Joe Pompeo

On a sweltering afternoon early last month, Adam Newman, a 25-year-old Park Slope comedian who works for CollegeHumor.com, made a life-changing decision: He took scissors to a pair of brown corduroy pants and fashioned them into shorts.

“It’s getting hot and I’ve made up my mind. This summer, I’m wearing shorts!” Mr. Newman blogged recently. “I’ve always been an exclusively-pants guy, but I’m ready for change. No more sweating under the jeans at the park, I’m letting it breathe this year!”  read more »

Mr. Newman is not alone. A growing number of style-conscious men are becoming more comfortable with the idea of showing some leg during the hot summer months.

MONDAY

With all the local hype over The Real Housewives of New York City, we'd almost forgotten about their west coast predecessors and sister show, The Real Housewives of Orange County, which taught us everything we'd ever wanted to know about plastic surgery, Southern California Republicans and bad parenting. But now that summer's here, it's time to revisit Silicone Valley. Bravo's airing a Real Housewives mini-marathon starting at 5 p.m., followed by a sneak preview at 10 of the new reality series Date My Ex: Jo & Slade, in which twentysomething former Real Housewife Jo De La Rosa tries to find a new man with the help of her much older, career-advancing ex-boyfriend, Slade Smiley.  read more »

MONDAY

Things aren't looking good in Hollywood. A week from today, on June 30, the Screen Actors Guild's contract will expire. And as Variety reported on Friday, it seems increasingly unlikely that a deal with producers will be struck by then. Anyway, time for S.A.G. to celebrate! The labor union turns 75 this year, and Turner Classic Movies will salute its birth with a marathon of classic films from the 30's and 40's—starting at 8 p.m. with the 1932 comedy, Movie Crazy, in which "a stage struck young actor accidentally receives somebody else's invitation to test in Hollywood." From there it moves to 1933's The Kennel Murder Case, a suspense flick about a murder tied to a Long Island dog show (9:45 p.  read more »

Grammy Award-winning comedian George Carlin died of heart failure yesterday in Santa Monica, Calif. at the age of 71. According to reports, Mr. Carlin had a history of heart problems, and had checked into the hospital Sunday afternoon after complaining of chest pains. He had just performed the previous weekend in Las Vegas, and was scheduled to receive the John F. Kennedy Center For the Performing Arts' Mark Twain Prize, a lifetime achievement award, in November.  read more »

Newspapers today remembered Mr. Carlin as a cultural provocateur. "By the mid-’70s, like his comic predecessor Lenny Bruce and the fast-rising Richard Pryor, Mr. Carlin had emerged as a cultural renegade,"

This weekend, Anthology Film Archives will debut three new short films by legendary experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger. My Surfing Lucifer, which is a tribute to a surfer friend of Mr. Anger’s named Bunky, and I’ll Be Watching You, a found-footage piece that uses parts of a gay porn film to comment on voyeurism and scopophilia, will have their U.S. premieres, and Foreplay, which features found footage of male soccer players, will be shown for the first time ever, according to the cine/video-dance pioneer Amy Greenfield, who will be debuting several of her naked dance duet films as part of the “Cinema Dance Eros” two-day program.  read more »

With summer kicking into full swing, we'll all need a little dose of trashy television to help pass the time when it's just too hot to do anything but sit in front of the air conditioner sipping Coronas and channel surfing. Fortunately, the networks have lined up a whole season's worth of brand new reality shows that you will probably watch and love no matter how bad they are. New York mag's Vulture blog has compiled a list of 20 such horrific programs slated in the coming months. Some highlights:   read more »

Last week, we told you about Esquire's new column by author and academic Stephen Marche, the first installment of which focusses on the return of the skull as a fashionable, and sometimes pricey, cultural commodity. The article cites a diamond-encrusted platinum skull that original Young Bullshit Artist—er, we mean, Young British Artist, Damien Hirst sold for $100 million in 2007. Now, the 43-year-old international art sensation has some new pieces up for sale at astronomical prices. Reuters, which describes Mr. Hirst as "one of contemporary art's most bankable stars," reports that Sotheby's is set to auction off a series of his extravagant works in London this September.  read more »

Coldplay’s Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends comes out today. That's about as big as record-release news gets nowadays. But more importantly for the band, on Sunday, the album hit No.1 on charts in the U.K., where it was first released last Thursday, selling more than 300,000 copies in three days. Then there’s that ubiquitous iTunes commercial featuring the album’s title track. Yup, everything was going smoothly for Coldplay—that is until some Brooklyn band no one’s ever heard of accused them of stealing one of its songs!  read more »

Today is Bloomsday, that time-honored literary commemoration involving college professors, former English majors, and Irish people of the date on which all of the action of James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place (June 16, 1904). In New York City every year since 1981, Symphony Space has hosted a marathon Bloomsday event featuring all sorts of famous actors reading from the text, and radio station WBAI has broadcast the performances live on 99.5 FM. But The New York Times brings us news that tonight, for the first time since 1981, the theater and station “will go their separate ways as a result of apprehension about obscenity and government regulation.”  read more »

Monday

Is the impulse that drives viewers to A&E’s reality series Intervention charity? Or what the newspapers used to call "human interest"? Or is it just Schadenfreude? Either way, the show, which chronicles those confrontations between self-destructive people and their families and friends brokered by "intervention" specialists, certainly doesn't play for laughs. What you’re seeing is usually pretty horrific, and the train wrecks it picks through can actually become pretty touching stories. Methamphetamine and OxyContin addictions are common fare here; and the success stories, which are not guaranteed, are definitely the more edifying programs. So maybe it is charity after all? Tonight we meet Chad who, like most of the show's subjects, had a pretty troubled childhood—he ended up in juvie for felony arson. At age 15, Chad’s father introduced him to cycling, and he went pro and even cycled on the same team as Lance Armstrong. When he got kicked off the team for “personality conflicts,” however, he turned to drugs. He's homeless and spends his days drinking, panhandling and smoking crack. Can an intervention save his life? The show airs at 9 p.m. Of course before reality programs there were nonfictional programs about science and nature and history. The History Channel takes a break from reconstructing Hitler's last hours in the bunker to trot out an hour-long program about the origins of life on earth at 9 p.m. At any rate switch to Bravo at 10 and watch Clueless if you haven't seen it a few too many times already, or fire up the fourth season premiere of Weeds at 10 p.m. on Showtime.  read more »

Anyone who longs for the days when New York seemed like a post-apocalyptic, crime-ridden industrial wasteland is in for a treat tonight. At the Knitting Factory, the obscure yet seminal Manhattan post-punk band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks will reunite for two back-to-back performances. The shows will coincide with an exhibition opening at a gallery across the street celebrating the release of No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980 ($24.95, Abrams Image), a new visual coffee table book compiled by Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore and longtime rock critic Byron Coley.

Some background:  read more »

An interesting tidbit from The New York Times: U2 is selling a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that its bassist, Adam Clayton, bought at a New York gallery in 1989. According to Bloomberg, the band is expected to fetch as much as 6 million pounds (that’s $11.7 million) at a Sotheby’s Contemporary Art auction in London on July 1. The auction record for a Basquiat work is $14.6 million.

The painting, a 6-foot-square acrylic, oil stick and collage canvas, was completed in 1982 (some reports say 1983) when the artist was 22 years old. He died of a drug overdose in 1988.

“It seems especially appropriate that a work by Basquiat should end up in a music studio, since so much has been said about the relationship between his art and music,” Oliver Barker, of Sotheby's Contemporary Art department, told the BBC. The painting had been hanging in U2’s studio until now.

No word on whether Bono plans to do something philanthropic with the money.

The July issue of Esquire debuts a new culture column by Stephen Marche—a Ph.D.-possessing smart guy, former college professor, and Toronto-based novelist who apparently loves The Hills as much as he loves early modern drama. In zany Esquire fashion, the column’s laid out as if it were thought up on a typewriter and pasted into the mag 'zine-style, with little clippings of relevant pictures interspersed with the text. (The column is not online yet.)

