The New York Times reports that Mayor Bill de Blasio has signed off an initiative to perform a diversity review of the staff, board members, and patrons of city-financed cultural institutions in New York City, ranging from the Whitney Museum to the Public Theater.

As you approach the entrance to the church property, eerie noises waft out of its windows. At first, you might think what you're hearing is the native noise of the parsonage house itself—built in 1853, it sits, paint chipping and distressed, adjacent to an overgrown graveyard—but as you get closer, you realize the sound is coming from inside the building. It is the unsettling, sweeping theme from the film Psycho, played on loop.

As we told you last month, major media company Vice (whose average salary is allegedly $70,000 a year), will be displacing several beloved institutions in the South Williamsburg area in order to build out its own 75,000-square foot new office space. The first to close, on November 22nd, is DIY music venue Death By Audio.

Making fun of going to art school as a futile and self-indulgent formula for regret is like... even more cliched than making fun of law school. Unfortunately, the latest economic data confirms that everyone must continue with this trite (and, frankly, unfunny) form of mockery until the situation on the ground changes.

A group of protesters staged an "Orgy of the Rich" at Sotheby's auction house last night. To protest the British government cutting funds to arts programs, the sexy hooligans pulled a fire alarm and started moaning during the auction of a Warhol, unfurling a scarlet banner labeled "ORGY OF THE RICH," thereby disproving everything I learned by watching Eyes Wide Shut on Netflix last week. After the orgiastic poors were removed from the premises, everyone applauded and the auction began anew. The Warhol canvas sold for $5.09 million. [AnimalNY, NYT]

[An 11-foot-tall Jeff Koons' "Balloon Flower" sculpture is on display in front of Christie's in New York. It is expected to sell for around $12 million at auction in November. We should all become artists. Image via AP]

So about 50,000 artsy-lefty, sexed-up, chanting, New Aged nutsos got together in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to do all sorts non-traditional spiritual stuff, and the Lord took notice. He (She? It?) smote 'em Old School with a massive sandstorm yesterday that sent many of the occultists running for shelter before they could close the festivities with the traditional burning of some man.

As we told you Monday, one sad editrix of celebrity gossip sheet thinks her profession is living on borrowed time. It's one big void out there, the canvas is blank, there is no news. And it's not just low culture. The zeitgeist at large seems to be suffering from tired blood (maybe too much vital energy spent looking at mobile porn?). Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke was the most noteworthy book to be published so far this year, and it argued that World War II wasn't worth fighting. World War II. That's not even counterintuitive in a fun Slate-y kind of way. As for the election, we're in a massive lull until at least Labor Day, barring Israel's surgical strike on Natanz, which happened yesterday while you were updating your Tumblr page. The arts? The worst film of the year, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, is (tellingly) about about an epidemic that causes inanition followed by suicide. The Jewish Museum's exhibiting action painting at a time of supreme lassitude. Elsewhere the herd of independent minds has taken a collective nap: the red siren that blares in Matt Drudge's head has been as silent as the one in James Wolcott's. So what's going on?

Electronic Arts is learning to ask questions like "What is your sex song?" and "Hottie" requests. That's right, the videogames giant is leaping into the world of Facebook applications. Former EA Los Angeles general manager Neil Young is in charge of a "stealth division" believed to be EA Blueprint, which will develop and publish games to social networks. At least someone who knows what they're doing will be making games for the network. But if these rumors pan out, this at least sheds a bit more light on the threatened shutdown of Scrabulous.

Last night was the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave gala in... Manhattan. Yeah, no. we know. But I guess there aren't any spaces in Brooklyn that are nice. So instead, it was at 7 World Trade Center on some really high floor. Below, Ground Zero looked like a little deserted Erector Set. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Saarsgard were supposed to be there. But they had some other benefit to attend. John Turturro was supposed to be there too but wasn't. You know who was? Lou Reed. And you want to know something else? Turns out he's not a nice guy! Nikola Tamindzic was our witness.