• Artist John Currin is credited with redefining the portrait tradition in the postmodern era. Go and ask him what, exactly, that's supposed to mean, tonight at the New School. [flavorpill]
•The good folks with ADHD bring you another installment of Ritalin Readings tonight at Mo Pitkins. If you've not yet attended, do try to experience the joy of readings limited to 5 minutes or less. It's the only way it should be, really. [Ritalin Readings]
• Snow Patrol plays tonight at the Bowery Ballroom. Maybe if you listen hard enough, you can figure out what the fuck their name means. [Upcoming]

Beware the Astoria lesbian bar: Manhattan Offender reports that this weekend, Scarlett Johansson's brother was in attendance and kicking some wild game. Specifically, he approached a potential score — bold, given the surroundings — with the following pick-up line: "Hi, I'm Scarlett Johansson's brother." Suave just doesn't cover it.

Spotted on Orchard Street last night. Because sometimes it's just too much work to call your friend's friend to get a new dealer's pager number.

It's time for our daily exercise in bullying celebrities and generally contributing to the decline of the free world, all based on sightings sent in by readers who dream of stealing Julianne Moore's mail. Send yours to tips@gawker.com.

Nothing brings out the drunken college kids like the first vaguely warmer days of spring. (We drunken out-of-college kids drink proudly and consistently, heedless of weather.) So suddenly, here they are. And they're confusing us. To help us understand the folkways of this exotic tribe, we asked Gawker Mascot and amateur anthropologist Andrew Krucoff to don his trusty pith helmet, enlist earnest documentarian Nikola Tamindzic, and head to the remotest depths of the Central Village — the native habitat of this unusual people — to investigate. After the jump, his reports of beer pong, fake IDs, and the dreaded Look of Shame.

• Sin-e hosts the New York Press' Indie Label Jones showcase tonight. Requisite free PBR and bands you've never heard of included. [NYPress]
• There were only two listings on Flavorpill today, and White Rose Movement cancelled their gig at Mercury Lounge — so you're left with homocore DJs, burlesque, and political drag artists at Joe's Pub. Thanks, but the real fags will probably be at home exercising their crushes on Jack Bauer. [flavorpill]
• It's all Daily Show, all the time tonight at the UCB Theater: correspondent Dan Bakkedahl has the 9:30pm spot; shaggy-haired zeitgeist chronicler Demetri Martin follows at 11. [UCB]

[Courtesy of — who else? — Bucky Turco.]

We like the idea of the planet occasionally swallowing a gas-guzzling, ozone-depleting SUV. But doesn't it defeat the whole purpose if mass transit is knocked out as part of the deal?

None of these people cared about Villanova.
Our correspondent notes that yesterday, Sunday, the day of rest, there were nearly 100 people lined up outside of Trader Joe's at 5:20 PM. The store has been open over a week now. Is this sort of sidewalk clogging idiocy really necessary? We're sure the thai lime and chili peanuts are fabulous, but not so much that you need to subject yourselves to Disneyland-esque lines. Besides, this is Manhattan — you're not supposed to be eating in the first place, fatty.

In this TGIF edition of old-skool, text-based, apparently non-celebrity-menacing Gawker Stalker: Anna Wintour, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin eating dinner with Jay Z and Beyonce, La Blohan, Bruce Willis and Petra Nemcova, Robin Williams, Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz, Keanu Reeves, Diddy, Hilary Swank, Shakira, Bridget Moynahan, Jena Malone, Julia Stiles, Mike Myers, Fred Schneider, Joaquin Phoenix, Naomi Campbell, Isabella Rossellini, Cynthia Nixon, Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Woody Allen, Tim Robbins, Alec Baldwin and Nicole Seidel, Kevin Bacon, Rene Russo, Tyra Banks, Jodie Foster, Jennifer Esposito, Lucy Liu, Dan Aykroyd, Larry King, Kevin Klein and Phoebe Cates, Allie McGraw, Ja Rule, Geraldo, Dolly Parton, and the ubiquitous Tony Danza. All the reports — sent in by readers and entirely unverified — are after the jump. And, of course, sightings are always life-threateningly available on Gawker Stalker Maps.

Before we begin today's roundup of the Stalker Maps, a brief admonition: Maps only work when specific coordinates are provided. If you're going to go to all the trouble of making up a celebrity spotting, how difficult is it to make up a full address for where the spotting took place? For future reference, submisssions should include the spottee's name, the specific address (or name, if landmark) of the spotting, and when spotted, both date and time. Help us help you stalk your celebs more efficiently, people.

Friday:
• Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, the former Onion scribes behind the Found Footage Festival, show off their grubby wares at Galapagos Art Space tonight in Williamsburg. As if there is any other locale in which one might showcase video footage culled from dumpsters and thrift stores. [flavorpill]
• Mercy College hosts a seminar on everything you ever wanted to know about Nietzsche but were afraid to ask because you didn t want your prof to know you didn t actually do the reading. We re guessing it s a rather short list. [Paper]

Sightings are sent in by readers with malicious hearts and vivid imaginations. Send your NYC sightings to tips@gawker.com.

• Rap historian Jeff Chang and BET's unimonikered man about town, Toure, talk shop at Housing Works' "An Evening of Hip-Hop." The bookshop even tries to up its street cred by bringing in a DJ for the occasion. [flavorpill]
• Legendary MIT prof and quantum computer designer Seth Lloyd waxes philosophical on mind benders like, "How much information is there in the universe? What information existed at the time of the Big Bang and what happened to it? What would happen if we tried to create our world on a computer?" In other words, a guy with twice your IQ will answer the questions you come up with when you're stoned. [Upcoming]
• Got a little something left in that dimebag? Animal Collective plays Webster Hall tonight. Thanks to the Times, we can now add "bearded" to our already expansive list of hipster concert-attendee descriptors. [Upcoming]

How could you skip a story headlined, "City Unveils Pay Toilets of Tomorrow"? You could not skip it. Nor could we. And, as a public service, we pass along amNew York's picture of a prototype of the toilets to be installed on city streets as part of a billion-dollar contract for various "street furniture" in the city, including new bus shelters, new newsstands, and 20 of these "toilets of tomorrow." Study them; know them; be ready to shit in them.

It's time for our daily exercise in ruining the lives of many a hardworking, earnest publicist: the Satan-sponsored Gawker Stalker Map. Items are posted before readers even have the chance to make the actual sightings — we're that instantaneous, that paranormally dangerous.

• Package Deals, a city-specific multidisciplinary music and film screening series, brings the best Reykjavik, Iceland, has to offer to The Tank in Tribeca tonight. We're sure the complimentary Reyka Vodka will make up for the absence of Sigur Ros. [Package Deals]
• The New Directors/New Films Festival kicks off tonight at MoMA. Check it out and gain the privilege of anointing someone the next Pedro Almodovar before Manohla Dargis gets to 'em. [flavorpill]
• You know you want to listen to Ethan Hawke read Wichita Vortex Sutra over the sounds of Philip Glass. It's all you've ever wanted since you were a young child, in fact. Lucky for you, your dream will be realized tonight at Lincoln Center. [Lincoln Center]

After a few years of letting us have some semblance of tween-free happiness, MTV's president Christina Norman announced today that the 2006 Video Music Awards would return to Manhattan. The shitstorm goes down August 31 at Radio City, a safe distance from the tragic and ill-timed hurricanes of last year's debacle in Miami. Norman praised this year's potential for "insanity," to which Mayor Bloomberg responded:

A coyote was spotted in Central Park Sunday, and sharpshooters with tranquilizer guns have been hunting for him ever since. He was finally caught this morning, as 1010WINS is reporting on the top of its website. This is moderately good news for New Yorkers, who may have been concerned about walking their dogs in the Park while the animal was on the loose. And no doubt it's excellent news for San Antonio Spurs fans, who hope to have him back in time for tonight's halftime show.

Today's Observer publishes a tough investigation into what they identify as the new Affect, a subtle-yet-annoying dialect practiced by city girls of a certain ilk. While we may be so surrounded by the uptalking sounds of these young women as to hardly notice them, linguists identify the Affect by the continual extension of vowels, clipped consonants, and the hoarse whine of Parliaments. The junior linguists at the Observer also posit that there's also another means of identifying the Affected: