The specialty beverage industry – particularly Smart Water – is now the recipient of a clever parody from Brooklyn designer/photographer Till Krautkramer, who’s rolled out an elaborate marketing campaign for a line of beverages called MeatWater. The website proudly declares that the drink uses “only the finest protein” for such “High Efficiency Survival Beverages” as Dirty Hot Dog, “an authentic taste of the Big Apple you can sip through a straw!” and Italian Sausage: Mangia!......

EVENT: Into anime? It's your lucky weekend, the New York Anime Festival is in town! There will be previews, screenings and panels galore. Check out their website for more details. All Weekend // Jacob Javits Convention Center [655 W 34th St] // $30 day pass, $55 weekend pass SHOP: FIT and the Design Mavens come together for a 3 day shopstravaganza. Tons of designers we're not cool enough to have ever heard of will be......

READING: Dave Eggers has delivered two (out of three) great novels, and tonight he reads from last one (which is just out on paperback), What is the What. He'll be at the Strand discussing the book and he'll also give a slideshow presentation from a recent trip he took to Sudan. More info here. Friday // 7pm // Strand Bookstore [828 Broadway] // Free EVENT: We love a good pillow fight, and tonight there's a......

An exhibit at the main branch of the New York Public Library is drawing outrage from Republicans because some of the work on display depicts former and current members of the Bush administration posing for fake mug shots. Each official in the visionary series, called “Line Up”, is seen holding a slate with a date of arrest corresponding to a date when the official said something about Iraq that was not “reality-based.” Matthew Walter,......

Unnamed sources are telling the Daily News and The Post that a deal between the stagehands’ union and Broadway producers is within reach. The two sides have an agreement on the main sticking point, the dispute over the number of stagehands required for a show’s “load-in” and are currently negotiating salaries. As one source put it, "Everybody is confident we can finally get this done." There’s even optimism that some shows affected by the strike......

EVENT: Tonight, as part of the recurring Upstairs at the Square event, Nellie McKay plays tunes from her latest, Obligatory Villager and host Katherine Lanpher talks with author and filmmaker Antonio Monda. Monda's new book Do You Believe? Conversations on God and Religion will hit shelves soon -- and tonight he'll relay the discussions he had about religion with folks like Spike Lee and David Lynch. 7pm // Barnes & Noble [33 E 17th St]......

Musical theater star and lounge singer extraordinaire Robert Goulet died yesterday of pulmonary fibrosis while awaiting a lung transplant in an L.A. hospital; he was 73. In the early 60s Goulet skyrocketed to fame through his performance as Lancelot in the smash Broadway hit Camelot. He soon became a seemingly timeless fixture on both the musical theater touring circuit and the Vegas strip – in 1982 he was proclaimed Vegas Entertainer of the Year –......

Black Book (directed by Paul Verhoeven) Growing up in Holland during their occupation by the Nazis, it's no surprise that Dutch director Paul Verhoeven would want to revisit that chapter of his country's history on film. But seeing as it is Verhoeven, director of such hilariously trashy and provocative films as Showgirls and Basic Instinct, he's not going to make a tame, reverent movie about the heroic Resistance. Black Book is a sexy, in-your-face Resistance......

I’ve been covering theater on Gothamist for exactly one year now, so I thought it might be worthwhile to gaze wistfully back at all the theatrical peaks and valleys and call attention to some of the more noteworthy summits. (Okay, maybe one bleak valley deserves special mention.) And since I’m on vacation until the end of the month, what better time to bust out the internet equivalent of a sitcom clips show? I hasten to......

EVENT: GRBG is helping in the celebration of the “Gangs of New York” Fall ’07 collection. Enjoy a photo exhibit of the fall look book shot in Coney Island, a screening of The Warriors and free Rum! 6 to 9pm // powerHouse Arena [37 Main St, Brooklyn] // Free READING: His book on the nightlife scene hit the stores yesterday, and today Rob the Bouncer will be joining them. He's not even quite sure what......

