“I watched the whole first season on demand,” said Ms. Joy, an attractive 26-year-old actress and student, puffing on a cigarette during a lull in the action. “I really like Jennifer Beals and her relationship—it’s so truthful, the way they fight, all the mixed-up sex stuff. I watch them and I think I had that same scene with my ex-boyfriend. And the sex scenes are really hot.

“And the sex scenes are from such a feminine point of view,” she added. “It’s not hot because it’s a lesbian sex scene, it’s hot because it’s from a female point of view, which is unusual on TV. It’s usually messy and emotional and more intense than normal hetero sex scenes, like in Sex and The City, where its more about being funny about fucking.”

For the next 13 weeks, a small but growing coterie of women will be staying in on Sunday nights to get their weekly fix of lesbian drama. While the series has a loyal following among the city’s lesbians—like Sunday worship, followed by the post–L Word pilgrimage to the East Village bar Starlight for potential pick-ups—more and more straight women are becoming hooked. Call them Sapphosexuals: straight women with a twinge of curiosity, a natural penchant for flirting with their female friends, and a high dose of emotional frustration with the city’s crop of narcissistic metrosexual males who perennially fail the Prince Charming test. Why not date a woman?

Indeed, why not?

“You know, these women with women, they fight, they fuck, they eat, they drink—we all do the same thing, but they seem to have a lot less problems than heterosexual people,” said Carolann Lynch, a 46-year-old Manhattanite who recently resubscribed to Showtime to be ready for the season premiere.

Rather than the predicted audience share—horny straight guys looking for some naked girl-on-girl action (Yeah, baby!)—last season’s ratings skewed heavily toward women ages 18 to 49. Though the statistics are not (for obvious reasons) broken down by sexual preference, it seems that The L Word—with its bus-shelter ads featuring the show’s stars naked and proclaiming “Venus Envy”—has to some degree filled the vacancy left by Sex and the City.

The excited chatter reserved not so long ago for Carrie and Mr. Big has been replaced by heated girlie chats over which L Word lovely is the hottest (Shane, the androgyne hair stylist); who’s a total bitch (Jenny, the straight-turned-gay doe-eyed writer); who they’d like to get to know (Bette, the high-powered museum curator); and, of course, which was the best sex scene. Ms. Beals’ Bette Porter slapping her girlfriend Tina (Laurel Holliman) and then engaging in make-up sex was, confess otherwise men-loving women, hands-down the hottest!

About the show’s straight female demographic, the show’s creator and executive producer, Ilene Chaiken, speaking by phone from her Hollywood Hills home, said: “That pleases me to no end. I’ve heard it statistically, but also from a lot of my straight friends, who talk about the show being as much about women as it is about lesbians. We all like stories that are different from our own. I think people are drawn to know about a culture or lifestyle that’s unfamiliar to them.”

Ms. Chaiken added another reason for the show’s crossover appeal: “I think probably among some women, there’s what is commonly referred to as the ‘bi-curious’ phenomenon. Women are a lot more sexually fluid than men.”

Where Sex and the City played for laughs, discussions of misshapen manhood and pink pubic hair, the L Word ladies ponder whether it’s bad form to go down on a girl on the first date over morning espresso at the Planet. Risqué? Subversive? Maybe for some, but several former Carrie wannabes are lapping it up.

“The L Word is a lot more serious about sex and relationships,” said Ms. Joy. “Sex and the City was more like, ‘Isn’t this ridiculous, all these things we do for men?’”

“I feel the relationships of the characters in The L Word are more believable than the Sex and the City characters,” said Janine, a 27-year-old from Washington Heights. “The consequences of the sexual relationships in The L Word are serious; the consequences of the sexual relationships in Sex and the City are humorous.”

Another draw may be the show’s implicit seal of approval from its cast. How can it be icky if Flashdance siren Jennifer Beals (married with kids) looks like she’s into it? A sneak peak into the lives of lesbians who don’t look like their brother Jim (a pervasive, homophobic stereotype even among many “hip” New Yorkers), the show gives women a chance to reclaim a not-so-uncommon female fantasy that has, until this point, been hijacked and corrupted into (Suburban Dykes et al.) visual Viagra for men.

For some women, The L Word—with its a constant stream of sex in various states of undress among the show’s long-limbed female cast—is pure, high-sheen entertainment, slickly directed with just the right mix of juicy dialogue, an unusually attractive cast, a sunny location, and a subject that most women enjoy unraveling on a regular basis: sex and relationships.

But aside from the entertainment factor, why do many straight women find The L Word so captivating? The show offers a safe, couch-bound entrée into a hitherto alien lifestyle which is only tapped into every so often: Madonna and Britney’s clumsily staged kiss, Mischa Barton’s cutesy girl crush on The O.C., Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon coming out in real life as being in a lesbian relationship. Showtime’s dedication to a long-running, exclusively lesbian drama offers a prime-time pop-culture podium for Lesbian Chic. Thanks to The L Word, being a gay woman isn’t all that bad; in fact, according to the subtext of the show, it’s a sign that you’re an empowered, self-identified woman in a woman’s world. As one fan declared, “I’m such a faux lesbian.”

“These relationships are new to us; seeing gay sex is a new thing,” said Heather, a 29-year-old magazine editor from Brooklyn who became addicted to the show last season. “They’re powerful and intellectual and beautiful women. Whether they’re gay or straight, any show that has women like that is just awesome …. I had a sort of interest in the show because I am, in some way—though I’m a totally straight person—I definitely find women more attractive than men anyway. From the time I was 13, watching a Sprite commercial.

