He remained on the couch for another hour or so, his half-erect penis cupped in his left hand. He heard the muezzin's incantations, "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar" (God is Great! God is Great!), calling the faithful to the first of their five daily worships to the Creator. He gently rubbed his penis and listened:

Jennifer Dworkin's prize-winning documentary is an honest and touching portrayal of three generations of a family that, to be sadly blunt, live in a place two steps beyond redemption.

A surreal, depressing look into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, told from a militant, overly intellectualized Palestinian perspective using wildly sardonic humor, brutally honest irony within a disjointed plot that at times is somewhat maddening but always surprising.

It is rare that two novels come out about the same place and time, this being Spanish Harlem. It is also next to impossible that two authors can create two books evoking the same angels and demons while creating two distinctly different main characters.

Todd Solondz's fourth film, Palindromes, is a success. Well, it is a success in that I left the theater feeling sick and hating everything. But, since this film takes place in a world where all humans are weak, awful creatures incapable of growth or change, I can only assume that nauseating the audience was among the director's stated objectives. So, good job, Mr. Solondz!

Jonathan Safran Foer's new novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, tells the story of a boy's struggle to cope with the death of his father, who was killed in the September 11th attacks. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Surprisingly, much of the book is fun. Because of the book's idiosyncratic, imaginative, outspoken narrator and protagonist, 9-year-old Oskar Schell, the book culminates in a fun, funny, tragic, moving, and often beautiful experience.

"I had come to Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, on my own Columbus-like journey of exploration." So writes Thomas Friedman on the second page of his latest release The World Is Flat, and from there expands a lighthearted comparative device into the basis for a weighty treatment of the present and future of the globalizing economy. "Columbus accidentally ran into America but thought he had discovered part of India. I actually found India and thought many of the people I met there were Americans ... Columbus reported to his king and queen that the world was round, and he went down in history as the man who first made this discovery. I returned home and shared my discovery only with my wife ... 'I think the world is flat.' "

Frank Gonzales, otherwise known as"Frankie G.," heats up a seat at the House of Tribes Theatre, a small black box on the Lower East Side of New York City. With a quiet confidence and intense gaze that could melt Alaska, he sits inside the red theatre seat in a black jumpsuit and sneakers, donning a chiseled jaw, gracious humility, and the smoldering eyes of a rising star.

Backwoods Broadsides' editor, publisher and sole source of funding, Sylvester Pollet is officially part of the micropublishing set. Poet Ron Silliman describes micropublishing as "any book or journal done in such a fashion as to preclude bookstore distribution, even via Small Press Distribution" and goes on to say that it [micropublishing] is one of the very best things about poetry.

Coyote trots across my soul

dangling my illusions from her jaws

like a newborn lamb

Formally and conceptually, Eli Kince's multimedia installation (which includes "Fruits of Labor", 1994) is both engaging and introspective with his exploration of regeneration from the sprits and narratives of slaves.

As far as I have seen it, New Yorkers have several hobbies, like european art, that you can actually see at the ICP or in the NYC library, make fun of French society and of course speaking about psychoanalysis (their own analysis preferably). For this reason, Kader Attia, a young french artist should please the New Yorkers.

Less than a week since I arrived in New York, and I have the impression that, if the city has changed, its inhabitants haven't since John Dos Passos descriptions in Manhattan Transfer.

One of the symptoms of being an Emotional Idiot is that I want all my ex-boyfriends to pine for me long after I have left them. Even if I was completely sick of them by the time we broke up, still, I expect them to never find a substitute for ME. I know this is grandiose but so what.

Rio de Janeiro swarms with the noiseof meat cutters, mariachis, and mothers calling their children away from overflowing fire hydrants -- the water's too cold, hurts the mothers' skin to see it on their children. Over the borders, oil and drugs and revolution float in the air like the souls of dead dogs. Up the Amazon, the ghost of Elizabeth Bishop smells coffee

Caution dictates further murder Revenge will make things right

As the exhibition continues up the ramps, it gradually moves backwards in time. Tucked away in a back room on the first ramp are other works of laser art created between 1997 and 2000, entitled Three Elements. Projected through spinning prisms in large mirror-backed geometric structures, the lasers ricochet off the side panels. The darkness of the room accentuates the concentrated color in the beams.