The subject of this inaugural column? Skulls.  read more »

Are we getting closer to another strike in Hollywood? It seems plausible now that Screen Actors Guild president Alan Rosenberg has told Daily Variety it’s unlikely the guild and the major producers will strike a deal by June 30, the date the guild’s contract is set to expire. More, he admitted that guild leadership would decide by next week whether to ask SAG members for strike authorization—it would need approval from 75 percent of them.  read more »

As we mentioned in the Week in Music on Tuesday, Brooklyn’s very own outrageously-dressed, genre-bending singer/rapper/popstress Santogold, who’s written tracks for Ashlee Simpson and used to be in a Philly punk band, just collaborated on a new track with producer Pharrell Williams and Strokes singer Julian Casablancas as part of the centennial promo campaign for Converse sneakers. And surely you’ve seen that ubiquitous commercial for Bud Light Lime featuring her hyped up and spastic debut single, “Creator.” (Opening lyric: “Got no need for the fancy things.” Hence: drinking Budweiser!) But the indie rock product placement doesn’t stop there. Stereogum reports that Santogold has lent a remix of her other popular tune, “L.E.S. Artistes,” to Ford in a new auto spot for the Ford Flex. “Santi's wasting no time,” the blog notes. “You know why? Because selling records doesn't make money, and licensing does.” Touche! But what does Santogold have to say about all this? Well, she told New York mag:  read more »

The Associated Press has confirmed that Paul Newman, the Oscar-winning actor, philanthropist and salad dressing entrepreneur, is battling cancer. The news comes from the 83-year-old Mr. Newman's longtime friend and business partner, writer A.E. Hotchner, with whom Mr. Newman started Newman's Own salad dressing company in 1982. (It reportedly started as a joke and grew into a multi-million-dollar food company.) "He's battling," Mr. Hotchner told the AP. "He's doing all the right stuff. Paul is a fighter. He seems to be going through a good period right now." More after the jump.  read more »

Yesterday, Stereogum leaked a spazzy new pop track called “My Drive Thru” that’s part of the centennial promo campaign for the timeless hipster sneaker brand Converse. The artists behind the tune are something of an unlikely collaboration: In one corner, you have Julian Casablancas, singer of the Strokes and semi-forgotten it-boy of 2001. In the other, Santogold, the sassy, genre-bending Brooklyn singer who all the cool kids are calling ‘the new M.I.A.’ And rounding out the trio—all star producer and one-half of the beat-making duo the Neptunes, Pharrell Williams, who's lent his talents to everyone from Justin Timberlake to Gwen Stefani to Madonna.  read more »

There was almost a full-on press melee in Philadelphia this weekend at the Alternative Newsweeklies Convention. According to Gustavo Arellano, The OC Weekly's "Ask a Mexican" columnist, he and Village Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega, New York Times culture editor Sam Sifton and Times media critic David Carr were called "nerds" by a "big mook" on their walk back to the Downtown Marriot after an evening of boozing at a local press hangout.

"All of us were in various stages of inebriation (from nothing to Jim Beam-ing), all of us were living life," Mr. Arellano later wrote. "If the guy said it to my face, I'da kick[ed] his ass! ... Carr, Sifton, and Ortega made similar threats. We headed to the Marriot's bar for a nightcapper and laughed with the knowledge our nerdish ways have rewarded us with lives of leisure, while that assaulting asshole could only look forward to trimming his precious goatee."  read more »

Brokeback Mountain is coming back to New York, this time in the form of an opera.