“There are probably a lot of women walking the streets that are like me,” Heather continued. “Had relationships with men, but have always been sort of curious about women. There are also a lot of straight women who probably wonder—not just on a sex level, but on a real level of intimacy—about how they have these amazing relationships with our girlfriends: How amazing would it be if it extended to every level of our love lives?”

But, she added, “I wouldn’t just dally with the other side. All my lesbian friends tell me, there’s nothing worse than the straight girl who thinks that she might like girls.”

“It’s just different from watching a man and a woman,” said Ms. Lynch. “You just see these two women, and it’s so passionate—I don’t think a lot of people realize it can be like that. They always think of lesbians, you know, with pants and short hair.”

“I’m obsessed with it,” said Elizabeth, a 24-year-old woman who works in fashion. “There’s nothing on TV that comes close to beating the sex on The L Word. The actors obviously fake their chemistry really, really well, and you sort of envy them for having such naturally randy relationships. I watched it with a boyfriend, but he thought it was cheesy.”

“For years, we’ve been told women are not turned on by visual stories, but that’s not true,” said Candida Royalle, the creator of women-friendly sex films and the author of How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do. “But,” she added, “not all women are turned on by lesbian scenes. I’m not into watching it, but I’ve been more into doing it.”

“I think women aren’t ashamed of saying they’re turned on by it,” said Diane Peragas, a 34-year-old documentary filmmaker. “A lot of women find the idea of being with a woman erotic on some level.” She added she was under the impression that the publicity for the show has been “very vocal about advertising that most of the actors are actually straight. They’re doing these love scenes, but really they’re straight.”

At this point, only one cast member—Leisha Hailey, who plays Alice, the bisexual journalist—has talked publicly about being gay.

Boi Crush

Set in Los Angeles, The L Word follows a group of thirtysomething lesbians as they navigate their personal and professional lives. In familiar TV terrain, the women all meet at the same coffee shop, share dating and relationship woes, and dress in a fashion-forward, dyke-centric style. (Designer Patricia Field’s attention to detail on Sex and the City is mirrored by The L Word’s weekly array of looks, from Bette’s Armani power suits to Shane’s grunge-punk svelte silhouette and Marc Jacobs aesthetic.) The sun is always shining, L.A. looks hazy and golden (though the show is filmed in Vancouver), and sex is always on one of the women’s agendas—girlfriends are shared, stolen and swapped in a nod to the lesbian community’s incestuous daisy chain.

The female cast is arguably the most attractive on TV.

“It’s television,” explained Ms. Chaiken, who, at a recent media screening of the show, joked: “I know why the Desperate Housewives are desperate—because we’ve got the best-looking cast on TV.”

With guest appearances by Rosanna Arquette, the late Ossie Davis, Arianna Huffington (playing herself), Sandra Bernhard and, coming this season, Melissa Rivers as a lesbian version of herself, the show was recently given the green light for a third season.

Ask any woman, straight or gay, who their favorite L Word character is, and without missing a beat one name pops out: Shane.

“I immediately developed a crush on Shane,” said Heather. “She’s the bad girl. I like her style, her attitude—I like that she cuts hair. She’s cool and punk rock. She’s like the kind of woman I would dream of seducing me.”

Played by Gwyneth Paltrow’s cousin Katherine Moennig, Shane is a skinny-hipped, boyish hair stylist whose motto—“Sex with no emotional entanglements”—provides the show much of its X-rated content. (And Ms. Moennig’s vagueness about her own sexuality takes up an inordinate amount of space on fan message boards.) In the Season 2 premiere, Shane, after styling Arianna Huffington’s coiff, slunk off to a TV sound studio with Carmen, played by former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Sarah Shahi. The Shane character is reputedly modeled on Sally Hershberger, the New York celebrity hair stylist. (During a recent Fashion Week party to celebrate the launch of Ms. Hershberger’s Shagg collection of denim and T-shirts, held at her meatpacking district salon, a constant stream of cooing middle-aged women approached her with googly-eyed flirtations. “I would follow her to the end of the world,” said one blond-streaked woman from Connecticut.)

Each episode, Shane is seen lip-locked with a procession of women. Last season, she attracted the attention of a wealthy Hollywood wife played by Rosanna Arquette. Of course, it ended in tears—but not without explicit love scenes. A rarely seen study in the sexually empowered lesbian, Shane’s ability to get any woman she wants was a major turn-on for several fans.

“Shane’s like the poetic-asshole guy,” said Ms. Joy. “I think she reminds a lot of women of their bad boyfriend.”

“I like the skinny butch girl, because she’s nuts,” said Alisha Silvera, a 35-year-old single mom from Brooklyn. “She’s just so messy with her girls.”

“Shane’s like Samantha, in a way,” said Ms. Lynch, referring to the Sex and the City character played by Kim Cattrall. “Samantha’s with this one and that one, and she’s like, ‘Awww, if they don’t like it, fuck ’em.’ Shane kind of has that attitude, too, but she’s also very caring and sensitive about her friends.”

Interestingly, the character who arouses the most dislike in viewers, gay or straight, is Jenny, a straight woman who moves in with her husband, Tim, then meets the lesbians next-door. Jenny is played by Mia Kirshner, who made a name for herself at age 19 by playing a stripper in the art-house flick Exotica and then kept the pot boiling with her performance as a nymphomaniac who tries to seduce her brother in the 2001 spoof Not Another Teen Movie.

“I saw two women having sex in the swimming pool,” she whispers to Tim with wide eyes. Of course, curiosity kills the cat, or at least the marriage: After a tense seduction by Italian femme fatale Marina (Karina Lombard), Jenny is caught in the act by Tim. Marriage over; cue Jenny’s sexual self-discovery.

“She’s an idiot, because she handled it so badly. I understand that she wanted to experiment, but they way she handled it was just wrong,” said Ms. Silvera.

“I feel so bad for Jenny,” said Anna. “She’s so confused and doesn’t know what she wants. It’s interesting how she’s portrayed as an indecisive, flaky person and all the other women are really strong.”

“I can’t stand her,” said Ms. Lynch. “She’s always whispering. Always in turmoil. She gives me anxiety. One night, she had a guy and a girl in her room and she was still living in Tim’s apartment. She broke his heart in a million pieces.”

“It’s a true portrayal of the way that often happens,” said the show’s creator, Ms. Chaiken, who confessed to enjoying people’s anger toward Jenny. “But it’s not even exclusively about someone who’s heterosexual and falls in love with a woman. It’s a story about someone who’s in a relationship and thought she was committed, and then falls in love with someone else. It shows how bad some of us behave in that situation.”

Ms. Chaiken was careful to point out that the show wasn’t trying to mythologize lesbian sexuality or to “win converts.”

“I think gay women are just as sexually troubled and/or sexually free as straight women,” she said. “I think there are plenty of straight women who are fabulously sexual and liberated and who approach sex with many degrees of abandon. And there are plenty of gay women who are repressed and troubled by sex. This is a really tricky generalization to make, but I think that gay women overall may be a little more self-determined, because of having had to define ourselves by our own measure.”

The Scene

New York’s own lesbian scene, as tangled as Showtime’s portrayal, has had its fair share of straight interlopers. According to Karen Gilliam, a bartender who has worked at the mixed gay bar Starlight for five years, more unfamiliar faces—sometimes accompanied by a boyfriend or husband—have started walking through the door.

“I think The L Word has given women a lot more confidence to check out the scene,” she said. “I can tell by someone’s body language that they’re new. When women are there with a man, it’s obvious they’re both looking for a woman to share.” (She added that the bar’s door policy has become stricter over the years to keep out lechy guys.) Immediately after Sunday night’s season premiere, there was a line—mostly women—to get in. Inside Starlight, it seemed as if the women were channeling their inner Shane.

Whether The L Word will create a new strain of Shane or Jenny wannabes is hard to say. “I do feel like an outsider peeking in on that community, and it’s interesting in that way,” said Ms. Joy. “I was surprised at how linked the community seemed.”

Amanda Moore, a top model who’s been open about her sexuality, said the show was realistic in its portrayal of lesbian life.

“The New York scene is just as glamorous as The L Word,” said Ms. Moore, who at 25 has graced the cover of Vogue, was the face of Tommy Hilfiger’s “Tommy Boy” campaign and is a runway favorite in Paris and Milan. “There isn’t anyone on the show who I can’t compare to a woman I know—and when it comes to hanging out on the scene, I have friends who’ve slept with friends and ex-lovers. It gets difficult sometimes.”

She added, “It’s really good to have people on TV who have been suppressed for so many years. But it scares me that, in bringing out people’s curiosity, there’s going to be a lot of day-trippers. And I don’t want to be someone’s experiment.”

Zadie Smith’s much-hyped new novel, On Beauty, is full of blather, the kind of earnest gibberish found in one setting in particular: liberal-arts academia. Inspired, no doubt, by her own stint at Harvard—as a Radcliffe teaching fellow in 2003—Ms. Smith’s third novel is quite a leap from the setting of her first, White Teeth (2000), and her second, The Autograph Man (2002). And it’s not as colorful.

In White Teeth, a 24-year-old Ms. Smith took us deep into London’s urban suburbia, the land of greasy-spoon caffs and curry shops, where a Bengali waiter is “mates” with a cockney and Jehovah’s Witness grandmas wrangle with Muslim teenagers about the Second Coming. The novel was sassy in the best sense of the word. Critics said it reminded them of Dickens—a multicultural postcolonial update on his London—and PBS even created a lavish Masterpiece Theatre series out of it.

On Beauty is by comparison disappointingly sedate. It seems that the pretensions of Harvard have zapped the spirit out of the author’s voice, in the way that a creative student obsessed about her career molds herself into a graduate-school geek: No more Ms. Wacky—time to get serious, babe.

The fictional college town of Wellington, Mass., provides the backdrop. A suburban protectorate, Wellington is home to “high income, morally complacent … spiritually inert hypocrites,” the types one assumes Ms. Smith shared faculty drinks with at Harvard. Taking E.M. Forster’s Howards End as inspiration, the story centers around the rivalry between two families, the Belseys and the Kipps. As in Howards End, it’s the men in the family who jostle for intellectual and moral superiority.

Howard Belsey, a professor of art theory at Wellington, is a postmodern misery guts, a man for whom “beauty” is a construction he’s determined to dismantle. Howard’s main contribution to the field of Rembrandt studies lies tucked away in his study drawer, an unfinished manuscript arguing that the Dutch master was neither genius nor maverick, but a competent artisan. “Art is the Western myth,” Professor Belsey lectures eager freshmen, “to recast aesthetics as a rarefied language of exclusion.”

When Howard’s archrival, Monty Kipps, arrives from London to Wellington as a visiting scholar, a battle of ideologies ensues at home and on campus. A distinguished public intellectual, Oxford graduate and fellow Rembrandt scholar, Monty believes that beauty is transcendence and art “a gift from God.” Keeping up with today’s identity politics, Monty is a black intellectual whose conservatism becomes a statement of rebellion against the woolly liberalism of white intellectuals like Howard. Unlike Howard, who chairs Wellington’s affirmative-action committee, Monty believes affirmative action is the “work of evil,” a way of continuing a cycle of underachievement. “Opportunity is a right—but it is not a gift,” he announces. “Rights are earned …. Otherwise the system is radically devalued.”

Playing off the myopic extremes of both men and their families, Ms. Smith ponders some grand themes—political correctness versus conservatism, faith versus intellectualism, art versus reason—but she never sticks to one debate long enough for it to mean much. Just as you’re engaging with Howard’s deconstruction of how patronage shaped Renaissance painting, a melodrama interrupts: An affair between Howard and an anorexic poetry professor is discovered by his African-American wife of 30 years! O.K.—but what about those paintings?

Race is a central theme of the novel, but race in this context is often about the petty campus political agendas. Poetry professor Claire Malcolm, for instance, sees affirmative action and Howard’s committee a bit of a bore. “She had served six months … in Wellington’s Affirmative Action Committee … but her interest had been minimal …. Claire was only truly excited by the apocalyptic on the world stage.” Howard, the novels’ conscientious white guy—married to Kiki, the African-American mother of his three mixed-race kids—is all for affirmative action. Monty, the British-Caribbean “black conservative,” is much more interested in buying Haitian art on the black market; he’s way beyond politically correctness—more Ward Connelly than Cornel West. The only black American academic portrayed by Ms. Smith, Professor Erskine Jegede, has precious little to say on the issue, and is shown merely as a colorful philanderer sporting a “three piece suit of the yellowest of yellows, the curves of his bumptious body naturally resisting all three pieces.”

Compared to the tedious grind of academia, the novel’s supporting cast stirs up some degree of human emotion. Returning to what she did so brilliantly in White Teeth, Ms. Smith gives voice to characters who are not intellectuals, yet seem possessed of greater wisdom than the eggheads with the advanced degrees. During an outdoor concert of Mozart’s Requiem, the 250-pound Kiki starts composing in her head a speech to the “imaginary guild of black American mothers” on how to raise black sons: “ … you need to counter the dismal self-image that black men receive as their birthright from America … and, I don’t know … get involved in after-school activities, have books around the house …. ”

Another great Kiki moment: Sick of her husband’s intellectual rants, she shouts, “We can’t talk about anything seriously, everything’s ironic ... everyone’s scared to speak in case you think it’s clichéd or dull.... OK, so [Monty] Kipps’ a nutcase, half the time, but he’s standing up there talking about something he believes in—”

Similarly, the Belsey kids present their personal difficulties with ringing clarity. In Ms. Smith’s Wellington, it’s young men like Belsey’s son Levi—streetwise, angry, political—who carry the burden of trying to make sense of society’s racism. When a white neighbor passes the Belsey home and catches sight of Levi, his older sister Zora notices the look of alarm on the woman’s face. “Wow, this one really can’t believe her eyes. Check it out—she’s having some kind of cognitive failure …. Yes, move along now—he lives here—yes, that’s right—no crime is taking place—thank you for your interest.”

Moments like these nearly rescue On Beauty from a dismal fate: a spot on the shelf next to scores of other lightweight campus melodramas. But there aren’t enough of them to make this new novel any kind of competition for her brilliant debut.

Shazia Ahmad was deputy books editor of The Observer before becoming a freelance writer earlier this year.

"She was laying there," he said, "and had taken her clothes off. Then, in completely slurred speech, she said: 'I just took two Ambien, so anything you're going to do, you better do it before I pass out.' She said she hadn't slept a night in seven years without her Ambien."

The young man had come face to face with a member of the Ambien Generation, where being turned on takes a back seat to being able to turn off. In this edgy, post-9/11 city, sleep is more and more seen as an inalienable right: Tossing and turning is for suckers. Though Ambien, the country's best-selling insomnia medication, has been on the market since 1993, it's increasingly begun to occupy the same place in many New Yorkers' lives as coffee and cigarettes. And if Viagra was the boutique drug of the 90's, now New Yorkers are pining for a drug that renders them useless at bedtime. The city that never sleeps is becoming the city that can't wait to go to sleep.

Ambien seems to have dodged any social stigma. During the trial involving Vogue editor Anna Wintour and her former nanny last October, the disgruntled ex-help claimed that Ambien was Ms. Wintour's prescription drug of choice. Back in October 2003, then–Secretary of State Colin Powell boasted to a Saudi reporter from the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat: "They're a wonderful medication-not medication. How would you call it? They're called Ambien, which is very good. You don't use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien." Actress Scarlett Johannson told InStyle what her cure for jet lag was: "Drink water, buy a Brookstone travel pillow, ask your doctor for a prescription of Ambien, and you'll be fine." In The Ring Two, Naomi Watts' character even feeds her child a peanut butter and Ambien sandwich.

"I get more bang for an hour of sleep with Ambien than I can without it," said a venture capitalist who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "But the first few times you take it, you've got to be careful. Make sure you're in bed, because literally within five minutes of taking it, you'll literally pass out wherever you are."

Liz Withers, a 28-year-old self-employed entrepreneur who lives on the Upper East Side, estimates that she's taken Ambien 100 times. "It gives me the best night's sleep of my life," she said. "I take it when I'm stressed out from work, can't sleep, have a lot on my mind. I take that and I sleep like a baby. You just drift off into a nice sleep, and when you wake up in the morning, you're not groggy. It's fabulous-I couldn't live without it …. I don't forget things the next day …. I take it on a regular basis."

Daytime use of Ambien is not unheard of. "I have a number of clients who, the only way they get through the mediation or counseling sessions with their husbands is Ambien," said a Manhattan divorce lawyer. "They knock themselves out and then they're on automatic for the 45 minutes. Whatever the virtues may be for patients, it's great for the company that manufactures it."

Last year, nationwide sales for Ambien reached $1.88 billion. With its seductive name-think ambient noise, a pleasant ambiance, good morning (a.m. = "morning," bien = "good")-Ambien would seem to have a hold on the market. But wait: Sepracor's Lunesta, which was launched this month with a $60 million ad campaign, promises longer, uninterrupted sleep, and it doesn't carry Ambien's warning that one should only take it for seven to 10 days. Meanwhile, Sanofi-Aventis, the makers of Ambien, are awaiting F.D.A. approval for a newer version of Ambien that can induce longer sleep periods.

At a recent party, actress Helen Hunt's boyfriend, novelist Matthew Carnahan, remembered his Ambien-induced sleep: "You have strange dreams. If you try to stay awake, you make phone calls you don't remember-it's like living a horrible blackout."

At the same party, Eric Gilliland, a TV writer, said, "Ambien saved my life at first, but later I abused it. I crossed eight different time zones in five days and overdid it. Now I take a third of a pill and that's enough."

"I never have insomnia except the second night in Europe, and then I take one melatonin. But I never have insomnia," said author Erica Jong. "I can sleep almost anywhere-on a plane, on a train. I'm a sleeper. I could sleep 14 hours a night and be happy. I don't need Ambien. I mean, talk to me about Effexor, the antidepressant: I like that."

"It's not like it was ever prescribed to me," said a 28-year-old who works in publishing and began taking Ambien during the stress of her upcoming wedding. "A lot of my friends were taking it and gave me some, and it's actually the perfect thing for those nights when you're up late and working, because you don't need to worry about winding down. It just gets you to sleep. It knocks you out."

Not everyone is a fan. At a recent book party in Manhattan, the singer Judy Collins said she'd taken Ambien once. "Once is more than enough," she said. "I would never go near it. It's a horrible, horrible drug. I had people coming in from the walls. I had a shoulder replacement seven years ago-it was a major, major surgery, a big, big deal …. I took this pill, I'm telling you, people were coming out of the walls. Crazy-are you kidding? Insane, scared, terrified. Aliens for sure. I think one of the problems in this country is too many people are on either or both Ambien and Viagra. I mean, give me a break! Ambien is dangerous, inducing-from my point of view-psychotic states. If you've had those experiences before, you want to stay away from it. You know what? Lack of sleep will not kill you. Of course I have a sleepless night every once in a while-everybody does. I get up and work. You know what helps me? A little apple juice. There are many remedies to go to sleep. One thing is to lay there and pray for peace-that's not a bad idea."

Ambien is in a class of drugs known as hypnotics. When Jacqueline Susann wrote Valley of the Dolls in the mid-60's, she referred to sleeping pills as being among the little "dolls" that kept Neely, Jennifer and Anne zoned out as they lived their glamorous postwar life in the city. Though for Neely, the dolls stopped working: "[S]he went to her bedroom, pulled the blinds … and swallowed five red pills. Five red ones hardly did anything now. Last night she had only slept three hours with five red ones and two yellows."

Ambien works by increasing the effects of a neurotransmitter called GABA that promotes sleep. The drug targets a specific group of GABA receptors as opposed to a broader range, and hence, unlike older sleep meds, reduces side effects such as grogginess, memory loss, hallucinations and clumsiness. But Ambien is still considered habit-forming. The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies it as a Schedule IV narcotic, meaning it's a controlled substance with potential for abuse.

The venture capitalist said he's been taking Ambien every night for a year and a half. "After a while it becomes much less overwhelming, but you do get the GABA high for about 20 minutes before you sleep," he said. He was first prescribed Ambien after suffering a week of insomnia during a business trip. "I live a really crazy life," he said. "I'm on a plane a lot. I have seven different deals going on at one time. It's intense-there's never a slack moment."

When told that people were using Ambien for longer than the prescribed time, Melissa Feltmann, a spokeswoman for Sanofi-Aventis, insisted that Ambien was safe to use for a period of 30 days. "The label on the medication's bottle that they should be limited to seven to 10 days refers to hypnotics in general," she said. "Ambien is actually indicated for the short-term treatment of insomnia for a 30-day supply." She added, "If people go beyond the prescribed time, a physician and patient make decisions about their treatment."

According to a 2005 poll by the National Sleep Foundation, in the Northeastern U.S., 18 percent of respondents were getting less than six hours of sleep a night. But is popping a pill the answer?

"People can't turn their brains on and off like we can a light switch," said Dr. Daniel Salzman, a sleep specialist at the New York Presbyterian Sleep/Wake Disorders Center in White Plains. "We live in a society-especially New York-where we are overstimulated. To be able to do something doesn't mean we should be. We weren't built for a 24-hour society."

He added, "By altering the circadian rhythm, your natural sleep mechanism, you're definitely taking a toll on your health."

Dr. Salzman advocates behavioral techniques for treating the sleep-deprived and cautions against overuse of Ambien. "It's potentially problematic that people take it over two weeks," he said. "While you're giving someone the Ambien and you're treating the symptom, they're able to sleep fine. When they stop, the underlying cause is still there. Many people may develop a psychological dependence on the Ambien-or on any sleeping pill, for that matter. They eventually begin to believe they can't sleep without it."

"In general, people who have problems with alcohol are prone to have problems with benzos or Ambien," said Dr. Edward Kenny, a prominent psychopharmacologist with a practice on the Upper West Side. "People who use too much Ambien use it to cope with their life."

As for potential dangers, Dr. Kenny added, "One of the things which has not been studied is, it can cause some subtle memory change. Nobody's been studying Ambien's long-term effects. With benzos, the hippocampus can shrink."

"We don't know what harmful effects it may have, but Ambien is an addictive drug that tends to habituate," said Dr. Daniel Kripke, one of the few voices in the medical profession whose Web site, www.darksideofsleepingpills.com, warns of the dangers of prescription sleeping meds. "It may take 10 to 20 years to know what the effects of the drug will be. It's like how the tobacco industry was before it was regulated."

Not surprisingly, some of the city's late-night party crowd has reportedly been indulging in Ambien. The claim is that if one takes three or four Ambien and then forces oneself to stay awake, hallucinations follow.

Whether one is taking Ambien or not, it has definitely become part of what New Yorkers talk about when they talk about sleep.

"I was put on sleeping pills at age 8 by a psychiatrist," said writer Daphne Merkin. "Ambien is not my love. I think Ambien works on non-diehard insomniacs. I tried it last night; I took it with a Klonopin. I think insomnia goes to a degree with a constant state of melancholia …. Like I have trouble getting up, I have trouble tuning out. The touted plus of Ambien is that it works quickly and it's out of you quickly. But I may be too inured. I wouldn't call myself a junkie, because any junkie tendencies have been beaten out of me from my childhood. I think Ambien is a very good drug; it's just never worked for me. I have never even tried it in the five-milligram form-I went straight to 10 milligrams and Klonopin, and I was still awake an hour and half later …. Lately I've been trying not to take sleeping pills …. Xanax I don't find great; Klonopin is the new Valium. I was once sent to a shrink who said to me if I hadn't come from an orthodox Jewish background, I would be a heroin addict, by which I think he meant I wanted to blunt my sensibilities. Basically, on some level I want to conk out …. A certain kind of TV does it for me: Sex and the City. I sort of get cozily involved in what shoes is she going to pull out …. Charlie Rose? No, he agitates me."

"People, especially in theater, we have a lot of trouble going to sleep," said actor Adrian Zmed of T.J. Hooker fame. "Our brain-we can't shut it off. I've seen Ambien. I've looked at it and I've said, Hmmmm. I work in theater, I can't shut it down until 2, 3 in the morning; the brain just won't let go. I'll try anything. I've tried everything you can imagine. Sometimes you just stay up until you fall asleep. I use ear plugs-shut out the world-and probably a couple of drinks before I go to sleep and leave it at that."

"For me, Ambien falls into the category of pragmatic pharmacology," said Jeremy Walker, of Jeremy Walker and Associates, a movie publicity company. "If you have a headache, take aspirin. You watch Desperate Housewives and you're all wound up afterward-so I find myself taking half an Ambien on Sunday nights, so you're entire week isn't fucked up.

"Originally, the reason I got the prescription was because the year before, at the Sundance Film Festival, I'd experienced sleeplessness due to stress," he continued. "I asked my doctor for a prescription the following year, and for whatever reason I never used it. Then I noticed the Sunday-evening problem."

"The funny thing about Ambien is, you know when you get sleepy-naturally sleepy-your eyes get tired, and they get sort of dry and you rub them, and it's sort of a precursor to sleep," Mr. Walker added. "I've noticed that's one of the things Ambien does: Your eyes get dry, you rub them and you get slightly cranky, and then you want to go to sleep. And it does it in minutes."

But there's a question left hanging: Is it really healthy never to have any dark nights of the soul, those horrid stretches of crepuscular creepiness which often result in inspiration and a humble respect for the mysteries of the human heart?

"Ambien is relatively effective in the short term, but you really got to find the underlying cause," said Dr. Salzman. "Why would people want to take a pill to sleep for the rest of their life?"

-Additional reporting by George Gurley, Rebecca Dana and Raquel Hecker.

The Glass Menagerie, which premiered at New York's Playhouse Theatre in 1945, was Williams' first Broadway hit. It's a great primer in the dramatist's early work: expect family dysfunction-an overbearing mother, her angst-ridden son and her misfit daughter-as well as repression, desire, loss and humiliation. Jessica Lange stars as Amanda, with Christian Slater ( Christian Slater!) as the tortured Tom-purportedly the voice of the young, sexually confused Willams himself. Directed by David Leveaux, The Glass Menagerie opens at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on March 22.

Over at the Roundabout Theater's Studio 54, John C. Reilly takes on Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Roundabout's staging will mark the play's fifth revival on Broadway; the last production, in 1992, paired Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange. Natasha Richardson tries out the role of faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois, driven to madness by her thuggish brother-in-law. But can the often stunning Mr. Reilly, as the macho, liquor-swilling, card-playing Stanley, imbue the role with Marlon Brando's tight-teed animal passion? (Brando, of course, shared the stage with Jessica Tandy in 1947 and the screen with Vivien Leigh in 1951.) Stellaaaaa!!! The scream to end all screams has come to embody male angst-here's hoping Mr. Cellophane can rev it up for the show. Mr. Reilly and Ms. Richardson, under the direction of Edward Hall (Sir Peter Hall's son), will have a tough job getting the audience to forget-temporarily, at least-Brando and Leigh's legendary portrayals. A Streetcar Named Desire opens at Studio 54 on March 26 and plays through July 3.

Another Broadway favorite this season is Edward Albee's multi-layered relationship drama, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Will this new production, starring Kathleen Turner as Martha and Bill Irwin as George, outshine the mesmerizing onscreen (and offscreen) work of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as the married couple from hell? We think not, although Ms. Turner as Martha is a scary prospect. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, directed by Anthony Page at the Longacre Theater, opens on March 20.

Broadway's biggest star attraction this season is Hollywood's own Denzel Washington, who will play Brutus in Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar-which, according to the production notes, will be set in the near future this time around. Daniel Sullivan directs Mr. Washington and the rest of the considerably less starry cast. Despite starting his career on the stage-with the Negro Ensemble Company and the Manhattan Theater Club-this is only the second time that Mr. Washington has appeared on Broadway (the first, back in 1988, was in the comedy Checkmates). Julius Caesar opens at the Belasco Theater on April 3.

David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize–winning drama Glengarry Glen Ross, set in a real-estate sales office, sees its first Broadway revival since it premiered at the John Golden Theater in 1985. Mr. Mamet adapted his play for the big screen back in 1992; the movie version starred the relatively unknown Kevin Spacey alongside Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin and Ed Harris. A stellar cast has been lined up for this latest production as well, including theater darling Liev Schreiber and recent Oscar nominee Alan Alda, along with Gordon Clapp and Jeffrey Tambor as the other sparring salesmen. Expect tight direction from Joe Mantello. Glengarry Glen Ross opens on May 1 at the Royale Theater.

On a lighter note, Monty Python fans will be in for an extravaganza of silliness in the guise of Spamalot, a musical version of the troupe's 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Tim Curry is at the helm as King Arthur, Frasier's David Hyde Pierce dons a pair of tights as Sir Robin, and Hank Azaria stars as the crowd-pleasing Sir Lancelot. Mike Nichols directs. The show promises all your favorite Grail absurdities (the Knights of Ni!, the killer bunny, flatulent Frenchmen) and more). A new score featuring music and lyrics by Eric Idle and John Du Prez adds to the laughs. Spamalot opens March 17 at the Shubert Theater.

"I watched the whole first season on demand," said Ms. Joy, an attractive 26-year-old actress and student, puffing on a cigarette during a lull in the action. "I really like Jennifer Beals and her relationship-it's so truthful, the way they fight, all the mixed-up sex stuff. I watch them and I think I had that same scene with my ex-boyfriend. And the sex scenes are really hot.

"And the sex scenes are from such a feminine point of view," she added. "It's not hot because it's a lesbian sex scene, it's hot because its from a female point of view, which is unusual on TV. It's usually messy and emotional and more intense than normal hetero sex scenes, like in Sex and The City, where its more about being funny about fucking."

For the next 13 weeks, a small but growing coterie of women will be staying in on Sunday nights to get their weekly fix of lesbian drama. While the series has a loyal following among the city's lesbians-like Sunday worship, followed by the post– L Word pilgrimage to the East Village bar Starlight for potential pick-ups-more and more straight women are becoming hooked. Call them Sapphosexuals: straight women with a twinge of curiosity, a natural penchant for flirting with their female friends, and a high dose of emotional frustration with the city's crop of narcissistic metrosexual males who perennially fail the Prince Charming test. Why not date a woman?

Indeed, why not?

"You know, these women with women, they fight, they fuck, they eat, they drink-we all do the same thing, but they seem to have a lot less problems than heterosexual people," said Carolann Lynch, a 46-year-old Manhattanite who recently resubscribed to Showtime to be ready for the season premiere.

Rather than the predicted audience share-horny straight guys looking for some naked girl-on-girl action ( Yeah, baby!)-last season's ratings skewed heavily toward women aged 18 to 49. Though the statistics are not (for obvious reasons) broken down by sexual preference, it seems that The L Word-with its bus-shelter ads featuring the show's stars naked and proclaiming "Venus Envy"-has to some degree filled the vacancy left by Sex and the City.

The excited chatter reserved not so long ago for Carrie and Mr. Big has been replaced by heated girlie chats over which L Word lovely is the hottest (Shane, the androgyne hair stylist); who's a total bitch (Jenny, the straight-turned-gay doe-eyed writer); who they'd like to get to know (Bette, the high-powered museum curator); and, of course, which was the best sex scene. Ms. Beals' Bette Porter slapping her girlfriend Tina (Laurel Holliman) and then engaging in make-up sex was, confess otherwise men-loving women, hands-down the hottest!

About the show's straight female demographic, the show's creator and executive producer, Ilene Chaiken, speaking by phone from her Hollywood Hills home, said: "That pleases me no end. I've heard it statistically, but also from a lot of my straight friends, who talk about the show being as much about women as it is about lesbians. We all like stories that are different from our own. I think people are drawn to know about a culture or lifestyle that's unfamiliar to them."

Ms. Chaiken added another reason for the show's crossover appeal: "I think probably among some women, there's what is commonly referred to as the 'bi-curious' phenomenon. Women are a lot more sexually fluid than men."

