Gabe Liedman (Big Terrific) and Jenny Slate (Saturday Night Live) will serve as your MCs, entertaining during commercials with their hilarious analysis. Meanwhile, WitStream will run it’s LIVE feed of clever asides and scathing Oscar commentary from over 200 of the nation’s funniest comedians and writers PLUS we’ll have ballots and prizes for those who wish to predict the evening’s big winners.

The Brooklyn Paper: The controversial designation sets into motion a half-billion-dollar, decade-long federally overseen clean-up of the polluted waterway, which cuts a sclerotic artery through the gentrifying heart of Brownstone Brooklyn. But it also raises questions about whether developers, who currently yearn to build residential housing in the canal zone, will ever exhibit quite the same ardor now that the area has been deemed one of the most polluted places in the country.

“This site has a very long legacy of toxic pollution that plagues this urban waterway,” said Judith Enck, the EPA’s regional director. “And because of that, the EPA is saying it is adding the Gowanus Canal to the federal Superfund list. We believe it will get us the most efficient and comprehensive cleanup of this waterway.”

Enck started her statement by declaring that taxpayers should rest easy that the feds went with a Superfund designation, which sets into motion a process of getting restitution from responsible polluters.

“The goal of Superfund is to ensure that polluters pay for cleanup, not the taxpayer,” she said.

As the first Wednesday of the month approaches, so does another monthly Cobble Hill Association Happy Hour. Stop by Watty & Meg (corner of Court and Kane Streets) this Wednesday from 6-9pm, where there will be reserved tables and drink specials, including $5 glasses of wine and $3 beers.

Photo, the New York Times.

Mile End (97A Hoyt Street) will begin selling bagels from St-Viateur Bagel bakery in Montreal this Saturday. The bagels have been served since Mile End opened, but now they’ll be fresh out of the oven- driven down from Montreal on Friday night by two of the owner’s friends. Previously, the bagels were delivered via FedEx, and were missing some of  “that gooey awesomeness that Montreal bagels can have when they’re super-fresh,” says owner Noah Bernamoff. The bagel imports will cost $2.50 for one, $12 for a half-dozen and $22 for a dozen. They’ll probably go as quickly as the smoked meat, so your best bet is to pre-order them here. I’ll be picking up an order of half sesame, half poppyseed myself, if the snow doesn’t stop me (honestly, I can’t imagine a bagel being more delicious than one from Avenue N in Mill Basin). The New York Times put up the Montreal Bagels against New York’s very own – check it out here.

There was a large turnout for Jeff Garlin’s reading from his new book, My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World, last night at BookCourt. Local writer Jonathan Ames introduced him, recounting a story of their time at a Russian bath. There’s no greater way to appreciate Garlin’s new book than to hear him read from it himself, so it was truly a treat. After interrupting his reading to take a phone call from Richard Kind (he put him on speaker phone to talk to the audience – picture after the jump), Garlin welcomed any and all questions from the audience. He said there’s a 61% chance that there will be an eighth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm- as long as Larry David comes up with enough material he finds humorous enough to pursue. Fingers crossed!

Photo, Pardon Me For Asking.

PMFA reports that Il Cuntuccio brick oven pizza will be opening at 478 Smith Street, on the corner of 9th Street. The location was formerly home to an Uncle Louie G’s.

NY Post: The problem is Whole Foods is still trying to salvage the store-part of the project by finding development partners, although Bogdaski said the chain “is still committed” to building the supermarket.

He said in the coming weeks contaminated soil and three leaky underground storage tanks containing benzene and other cancer-causing substances would be removed and trucked away.

The cleanup of the site was originally supposed to be done in conjunction with construction of a new store. Instead, Bogdaski said the site would be covered with two feet of clean fill in preparation for potential development.

Photos from Lost City & Brownstoner.

In case you were curious, Norah Jones now has three windows on the side of her townhouse on Amity Street. Four more to go to make the seven (reduced from her original request for ten).

PopCrunch: Tattling tipters claim producers dumped the couple after refusing to do any more business with the overbearing Simon, who flew into full Bitch Mode when Bravo slammed the entire cast with a hefty reduction in pay. In addition, the network was concerned by the fact that the couple never quite seemed to resonate with viewers.

Photo, New York Times.

I haven’t made it there myself, but the new Blue Marble at 196 Court Street has gained the attention of the New York Times’ Florence Fabricant, both here and here. The price is right ($3.89 for a regular serving, $2.90 for a mini), and the pictures look scrumptious.