The New York City Opera has commissioned American composer and New York native Charles Wuorinen to adapt the E. Annie Proulx short story and subsequent Oscar-winning film for its 2013 spring season. It will be Mr. Wuorinen’s second world premiere at City Opera, his first being an adaptation in 2004 of Salman Rushdie’s Sea of Stoires.  read more »

Monday, June 9

This week kicks off with a controversial documentary about the Oscar-winning filmmaker-cum-Humbert Humbert, Roman Polanski (9 p.m. on HBO). As you may recall, Mr. Polanksi, a Polish Holocaust survivor who was married to the eight-months-pregnant actress Sharon Tate when members of the Manson family murdered her in 1969, pleaded guilty to getting it on with a 13-year-old in 1977. A year later, he fled the U.S for Paris, likely evading years worth of prison time. But Marina Zenovich’s new film, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which the LA Times calls a “surprisingly haunting examination of the politics, personalities and legal complexities of the 1977 case,” argues that Mr. Polanski’s flight to France was more than just a means of avoiding the slammer:  read more »

So, apparently the top actors who do the voices on The Simpsons get paid nearly $400,000 per episode under their new contract! This from Reuters via The Hollywood Reporter, which brings us news this morning that after months of negotiations, the standoff between the cast of the long-running animated series and Twentieth Century Fox TV has ended. Cast members reportedly sought $500,000 per episode, but settled for a nevertheless significant increase over their current paychecks of roughly $300,000 an episode. For some context, the article points out that the highest-paid sitcom star, Charlie Sheen, made about $350,000 per episode in 2006 for his role in Two and a Half Men. Also, kudos to Reuters for its headline: “Dough! Simpsons cast gets a hefty raise.” The Simpsons begins work on its 20th season today.

Today marks the 261st commencement ceremony at Princeton University. Yesterday marked the day the esteemed Ivy gave an award to Stephen Colbert.  read more »

There’s nothing like a good feud between two massively iconic rock artists to keep the fanboys sweating. And that’s just what happened last week when an unlikely Internet controversy erupted between Prince and Radiohead. See, Prince did a rendition of Radiohead’s 1993 break-through hit, “Creep” at this year’s Coachella Music Festival in late April. And at first, the guys in Radiohead thought that was pretty awesome. Thom Yorke reportedly got a text message about it, and found it so “hilarious” that he had to see/hear the cover for himself.  read more »

As the New York Sun reports, the New York City Opera’s home at the New York State Theater in Lincoln Center is currently undergoing renovations. So to keep the music alive, the Opera will tour the five boroughs during its 2008-2009 season with a series of concerts, showcases, screenings and discussions at various theaters throughout the city. Stops will include the St.  read more »

Bo Diddley, the pioneering rock ’n’ roller responsible for classics like “Who Do You Love” and “I’m a Man,” died of heart failure today in his Florida home, Reuters reports. He was 79.

“One of the founding fathers of rock 'n' roll has left the building he helped construct,” read a statement his management agency released.

More from Reuters:  read more »

Brooklyn Vegan reports that at 10 a.m. today, presale tickets go onsale for for an Aug. 12 Bob Dylan concert at the Prospect Park bandshell in Park Slope.

Only problem is you'll need one of those pesky pre-sale passwords to buy them, and even the all-knowing Brooklyn Vegan isn't sure what the password is, though he suggests trying "modern."

So far, Mr. Dylan's Park Slope performance is the only U.S. show listed on his summer tour itinerary.

This is basically what it was coming to all along. It's been said of J.J. Abrams that the television series Lost was inspired in part by the aesthetic and approach of the video game Myst, and in the "gaming" spirit, plotlines have been developed by consulting with the masses who watch the show regularly. Now, the Sci-Fi Channel makes the relationship explicit with the announcement of a new science-fiction television series-cum-Internet video game that allows fans to shape the story arc.  read more »

Despite negative reviews, Sex and the City dominated the box office this weekend, kicking the new Indiana Jones movie out of the no.1 spot and raking in roughly $55.7 million, The New York Times reports. And, surprise! 85 percent of ticket buyers were women, “many viewing in groups.” SJP is pleased: “I am so excited about the possibilities for movies about women,” she told the Times.

Today, Pitchfork brings us a brand new Morrissey video for a forthcoming single called “All You Need is Me.” The interesting part is that the video was directed by Patrick O’Dell, the Manhattan photographer and former Vice magazine photo editor whose blog, Epicly L’aterd has become something of a must read for downtown scenesters and skater kids.  read more »

So, we hear 'zines are coming back in style. Or at least that they’re not totally dead. In fact there’s a party tonight in their honor at the Lower East Side arts space ABC No Rio, which has a 'zine library filled with more than 10,000 underground publications and comic books. For ye of the blog generation, 'zines were—er, are—these self-produced, mostly Xeroxed, often quirky or personal little periodicals that people trade with each other via the United States Postal Service. (Remember “snail mail?”)  read more »

What We Do Is Secret, a new biopic about the legendary, late-‘70s Los Angeles punk rock band the Germs, is coming to New York theaters in August, Billboard reports. (Reference point: You may remember Germs guitarist Pat Smear as the fourth member of Nirvana and an original member of the Foo Fighters.)  read more »

The "Cosby Sweater," the kind of loud, patchy sweater worn by Bill Cosby on The Cosby Show in the late 1980's that misled millions into adjusting their aerials, may not be the sort of "directional" fashion-do that Sarah Jessica Parker's shoes and dresses from Sex and the City have become, but that doesn't mean he can't auction them off for charity!

Just in time for Father’s Day, Bill Cosby’s daughter has happened upon a pile of the horridly patterned wool topsand and will be putting three of them up for auction on eBay June 2 through 12.  read more »

Oh, Park Slope. Land of baby strollers, brownstone owners, literary types and … booze-fueled country music hoedowns? Yes, apparently the Park Slope country scene is alive and well. In fact country is thriving throughout the outer boroughs, at least according to this week’s cover story in The Village Voice.  read more »

Sony has come up with a creative way of generating revenue in the face of the industry-wide slump in music sales. The New York Times reports that executives at the company are tapping into the photo archives in the basement of its New York headquarters, and are expected today to announce a partnership with the Morrison Hotel Gallery—which showcases prominent music photographers—to sell off Sony's "gold mine" of classic rock images.

Apparently there are decades' worth of photos that were taken by staff photographers at Columbia Records, which Sony acquired in 1988. The images were more or less collecting dust until last year, when Sony started selling reproductions of them via its newly created boutique business, Icon Collectibles. Now, an exhibition of photos from Columbia’s 30th Street Studio is slated at the gallery for mid-July. "We're looking to take advantage of all the assets of the company, not just the audio recordings. We have the content, and we found a way to tap into it," John Ingrassia, president of Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s commercial music group, told The Times. Some of the hot ticket items include:  read more »

Los Angeles “will continue to be preoccupied with the threat of Hollywood shutting down,” according to The New York Times’ Michael Cieply, who brings us an update today on the labor negotiations currently under way between producers and actors’ unions.

Yesterday, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists struck a three-year deal with production companies over reusing performers’ images on the Web. But The Times reports that the more powerful Screen Actors Guild “would not simply accept the same terms as other unions.”  read more »

During the summer, a lot of people do summery things like relaxing on the beach, barbecuing in the park, going to baseball games. Maybe even, if they have rich friends, getting a little sailing time in. But on those hot and sticky days in Williamsburg, the kids like to hang out in a big, empty, concrete, waterless, treeless, shadeless swimming pool with festering port-a-potties for toilets. To each his own!

At least McCarren Park Pool hosts free concerts—“Pool Parties,” as they are called—all summer long. (If you missed Superchunk last year, we feel sorry for you.) Brooklyn Vegan has this season’s lineup, which is sure to please the early-20-something hipster set with performances by the likes of The Hold Steady, Liars, Deerhunter and the Black Lips. Also, rumor has it the Breeders are headlining the July 13 slot. Full schedule after the jump.  read more »

Pitchfork reminds us that the New York edition of the 2008 Bicycle Film Festival kicks off 9 p.m. tonight at Studio B in Greenpoint. (There are a few hipster bike messenger types in that neck of the woods, no?) This evening’s event, the aptly titled “Bikes Rock,” will be the first of five consecutive days of citywide film, music and art programming celebrating that manual, green (and here in New York, a bit dangerous?) form of two-wheeled transportation that is the bicycle:  read more »

Surprisingly, today's Phil Spector news doesn't involve the legendary 69-year-old producer's murder trial, although it does involve a death: that of the engineer who helped create Mr. Spector's famed "Wall of Sound" recording technique.

