​Nicholas Brooks, who the New York Post keeps reminding us is a hard-partying stoner and the "son of accused serial-raping Oscar-winning composer Joe Brooks" whenever they mention his name (why not also mention "questionable facial hair"?), has been indicted in the death of his ex-girlfriend, swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay, who reportedly broke up with him a day before she was found dead in a bathtub at the Soho House.

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via Apartment Therapy

​Among all the outrageous holiday things we do, whether we're rich or poor or simply middle-class, there is the outrageousness of paying someone else to do it for you. We're all a little bit guilty of this, most likely -- store gift-wrapping? Buying the pies instead of making them? -- but some people do it A LOT. The New York Times talks to some of the magical interior design elves who make the holidays happen for rich people, who, unsurprisingly, outsource everything from tinsel to "atmosphere" to family traditions. With multiple homes, it's very hard to decorate for yourself. And, really, why should you?

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​• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been granted bail in London after the courts rejected Swedish prosecutors' appeal. He'll stay at the 10-bedroom Suffolk mansion (on a 650-acre estate) of his friend Vaughn Smith, who founded the Frontline journalists' club. [CNN, NYT]

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​Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.

Three Godawful Coloring Books

The coloring book industry now profits thousands of dollars per year and stands as the most reliable method for transmitting sketches from bar napkins and slush piles directly into the hands of America's children. Nowhere in publishing are the expectations more agreeably low.

How else to explain this thing to the right? In the name of drawing Iron Man or somebody, the talents behind The Avengers Coloring & Activity Book instead invite kids to dedicate themselves to the memorialization of Lionel Richie's face -- an artistic task we all know is best left to sculptors.
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​The NYPD is asking for the public's help locating the suspect in the police sketch, who's wanted in connection with three sex assaults in the same neighborhood of East Flatbush, Brooklyn. He's described as a black male in his late 20s, approximately 5'9" to 5'11" with a medium build, medium to dark skin tone, and short black hair. He has sexually assaulted three women, raping two of them, in April, May, and most recently December 10, after following them home to locations near the intersection of Flatbush and Bedford Avenues. If you have any information, call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). All calls are strictly confidential.

​Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives.
July 1, 1971, Vol. XVI, No. 26

Fillmore, Summer of '71: Graduation Day
By Don Heckman

So it turned out to be with a whimper, after all. Expecting fireworks at the Absolutely Last Final Fillmore East performance on Sunday night, we experienced, instead, a strangely down drifting-off into nothingness. The week's hot rumors about superstar appearances and dynamite jams finally were dispelled around 2:30 a.m., when the Allman Brothers Band went on stage for the epitaph Fillmore set. The Beach Boys had been there, and Edgar Winter's White Trash, Mountain, Country Joe, Albert King, and the J. Geils Band. But McCartney and Lennon never made their predicted surprise appearance on stage; if Dylan was there only Al Aronowitz knew about it, and the rumors of Jagger's imminent arrival were too much to believe, in front.

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​The U.S. House of Representatives today voted 250 to 175 (almost straight down party lines) to repeal the ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers in the U.S. military. This is the second time a repeal has been approved by the House. Previously it was repealed in connection with a defense spending bill, which stalled in the Senate a week ago.

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​Dress code? We haven't had a dress code since we quit Brownies. But some people do. Some people have to wear, for instance, those leg-compressing torture chambers known as pantyhose, or businessperson skirt and jacket or pants suits that never really smell fresh after the first wear, despite dry-cleaning. These people likely work at banks like UBS, which, via the Wall Street Journal, is sending a 43-page memo to its Swiss banking staff on how to dress to impress.

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​Bing Crosby didn't know it, but when he took off for Paris on October 12, 1960, he left us all with a wonderful Christmas present. Bing was part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates and fearful that his National League champions were no match for the Mickey Mantle-Roger Maris-Whitey Ford Yankees. So he left the country before the seventh game of the World Series, but not without arranging to have the game kinescoped from the television broadcast.

Nearly 50 years later, the film was discovered in Crosby's wine cellar, alongside copies of his movies and TV specials. Tonight you can step back in time as the MLB Network broadcasts the game at 8:00 pm ET. Bob Costas hosts the program, recorded on November 13 at the historic Byham Theater in Pittsburgh, with a panel that includes former Pirate Dick Groat and Yankee Bobby Richardson.

