paris Review, wrote two acclaimed novels, and was a gregarious fixture of the cultural scene in Paris, London and New York. Doc was a 1950s NYC intellectual, a 60s free speech militant, and a 70s visionary crazy......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: The War: A Ken Burns Film (Sunday - Tuesday, 8:00 p. m., WNET 13; Sunday - Tuesday, 10:00 p. m., WLIW 21) The Ken Burns World War II documentary wraps up this week. Top Gear (Monday 8:00 p.m. & 9:00 p.m., BBC America) We recently stumbled onto the insanely brilliant BBC 2 show which is in theory about cars, but is really about three crazy Brits going......

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......

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......

Don't you just love that feeling of "discovering" a new artist that no one else knows about yet? The New Directors/New Films festival curated by the Film Society at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art's Film department have been keeping New Yorkers ahead of the cinema curve for 35 years now with their annual series. In the past they've showcased such newbies as Chantal Akerman, Pedro Almodóvar, Héctor Babenco, Terence Davies, Guillermo del......

DISCUSSION: Tonight Thurston Moore and Jim Jarmusch will have a little talk, titled "Transforming New York: Music and Film at Night". This is in conjunction with Doug Aitken's sleepwalkers, so Aitken will be there too, and the three discuss nighttime, just after the sun goes down. 6:30pm // MoMA [11 W 53 St] // $10 SIGNING: Ron Jeremy has gone and written a book, of course, it's as dirty as most of his films. You......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a residential high-rise fire on upper Broadway, a "church robbery" (! - those robbers took from the poor box!) in Queens, and a shooting in Bed-Stuy. Have you lost the Christmas spirit? If you have, read "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story", by Paul Auster-- it'll cheer you up. [Via OTBKB] James Forbes, the controversial pastor of Riverside Church, has delivered his last sermon there. He'll be embarking on a farewell......

While the most posh our hovel of an apartment has seen is the Dwell sample sale, our ex-boss registered at Moss; now, happily she (and you, presumably, after a date with your sugar daddy) can drink there, too. Centovini the newest venture from Moss and the people behind I Trulli and Vino is both a wine store and bar, open evenings and, soon, for breakfast and lunch (We can totally rationalize breakfast drinking, especially with......

M.J. Rose, Author, The Delilah Complex, Book Blogger...

We know it's cold outside, but trust us, this is a good week for literature (unlike last week, coughFREYcough). We've got some real fiction, some real non-fiction, and even a real memoir! The fun kicks off tonight at 7PM at 192 Books (10th Ave. at 21st St.) with Caroline Burke reading from Lee Miller: A Life, her new biography of the photographer. Seating is limited, so call (212) 255-4022 for reservations. Because of the reservation......

Don't get confused – today is Friday. Gothamist has been a bit under the weather, hence our little weekend movie preview showing up today rather than on its usual Thursday. And while we all anxiously count down the minutes until Monday's Golden Globes, there are a lot of great movie options available without even considering all the 2005 films hoping to take home a prize. Some Quick Gothamist Picks: One of the best places to......

Dave Eggers and Paul Auster start a band...it sounds like the beginning of a joke. For better or worse, it's not. Joe Pacheco's documentary, As Smart As They Are: The Author Project documents how the McSweeney's in-house band, One Ring Zero, collaborated with some writers to make Lit Rock. The documentary includes live performances, studio sessions and interviews with the writers and musicians, while exploring relationships between music and literature. The featured players are Dave......

On Sundays, Gothamist publishes opinion pieces relevant to life in New York City. The opinions expressed in the book review below belong to Dio, a very well-read 23-year old, and not to Gothamist-- which should be obvious, since we only read magazines. One of the numerous minor characters that flit in and out of The Brooklyn Follies is one James Joyce -- not the writer, but a Foley walker, a person who makes sound......

Last night Gothamist headed over to a loft, overlooking a beautiful red sunset, for the Free Arts NYC auction and benefit. While celebrities and those "famous for being famous" mingled in their Manolos with the likes of us and our Dr. Scholls sandals, there was also art being bid on. We couldn't afford any, but if we could we may have put our money down on that photo to the left. Or, more realistically, that......

On Friday Gothamist went to check out Paul Auster and Billy Martin perform at Symphony Space in an event called My Mouth Is Tired Now (although Martin says his personal theme for the show was "The Music of Chance is Always Playing".) We walked into the space with no expectations and as we slid down in our seat, the lights dimmed and our minds opened to take in whatever we were about to see and......

Gothamist was excited to hear about the collaboration of two New Yorkers we respect on different parts of the creative spectrum. Tonight musician Billy Martin (of Medeski, Martin & Wood) and author Paul Auster will join forces at the Thalia Theater for a performance guaranteed to be unlike any other. Martin will curate and lead a trio to accompany Auster in the reading of Timbuktu and City of Glass. Musicians Marty Ehrlich and Doug......

Brooklyn is buzzing over rumors that Caroline Kennedy, husband Edwin Schlossberg, and their kids are moving to Park Slope from the Upper East Side. While there's "no comment" from the family, Brooklyn's biggest booster, Borough President Marty Markowitz, had some:Brooklyn, home to everyone from everywhere, is proud to be the new home of the Kennedys. Park Slope: It ain't Cape Cod, but it's starting to look a lot like Camelot.Park Slope residents are used to......

One of Gothamist's favorite movies, Hope and Glory, is playing at BAM tonight. It's part of BAM's retrospective of director John Boorman's work, The Adventures of John Boorman. Boorman's made his name with darker, more violent films like Point Blank and Deliverance, which is why Gothamist loves Hope and Glory so much: It's a hilarious film about a British family surviving World War II, from the middle-aged father who enlists to the young children who......

For a while now Music For America has been providing us with endless amounts of entertainment, events and information. Tonight is no different, and if you're in NY (and c'mon, who of us aren't?) then The Songwriter's Beat will entertain you in the name of Democracy over at one of Gothamist's favorite establishments, Cornelia Street Cafe. For those not privy, The Songwriters Beat is an all-acoustic show with 4 singer songwriters all given a......

Above: Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Kurt Vonnegut, Salman Rushdie, Laurie Anderson. Involver (media and entertainment activist community) and PEN (national organization of writers) present State of Emergency: Unconventional Readings this Wednesday, August 4 at 7:00pm. An incredible lineup of literary legends convene to address contemporary political threats to freedom of expression. Scheduled to apprear: Laurie Anderson, Paul Auster, Russell Banks, Michael Cunningham, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Ariel Dorfman, Eve Ensler, Jonathan Safran Foer, Barbara......

It's NY magazine's SEXY (caps are ours) issue and we were excited to see our favorites, Paul Auster (sexy author), Anthony Bourdain (sexy chef - take that, Rocco!), and Amy Sedaris (sexy comedienne) on the list. The rest - eh; Harrison Ford's mid-life crisis is not sexy.......

I woke up and just saw white outside. Then I got up and saw that the fog was relatively light - meaning that I could see buildings in New Jersey. The thin line of fog was pretty and atmospheric, and made me think of a noir movie or book or something by Paul Auster. I think it was advection fog. Taken at 6:30AM, from the Upper West Side looking out over the Hudson River to......

The news about the new film "Party Monster," which premiered at Sundance is especially big in NY, because it caused the downfall of a certain kind of club lifestyle. This predated the gansta rap bling-bling lifestyle. The Post gives a primer on the characters in the affair. Michael Musto's column from a year ago talks about it. And Michael Alig himself writes about prison. [J, 12pm]: This case was always of special interest to me......

There are a series of Paul Auster anecdotes that the Italian story reminds me of- the one below is from Smoke, but also comes up in the Red Notebook and a bunch of other places: Film Summary: Smoke PAUL: About twenty-five years ago a young man went skiing alone in the Alps. There was an avalanche. The snow swallowed him up, and his body was never recovered. His son was just a little boy at......

I've decided to write a Paul Auster book based on this story from Excite News: Man Found Dead 44 Years After 'Trip to U.S.'......