The New York-born Larry Levine, 80, died on May 8 at his Encino, Calif. home after suffering from emphysema, The New York Times reports:

Mr. Levine, a house engineer at Gold Star Recording Studios in Hollywood, first collaborated with Mr. Spector in 1962 on the Crystals hit “He’s A Rebel,” the first of many Spector-produced records featuring lush instrumental backgrounds and heavy use of echo chamber. The wall of sound technique, which Mr. Spector and Mr. Levine refined through a process of trial and error, defined a string of hits, including “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain” by the Ronettes, “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Then He Kissed Me” by the Crystals, and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers.  read more »

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CONCERTS

In case you were wondering what this year's official summer jam might be, wonder no more: A few days ago, People unveiled a taste of New Kids On the Block's comeback single, "Summertime," and as the title suggests, it is indeed all about the summertime, or, perhaps more accurately, meeting hot chicks in the summertime. Some of our favorite lines include, "I played it cool / The weather was hot / You had the beauty and the beach on lock" and "You wasn't lookin' for a man / When you saw me in the sand / But you fell for a boy from the city," and (here's the best one) "I was like, 'Hey girl, can i getch' yo' number?'" NKOTB plays the Meadowlands' Izod Arena on Sept. 23. (Pre-sale is on now, public sale starts Monday.) [On Sale: Monday, May 12]

The Smoking Popes never hit it much bigger than having one great song ("Need You Around") on the soundtrack to Clueless. But as far as '90s power pop bands go, it doesn't get much better. They play The Blender Theater at Gramercy on July 5. [On Sale: Friday, May 9 at noon]  read more »

David Lynch was in town last week promoting his national best seller, Catching the Big Fish, which recently came out in paperback. The book is an autobiographical account of the creative benefits the 62-year-old auteur claims to have reaped over the past three decades from practicing Transcendental Meditation, the trademarked meditation technique that rock stars like the Beatles and Donovan championed back in the late 1960s, and which has been making something of a pop culture comeback thanks to celebrity adherents like Mr. Lynch, Howard Stern and Moby. Indeed, it seems like over the past few years Mr. Lynch, whose most recent film was 2006’s epic Inland Empire, has been generating more press for his spiritual beliefs than his surreal and nightmarish brand of cinema.

But fans of creepy dancing midgets and lovers of cherry pie need not worry: Mr. Lynch, who spoke with the Culture Czar recently in his Upper West Side hotel room -- he was wearing his trademark white shirt buttoned all the way to the top and well-coiffed silver hair -- still loves Twin Peaks and a good cup of coffee. (His own Signature Cup blend is on sale at the IFC Center.) He also has a new documentary in the works that he hopes will be in theaters by the fall. But before he gets around to making another of the bewildering films his fans have come to relish, he has a slightly loftier goal to check off his to-do list: world peace. Read on!  read more »

Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski documentary will open in New York on July 11, two days after it airs on HBO, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film, which is titled Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, follows the Academy Award-winning director's infamous statutory rape trial (he pleaded guilty to getting it on with a 13-year-old in 1977) and subsequent flight from the U.S. in 1978 (he likely evaded decades worth of prison time).  read more »

It seemed odd enough when the 80's Texas psych-punk band The Butthole Surfers made something of comeback in 1996 with an album that got lots of mainstream airplay. Now they're making a comeback from their comeback? You be the judge—they're playing Webster Hall on July 29. [On Sale: Friday, May 2 at noon]  read more »

We'd been wondering what director Ang Lee's next move would be, especially following Brokeback Mountain star Heath Ledger's fatal overdose in late January. It turns out Mr. Lee's next project is a bit more light-hearted than that film, or his last, Lust, Caution. It's a comedy about the original Woodstock music festival based on Elliot Tiber's 2007 memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life.  read more »

In case you haven’t heard, a lineup has been announced for this year’s New York install