• Precocious literary talent (or at least precocious offspring of literary talent) Nick McDonell reads from his new book at the Half King tonight. Oh, to have parents in high places. [Half King]
• Punky biopic We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen opened on Friday, but Flavorpill has dubbed today Minuteman Monday. Whatever — utter disregard for dates is totes punk. [flavorpill]
• For all eleven sports fans out there, the U.S. Open starts today. New blue courts, same names we can't pronounce, more short skirts than you can shake your meat stick at. [USO]

In this edition: Angelina Jolie does Ralph Fiennes and Robert DeNiro (in that order), Leonardo DiCaprio and Lukas Haas, Rosie O'Donnell, Holly Hunter and Gordon MacDonald, Gwen Stefani, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, Mary Louise Parker and son, Phylicia Rashad, Usher, Jay-Z, Damon Wayans, Drew Barrymore and Fabrizio Moretti, Uma Thurman, Kip Pardue, Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel, Alan Cumming, Jeff Goldblum, Gabriel Byrne, Julie Delpy, Lauren Bacall, Gaby Hoffman, Dean Cain, Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon, Michael Showalter, Morgan Spurlock and Lauren Bush.

You know we're completely in favor of anything that suggests NYC IS EDGY. But we'd argue things have gone too far when shopping for ironic t-shirts becomes a potentially fatal extreme sport. A tipster reports:

We were misinformed. The couple who couldn't wait to get home to commence their canoodling and instead availed themselves of an old mattress conveniently left on the sidewalk did not, it turns out, brazenly boff in Prospect Heights, as we reported, but rather did so in Park Slope. (We'd assumed this sort of behavior stayed on the wrong side of Flatbush.) This news comes from the photographer himself, who wrote in with more information:

We often lament the existence of August, a month that seems devoid of anything besides humidity, stench, and boredom. Recent weeks, however, have had at least a modicum of action:

This morning we commented that we love New York. But then this email was forwarded to us, and now we love it even more. This is, to the best of our knowledge, for real, and it happened earlier this week in Prospect Heights.

• What would happen if an epidemic of organ failures resulted in the frentic harvesting of human organs, collected by brutal genetic repo men? Check out REPO! The Genetic Opera tonight at Wings Theatre to find out. Marijuana pretty much seems to be a requisite. [flavorpill]
• Postmodern venue selection reaches its zenith (or nadir, depending on your perspective), when Sam Lipsyte reads from his new novel, Homeland, at a laundromat on Avenue C as part of the Howl! Festival. [Paper]
• Tickets for September 23-25's New Yorker Festival go on sale today. Jhumpa Lahiri or Michael Chabon on Friday night? Malcolm Gladwell's meditation on America's obesession with precociousness, or John Updike's interview with David Remnick, on Saturday? Oh, the choices of a culture snob! [NYer]

Spotted by a tipster on the streets near Penn Station:

We're typically like Uncle Leo, ready and even eager to find anti-Semitism anywhere. But, still, we just can't get ourselves worked up about a scoop in this morning's Post, that Bronx Democratic chief Jose Rivera charged that Assembly speaker Shelly Silver made a deal with Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz because "blood [was] taking care of blood." See, Rivera meant that as a compliment. "I learn from 'em," Rivera also said. "God bless 'em, you know what I mean. What's good for them is good for me and my people."

• We knew LES stand-by Tonic was sacrificed in the name of condominium development. What we didn't know, however, was that the complex was going to be big, blue, and from planet fugly. [Curbed]
• Beware the Fire Island Shake & Bake. And no, it doesn't involve getting stoned in the Meat Rack. [Datalounge]
• You, too, can create a media tizzy about a non-existent meth problem — now in your hometown! [Meth Mouth]
• So when, exactly, will all these money men vacate Midtown? [NYT]
• The CorcoDevil eyes reality television. And Mark Burnett wept. [NYO]

• Behold the slow but obvious growth of Tara Reid's deformed nipples, and the breasts to which they're attached. [CityRag]
• If there's one thing you certainly don't want to miss, it's something called Chinatown Fear Factor. We bet it involves eating rotting fish guts. [ToTC]
• Time to get your indie panties in a bunch: The unofficial and totally tentative CMJ 2005 lineup. [Brooklyn Vegan]
• We love taggers who also drive their daddy's Range Rover. Priceless. [Miss Representation]
• Corporate (yet delicious) coffee takes its toll, as Chelsea's Big Cup will close its doors. [NYC Stories]
• As any anorexic knows, everybody's going to die someday. [OiNY]