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via All Movie Photo

​With the announcement of the upcoming Brooklyn movie theatre, we thought it best to try and help a burgeoning local business out. The six-screen cineplex will hopefully become an essential part of the neighborhood. So in honor of the scheduled completion of the new multiplex next fall, here are six movies we're pretty sure "Average Williamsburg Residents" wouldn't mind watching on the big screen all year round.

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Celebrities, getting hacked just like us! Unless Lindsay Lohan is tweeting out 50% discounts these days while in rehab at Betty Ford. But, it could be worse...like, acai berry worse. Lindsay -- use this widget to see if your Gawker password was hacked!

​The last legit-seeming Lindsay Lohan tweet was at 3 a.m. on November 26, when she may have still been out of rehab (where she's not supposed to be tweeting) for Thanksgiving.

Via NYC Nomad on Facebook

​The NYC Nomad, who was totally at our Web Awards last week, is starting to achieve a certain Internet fame, as evidenced by a recent piece on him in the New York Times. Ed Casabian, the nomad's real name, is a financial analyst for Outside.in during the day who goes home from work to a new house every week. He's lived in three boroughs -- all except Staten Island and the Bronx, though visits are planned -- and doesn't think he'll end his journey any time soon. "The goal is a year," he told us. "That could be defined by 52 weeks (which would end in May)."

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​Cops have identified the four bodies found on Oak Beach, Long Island, as women, and the FBI has been called in to help with the investigation, reports the New York Post. It's suspected that a serial killer may have dumped the bodies along Ocean Parkway after meeting prostitutes on Craigslist, luring them to the area, and murdering them. Police currently believe there are no more bodies in the area.

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via NY Post

​Williamsburg is getting a multi-screen, multi-level, mainstream movie theater of its own, planned for a currently vacant lot at Driggs and Grand. According to the New York Post, developer Blue Zees Real Estate will spend $9.3 million on the 850-seat multiplex in a neighborhood that's lacked "a movie house screening blockbuster films" since 2002.

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​If you've been reading the Daily News's Juan Gonzalez , the arrest this morning of a quartet of computer scamsters accused of ripping off a city payroll and time-keeping system for $80 million shouldn't be a big shock.

Gonzalez has been banging away at the city's hugely inflated "CityTime" project for months, naming names and citing cost overruns. The idea behind this project was to make paying workers and keeping track of their hours easier. It was originally supposed to cost $63 million; the clock now stands at $628 million and "only 35 percent of the intended user population was using the CityTime system as of June 2010," as Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and city investigations commissioner Rose Gill Hearn stated in a press release this morning.

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​A rash of pit bull attacks on both dogs and humans at Tompkins Square Park has forced some East Village dog owners to take matters into their own hands, carrying "knives and other weapons" when they visit the dog run now, reports DNA Info. "Other weapons" include a varied assortment of possible counterattack tools in dog-human warfare, including metal rods, knives, hammers, and even a billy club.

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Discarded appliances -- you know, the old or broken ones you leave on the curb because you don't want them anymore -- are vanishing throughout the city. But fear not! The New York Times (and the city's Department of Sanitation) are on the case.
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#4 Bed Bugs

​Mark Zuckerberg may have been chosen "Person of the Year," by Time, but we all know that there are certain more important things in life than people, especially people we don't even know. Thus, we would like to present Runnin' Scared's "Top 10 Things of the Year." This was a difficult choice, as there were many worthy contenders:

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​The indictment of state senator Pedro Espada Jr. and his son yesterday on federal embezzlement and conspiracy charges makes a pretty good guide for how to pick a nonprofit pocket:

-For starters there's creative Amex card use: Espada's own lousy credit rating made him ineligible for the Don't-Leave-Home-Without-It club. No problem: Have your publicly funded health clinic's financial officer agree to serve as personal guarantor.

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via Facebook

​• Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old Facebook founder, is Time's person of the year, beating out crowd favorite WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange (who's still currently in jail until Thursday), Hamid Karzai, the Chilean miners, and even the entire Tea Party!

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