MOVIE: It's certainly not the kind of night for an outdoor movie, so we suggest sitting in the cool a/c and watching the 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead. "Gone is the possibility of mankind’s dominance in this sequel to Night of the Living Dead; the zombies are in control now, with a group of AWOL soldiers and TV producers on the run from the staggering hordes. A deserted shopping mall offers a safe hideout,......

It's a big outdoor weekend, so good thing there are 51 outdoor pools opening up for the season around the city today (here's a "best of" list). If you prefer to stay dry, here are some options... EVENT: The Afro Punk series begins at BAMcafé tonight. The series kicks off with a spotlight on the Black Panthers, including "an Opening Night discussion with Black Panther co-Founder Bobby Seale, Gloria Rolando’s Eyes of the Rainbow (1997),......

THEATER: Gertrude Stein is regarded as an avant-garde intellectual whose adventurous prose has long overshadowed her plays – despite her Broadway hit Four Saints in Three Acts. (Who could forget?) A crack team of downtown experimental theater types are now hoisting six of Stein’s one-acts out of obscurity with a production in the East Village. The evening, irresistibly dubbed Steinese Takeout, boldly embraces Stein’s radicalism and runs with it. How radical are these plays? “How......

Twenty-nine-year-old playwright and actress Courtney McLean has done her share of day jobs: as a former wedding and party DJ, she DJed an afterparty for N'Sync at the San Diego Sports Arena, and her brushes with celebrity include discussing bikini waxes with Jessica Biel. After studying theater at UC San Diego, the California native headed to New York five years ago, and currently waitresses at Penelope, among other gigs. But her true love is theater,......

The first time I saw Daily Show correspondent John Oliver was at the UCB during their Best Comedy in the Universe Festival. During his half hour set, there was no thirty-second period where the audience wasn't laughing uproariously. From that alone I can say that Oliver is a tremendous talent and I can't wait to see him take the mic once again. Which of your Daily Show assignments has been your favorite thus far? I......

Last right, NYU's Asian Heritage Club protested the selection of a Valentine's Day concert band whose name is The Ching Chong Song. NYU junior and AHC member Frederick Wong told the Washington Square News that 20 students had gathered for the protest because "The name, Ching Chong Song, did not really relate to any of the lyrics in their songs. So we thought it was completely unnecessary to have a racist name." The band apologized......

THEATER: Katharsis Theater Company has been developing The Polish Play for the past two years; it’s a fusion of Macbeth and Ubu Roi, the play by Alfred Jarry that was partially inspired by Macbeth. This work of Grand Guignol fusion, which mixes puppetry with live acting, swerves between broad satire, tragedy and plenty of ultra-violence. (Although puppets are decapitated and disemboweled on-stage, rest assured that no puppets are permanently harmed for this production.) Jordan Gelber,......

SIGNING: If there is one person we could think of that doesn't need an autobiography...it might as well be Rupert Everett. Yet, he'll be signing his new book "Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins: The Autobiography" tonight. He wasn't just in "My Best Friends Wedding", he was also friends with Warhol and has been to easter egg hunts in Elizabeth Taylor's garden. Fabulous. 7pm // Barnes & Noble [33 E 17th St] // Free SHOP:......

In the weeks after 9/11, when Operation Infinite Justice (later re-branded Enduring Freedom) readied vengeance for peasants in Afghanistan, there were several writers who immediately stood out by simply noting the truth amidst an avalanche of jingoism. One that springs readily to mind is Arundhati Roy, who wrote in an article on September 29, 2001: “Witness the infinite justice of the new century. Civilians starving to death while they're waiting to be killed.” On......

THEATER: The Scene, a black comedy by Theresa Rebeck that premiered at this year’s Humana Festival in Louisville, is now in previews at Second Stage. The satire is about an out-of-work New York actor (Spenser: For Hire’s Tony Shalhoub) — married to a news producer (Alien Nation veteran Patricia Heaton) — who has an affair with a fresh-faced Ohioan ingénue. Rebeck’s stated intent with The Scene is to skewer America’s “cultural collapse into narcissism”. -......