• Bellis Stalkerfest2k5, Round IV: The man that just won't quit appears at lit bar Half King tonight to read from some book he wrote. Dude hasn't published a book in seven years, but he sure knows how to make up for lost time. [Half King]
• The irrascible buggers at Billionaires for Bush throw another fund-raising fete at Frying Pan tonight. Wear your sharpest, most ironic three-piece suit or string of faux pearls. [flavorpill]
• Duude, did you hear that Dazed and Confused is, like, playing for free at the Hudson River Park tonight? Nooo way! Party at the Moontower to follow. [Hudson River Park]

• The MTA hooks military hardware wizards Lockheed Martin for a three-year, $212 million contract to pull a subway security and communications system out of its cauldron. Interestingly enough, the system would allow for cellphone usage in underground stations. Awesome, just another damn place people can hunt you down. [NYT]
• R. Kelly joins the lineup at the MTV Video Music Awards, leaving us all excited for a 6-hour performance of In the Closet. Perhaps a few lucky souls in the audience will get even get peed on. [AP]
• We doubt Radar actually ponied up cash for information regarding Tom Cruise, so you've got to wonder what's up with their budget sticker advertising scheme. [Adrants]
• Just when we were floating along our Martha Stewart love train, word comes that she'll be letting her daughter Alexis in on the Apprentice act. Reality television nepotism is so gauche, really. [Zap2it]

• Bret Easton Ellis continues his "Lunar Park" press junket at Coliseum Books tonight, which, given the subject matter, is also a press junket for himself. We're sure some of you have gone to every damn Bellis reading we've listed, so keep up the stalking. [Coliseum]
• The legendary Kurtis Blow plays a free show at Queensbridge Partk tonight. Finally, a rap show you can leave the Kevlar vest at home for. [Upcoming]
• The Howl! Festival continues its dominance of every venue in Lower Manhattan with the Big Jewish Quiz Thing tonight at the 14th Street Y, in which a bunch of Jews (including a certain Gawkeleh) compete in a test of knowledge on all things Semitic. In keeping with non-Gentile trend, the show costs a mere $5. [Howl]

Admittedly, we're loving the mash-ups internerds have been cranking out since Google Maps released some of its code. The latest time-waster to capture our fickle hearts is an extremely handy Google mapping tool for internet popularity contest HotOrNot. By entering your zipcode and your sexual preferences, the program can give you a handy map of available "hotties" in your preferred neighborhood. You might not like who turns up, but keep in mind that your search results are only going to turn up the sorts who would put their picture up for mass judgment on something like HotOrNot. But whatever: If you're seriously using this thing, you can't afford to be choosy.

This week's New York reports that East Village patron princess Rosario Dawson is leaving New York in favor of the West Coast, where the actress will live with remarkably hunky boyfriend Jason Lewis and their overgrown dogs. Given her lead role in Christopher Columbus' adaptation of Rent, Dawson's departure is at a particularly intense time:

• Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have reached the summit of Heartbreak Mountain, having finally settled their divorce. As of October 2, Pitt will thus be free to have even more insanely sexual sex with Angelina Jolie, perhaps in a church of some sort. [Reuters]
• Designer Marc Ecko wins his case against NYC and is now free to have graffiti parties whenever he damn well pleases. [Wooster Collective]
• There's something special about the Sunday Times in August: The complete lack of news. [The Media Mob]
• Oh, if only we had the time to write a line-by-line rebuttal to the Times' Alexandra Bandon and her foray into the renter's inferno. [Property Grunt]
• Put your hard-earned cash right back in the man's pockets at the best corporate cafeterias. [Cakehead]
• London taxis make their way to NYC; the novelty ride costs the same as a regular cab and is presumably less dorky than a pedicab. [Witz]
• Wal-Mart preys on our city's weak, goes for Staten Island. [NYT]

• Gothamist's Moveable Hype 4.0 at Knitting Factory: In which Doveman, Raising the Fawn, Bravo Silva, and Langhorne Slim perform (with special, Gawky guests DJ Tanner and DJ Edgar Hoover between sets) for the indie blogging set, who promptly return to their apartments and write up the night's events upon show's completion. [flavorpill]
• Jaws — the movie that scared millions of beachgoers out of the ocean 25 years before Time — plays at Bryant Park tonight, 5:00pm. [Bryant Park]
• Celebrate the birthday of Dorothy Parker in all her sardonic glory at (obviously) the Algonquin Hotel, over drinks and reduced admission to "The Talk of the Town." [DPNYC]

Sightings are sent in by readers, most of whom take mushrooms as a daily "vitamin." Send your celebrity hallucinations to tips@gawker.com.

You, mass transit-using denizens of New York, have a choice to make. You can either: