SOCIAL LIFE > Why Nobody Wants to Be An Adult

NYMAG.COM: Why do so many 35-year-old New Yorkers look and act like they just got out of college? A look at a new breed of grown-ups who have redefined adulthood.

He owns eleven pairs of sneakers, hasn’t worn anything but jeans in a year, and won’t shut up about the latest Death Cab for Cutie CD. But he is no kid. He is among the ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap.

SOCIAL LIFE > City Releases Tapes of 911 Calls From Sept. 11 Attack

NYTIMES.COM: The city released partial recordings today of about 130 telephone calls made to 911 after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, stripped of the voices of the people inside the World Trade Center but still evocative of their invisible struggles for life.

Only the 911 operators and fire department dispatchers can be heard on the recordings, their words mapping the calamity in rough, faint echoes of the men and women in the towers who had called them for help.

They describe crowded islands of fleeting survival, on floors far from the crash and even on those that were directly hit: Hallways are blocked on 104. Send help to 84. It is hard to breathe on 97.

Be calm, the operators implore. God is there. Sit tight.

The recordings, contained on 11 compact discs, also document a broken link in the chain of emergency communications.

ART > Will the Art Market Crash?

NYMAG.COM: Five theories on why the art market is recession-proof. (And why it will crash anyway.)

Walk around Chelsea these days and you can practically hear money buzzing in the air. Powerhouse galleries such as Matthew Marks and PaceWildenstein have extended their empires with extra showrooms. Younger guns like Leo Koenig and Casey Kaplan are graduating into grander spaces. And almost every weekend, some former gallery director is going into business for himself. It’s not just Chelsea. The whole contemporary-art market has shifted into overdrive. Playing to today’s competitive collectors, the Armory Show’s opening gala earlier this month offered three-tiered access: $1,000 to enter the art fair at five o’clock, $500 a half-hour later, and $250 for seven. But by five, the booths of the hot dealers had already been besieged by dozens of collectors and art consultants, invited in at noon by their clients; many works by sought-after artists were either sold out or held on reserve (some on “double reserve”).

MOVIES > Drawing Restraint 9 @ IFC Center

FLAVORPILL.NET: A labor of Matthew Barney and Björk's love, Drawing Restraint 9 is Barney's first major film since his epic Cremaster Cycle. Commissioned by the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, the film enacts abstracted Japanese rituals aboard a whaling ship. Wrapped in fur kimonos, the couple performs a tea ceremony before cutting each other to pieces while liquid Vaseline floods the ship. The sharp, stylized cinematography, glacial pace, oozing liquids, and sexual metaphors are familiar from Cremaster, but Björk's quietly ethereal charisma mixes up the familiar, and her haunting score is used to great effect — particularly during the gory climax.

MUSIC > Weapons of Jazz Destruction - Tyondai Braxton 'Battles' at warp speed

EARPLUG.CC: Somewhere between a juggler and a shaman, Tyondai Braxton performs amidst a bed of pedals and cables, alternately intoning into a microphone, hammering away at his guitar, and working the effects with any limbs still available. The overall impression is one of a practiced ritual, with stern melodies slowly but surely emerging from a murky undercurrent of precisely constructed loops. "Though I consider what I do to be fully composed," Braxton explains, "I can understand why people would think a lot of it is improvised."

Braxton certainly takes cues from free jazz and noise, but his performances firmly position him as the conductor of an ensemble of machines. A Connecticut native who now lives in New York City, he has been accruing praise since the release of 2002's History That Has No Effect. In that time, he has collaborated with a range of musicians, from Elliot Sharp and Prefuse 73 to Glenn Branca, and performed with Thurston Moore, Oval, and Black Dice. Earlier this month, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council commissioned Braxton for a two-night multimedia performance called "Memory Remember Me."

INTERVIEW > Klaus Biesenbach

ARTKRUSH.COM: Sarah Kessler interviews Klaus Biesenbach, curator of film and media at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and chief curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, about Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and the Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art — both of which he founded — as well as his other current projects.

CONCERTS > Editors @ Webster Hall 3/30/06

VILLAGEINDIAN.COM: Another night with Editors, another impressive performance. Head to Stereogum for the full review. I've come to expect spine-tingling moments from this band, and last night they made me wait until the end of the show. But they delivered, with Tom casting his spell during an incredible performance of show-closer "Fingers In The Factories." I bumped into Laura and Jerry while there, they're sure to have some fun recaps. Take the jump for more tasty pics from the night.

CONCERTS > Get Your War Off

VILLAGEVOICE.COM: If Fly Life were to have a concert based around a political cause, it would be very much like the March 20 Bring 'Em Home Now event at the Hammerstein Ballroom. One of our favorite local gay promoters, Josh Wood (of Larry Tee's party the Bank), would co-produce it with Chris Wangrow; column regulars like Moby and James Iha would perform. And what would be a Fly Life–approved show without some Bush-bashing, bush-singing (thanks, Peaches, you're a, erm, peach), and a flamboyant rock-star performance, from, yes, Fischerspooner, featuring Fly Life Boyfriend Forever Casey Spooner? We'd include a cry-fest courtesy of dreamy Rufus Wainwright, who would be instructed to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (which he really did).

CARS > Charger fitted for NYPD uniform

AUTOBLOG.COM: You may remember a post awhile back on the NYPD agreeing to buy a fleet of 15 Chargers, five V6 models and ten with the HEMI V8, for a pilot program set to commence this summer.

Well here are snaps of the first one outfitted for duty mere moments after the decals were applied.

Autoblog reader Max sent us a link to a forum titled NYPD Rant where a few photos of the car are being hosted. The forum’s audience is made up entirely of boys in blue, so it’s great fun to read their reactions to what may become the newest member of the force.

The real cops of NYC apparently don’t expect to see any Chargers on the street until their bosses are done driving them around town between photo-ops, and they worry about back-seat room in the Charger, as well as that sunroof under the light bar. Most officers, however, would forego the Charger if it meant an annual salary that’s larger than the cost of their cruiser.

CARS > Crown Vic cruisers in NYC being replaced with Chargers?

AUTOBLOG.COM: New York City’s finest are trolling the aisles for a new set of wheels and they’ve decided to take the Dodge Charger for a test drive. The NYPD has agreed to buy 15 Chargers for a pilot program this summer, five models with V6 engines and 10 featuring Chrysler’s HEMI V8.

We reported awhile back that the Michigan State Police had tested many potential police cruisers and the results put the V8 Charger at the top in acceleration and fastest lap times. Apparently the NYPD were impressed and if the pilot program goes well, it could replace the city’s entire fleet of 3,000 Crown Vics and Impalas with Chargers.