THEATER: The Pearl Theatre Company, known for their deft handling of classic plays, has revived Molière's satire School for Wives. The play deliciously skewers the aristocrat Arnolphe, who so fears he’ll marry an unfaithful woman that he locks a little girl in a convent for 13 years, keeping her utterly isolated until she comes of age. The hi-jinks begin when he’s finally ready to fulfill his master marriage plan and finds himself outmaneuvered by a......

- Walter Pertyk, the teen who dressed as Hitler (for Halloween) at his Brooklyn public high school, walked in the march that protested his actions. He tells the Post, "They called it a walk of tolerance and respect, so I figured I would go and show my tolerance and respect for other people's views of my costume." It's suddenly sounding like the Death Camp of Tolerance episode of South Park. - David Langlieb, author of......

Haverford graduate, Parks Department project manager, and Greenpoint resident David Langlieb is under fire for writing an essay about his neighborhood in his alumni magazine. According to the Daily News, the essay, ripe with complaints about the old-school Polish residents and self-deprecation about not being an Ivy League graduate, has incensed the Polish American Congress and Councilman David Yassky, who said, "my eyes pretty much popped out of my head when I read this."......

THEATER: Joe's Pub hosts SpeakEasy, a theatrical "event" written by Neil LaBute, Edwin Sanchez, Theresa Rebeck and many others. The performance will happen throughout the Joe's Pub space, "surrounding the spectator with the bizarre, the comic, the seductive, and the sublime. Neo-Vaudeville meets social satire in this giant play with environmental staging, original music, and compelling new writing." It's the launch of The Fire Dept. a new theater company; this show features Janeane Garafalo and......

Nixon’s Nixon was originally presented in 1996 and is currently being revived with the original cast members at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in the West Village. The play takes place in the Lincoln Sitting Room at the White House and imagines what went on during an historic meeting between Nixon and Kissinger on the eve of Nixon’s resignation. These two larger-than-life characters are expertly played by actors Gerry Bamman and Steve Mellor, who evoke the......

Before the house lights dim, ¡El Conquistador! begins with a breezy prologue by the play’s sole live performer, Thaddeus Phillips, who introduces the audience to the quirky world they are about to visit. His story is set in an upscale condo in Bogota, where apartment dwellers are never issued keys to their buildings. Phillips tells us that for security reasons, metropolitan Columbians are usually at the mercy of their doormen who, in ¡El Conquistador! at......

THEATER: Teflon war criminal and Nobel laureate Henry Kissinger made news again this week with the revelation that Dr. Strangelove has secretly cautioned against any troop withdrawal from Iraq because, just like ‘Nam, such action would “become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more troops come home, the more will be demanded.” Kissinger’s breathtaking contempt for democracy is matched only by his Machiavellian genius; both attributes are skewered to great effect in this......

“Never Swim Alone” is a swift, funny satire about two Alpha-males and their ruthless competition for the title of Top Dog. The play is structured as a surreal egotistic boxing match: Frank and Bill, two guys in dark suits and bad ties, square off in a 13 round Battle Royale of vicious undermining and one-upmanship. It is at first unclear why these guys are at odds; they have so much in common that they often......

Dear lord, it's only mid-September but already the amount of new releases flooding theaters is getting a bit overwhelming. Brian De Palma's highly anticipated adaptation of James Ellroy's novel, The Black Dahlia hits theaters this Friday. Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart are Los Angeles detectives investigating an extremely grisly Hollywood murder of a young starlet in the late '40s. Hartnett's real life Girl Friday, Scarlett Johansson's also in the cast, as is Oscar winner Hilary......

We'll be keeping a running list of nominees for this year's most inappropriate morning coverage of the fifth anniversary of 9/11-- around noon we'll crown a winner. 1. In a devious bit of counter-programming, Gawker kicks off their day's coverage with a club-kid party crash, featuring a girl named "Baby Sinead" getting a vodka shower and showing some boob. Nice! 2. The Post decides that today is the perfect time to advertise its new......