Creamy, crenelated pinnacles in bright vanilla, deep chocolate or a swirl of both, are lower in butterfat than the shop’s regular ice cream (10 percent compared to 16 percent), so they can be churned out of the machine. The ice cream is eggless but has some organic soy lecithin as a stabilizer. Chocolate nibs from Nunu in Brooklyn are an optional topping.

Photo, The Daily News.

The Daily News has a piece on couples who work together, featuring The Grocery’s Sharon Pachter and Charles Kiely. The two are owners and chefs at the restaurant, and live around the corner. Could you spend all day and night working with your partner? Could you spend that much time with your partner, period?

“People look at the way we work and can’t believe that for 10 years we’ve spent all days and nights together,” she adds. “One of the secrets – we take turns giving in.”

Photo, Metromix.

Metromix recently visited NYC bars (two in the West Village, two in Carroll Gardens) to ask patrons and bartenders about the singles/hookup scene. The bars chosen in Carroll Gardens were Brooklyn Social and Boat (pictured above). What did the survey reveal? Not much. Single people go to bars, people who’ve met in bars get married, and some people who get married shouldn’t be doing so. Check it out for yourself here (flip through the pictures to read the story).

The F train will completely shut down for at least seven different weekends this year in large stretches of trendy Brooklyn, between Jay Street-Borough Hall and Church Avenue. As happened for six weekends last year, commuters will be forced to cram into slow-moving shuttles that will cross Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Park Slope during those time periods. Even yoga instructors are rattled! “People are going to totally freak out,” yoga guru Laura Stryjewski told the Post. “Taking the shuttle is a royal pain.”

The tiniest of the three locations of the mini-ice cream chain, Blue Marble, will open on Court Street in Cobble Hill on Sunday, and while it will sell Jennie Dundas and Alexis Miesen’s deliciously sinful ice cream made from the organic milk of grass-fed cows, this time, custard-style cones are part of the mix.

“Soft serve has such a bad reputation,” Dundas said the other day at her Atlantic Avenue flagship. “We’re going to restore it to its rightful place.”

Huffington Post.

If you weren’t able to make it to the Brooklyn Taco Experiment at the Bell House this past weekend, check out the HuffPo’s photos and coverage. Sounds like it was a delicious and carnivore-heavy event. Mark your calendars tentatively for April for the next Experiment event.

The above photo was sent in by a tipster, who reports:

Verizon was all over Court Street during Saturday’s frigid weather, installing cable underneath the streets to allow for FIOS. According to the techs, FIOS should be available to parts of Cobble Hill in about six months. Adios, Time Warner!

Will you make the switch? I’m not sure how this will work for those of us with landlords, because I’m under the impression that it will require a lot of new wiring in and around buildings. Thoughts?

Stop by the Cobble Hill Association’s second Happy Hour of the year tonight, happening the first Wednesday of every month from 6-9 pm at Watty & Meg (corner of Court and Kane Streets). There will be reserved tables and drink specials, including $5 glasses of wine and $3 beers.

NY Times.

Check out the New York Time’s piece on Tom, the “Concierge of Court Street,” and a neighborhood fixture. Unbeknownst to me, Tom wasn’t homeless. Care to share any memories or stories?

Tom was the guy who held the door as you walked in and out of the Super Deli, outside of which he was a daily fixture, on Court Street between Baltic and Kane Streets in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. He was the guy who offered to carry your shopping bags, or simply offered a bit of conversation. Tips were welcomed but not required.

“Tom was genuinely friendly, even to people who never gave him money,” recalled Ursula Alexander, who lives nearby. “He was good-natured, one of those people in the city who have a big impact, even though we never get to know them.”

So when word spread on Court Street that Tom died last month, he was honored with a sidewalk memorial of posters, flowers and photographs. It was stomach cancer, somebody heard. How old was he? Somewhere around 50, it seemed. Supposedly he lived with his mother in nearby public housing projects: Wyckoff Gardens, was it? Or maybe Gowanus Houses. And what was his last name, again?

Check out the Brooklyn Taco Experiment at the Bell House (149 Seventh Street) this Sunday, from 1-5 pm. Taco chefs will create tacos that range from savory to sweet, and a culinary judging panel along with the audience will choose their favorites for prizes. Want to enter? Fill out the form here.

Photo from the New York Times.

Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge” opened on Broadway this week, and the New York Times has a review of the play starring Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber. The story focuses on an Italian American family in 1950s Red Hook, made up of a longshoreman and his immigrant relatives.