Where Sex and the City played for laughs, discussions of misshapen manhood and pink pubic hair, the L Word ladies ponder whether it's bad form to go down on a girl on the first date over morning espresso at the Planet. Risqué? Subversive? Maybe for some, but several former Carrie wannabes are lapping it up.

" The L Word is a lot more serious about sex and relationships," said Ms. Joy. " Sex and the City was more like, 'Isn't this ridiculous, all these things we do for men?'"

"I feel the relationships of the characters in The L Word are more believable than the Sex and the City characters," said Janine, a 27-year-old from Washington Heights. "The consequences of the sexual relationships in The L Word are serious; the consequences of the sexual relationships in Sex and the City are humorous."

Another draw may be the show's implicit seal of approval from its cast. How can it be icky if Flashdance siren Jennifer Beals (married with kids) looks like she's into it? A sneak peak into the lives of lesbians who don't look like their brother Jim (a pervasive, homophobic stereotype even among many "hip" New Yorkers), the show gives women a chance to reclaim a not-so-uncommon female fantasy that has, until this point, been hijacked and corrupted into ( Suburban Dykes et al.) visual Viagra for men.

For some women, The L Word-with its a constant stream of sex in various states of undress among the show's long-limbed female cast-is pure, high-sheen entertainment, slickly directed with just the right mix of juicy dialogue, an unusually attractive cast, a sunny location, and a subject that most women enjoy unraveling on a regular basis: sex and relationships.

But aside from the entertainment factor, why do many straight women find The L Word so captivating? The show offers a safe, couch-bound entrée into a hitherto alien lifestyle which is only tapped into every so often: Madonna and Britney's clumsily staged kiss, Mischa Barton's cutesy girl crush on The O.C., Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon coming out in real life as being in a lesbian relationship. Showtime's dedication to a long-running, exclusively lesbian drama offers a prime-time pop-culture podium for Lesbian Chic. Thanks to The L Word, being a gay woman isn't all that bad; in fact, according to the subtext of the show, it's a sign that you're an empowered, self-identified woman in a woman's world. As one fan declared, "I'm such a faux lesbian."

"These relationships are new to us; seeing gay sex is a new thing," said Heather, a 29-year-old magazine editor from Brooklyn who became addicted to the show last season. "They're powerful and intellectual and beautiful women. Whether they're gay or straight, any show that has women like that is just awesome …. I had a sort of interest in the show because I am, in some way-though I'm a totally straight person-I definitely find women more attractive than men anyway. From the time I was 13, watching a Sprite commercial.

"There are probably a lot of women walking the streets that are like me," Heather continued. "Had relationships with men, but have always been sort of curious about women. There are also a lot of straight women who probably wonder-not just on a sex level, but on a real level of intimacy-about how they have these amazing relationships with our girlfriends: How amazing would it be if it extended to every level of our love lives?"

But, she added, "I wouldn't just dally with the other side. All my lesbian friends tell me, there's nothing worse than the straight girl who thinks that she might like girls."

"It's just different from watching a man and a woman," said Ms. Lynch. "You just see these two women, and it's so passionate-I don't think a lot of people realize it can be like that. They always think of lesbians, you know, with pants and short hair."

"I'm obsessed with it," said Elizabeth, a 24-year-old woman who works in fashion. "There's nothing on TV that comes close to beating the sex on The L Word. The actors obviously fake their chemistry really, really well, and you sort of envy them for having such naturally randy relationships. I watched it with a boyfriend, but he thought it was cheesy."

"For years, we've been told women are not turned on by visual stories, but that's not true," said Candida Royalle, the creator of women-friendly sex films and the author of How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do. "But," she added, "not all women are turned on by lesbian scenes. I'm not into watching it, but I've been more into doing it."

"I think women aren't ashamed of saying they're turned on by it," said Diane Peragas, a 34-year-old documentary filmmaker. "A lot of women find the idea of being with a woman erotic on some level." She added she was under the impression that the publicity for the show has been "very vocal about advertising that most of the actors are actually straight. They're doing these love scenes, but really they're straight."

At this point, only one cast member-Leisha Hailey, who plays Alice, the bisexual journalist-has talked publicly about being gay.

Boi Crush

Set in Los Angeles, The L Word follows a group of thirtysomething lesbians as they navigate their personal and professional lives. In familiar TV terrain, the women all meet at the same coffee shop, share dating and relationship woes, and dress in a fashion-forward, dyke-centric style. (Designer Patricia Field's attention to detail on Sex and the City is mirrored by The L Word's weekly array of looks, from Bette's Armani power suits to Shane's grunge-punk svelte silhouette and Marc Jacobs aesthetic.) The sun is always shining, L.A. looks hazy and golden (though the show is filmed in Vancouver), and sex is always on one of the women's agendas-girlfriends are shared, stolen and swapped in a nod to the lesbian community's incestuous daisy chain.

The female cast is arguably the most attractive on TV.

"It's television," explained Ms. Chaiken, who, at a recent media screening of the show, joked: "I know why the Desperate Housewives are desperate-because we've got the best-looking cast on TV."

With guest appearances by Rosanna Arquette, the late Ossie Davis, Arianna Huffington (playing herself), Sandra Bernhard and, coming this season, Melissa Rivers as a lesbian version of herself, the show was recently given the green light for a third season.

Ask any woman, straight or gay, who their favorite L Word character is, and without missing a beat one name pops out: Shane.

"I immediately developed a crush on Shane," said Heather. "She's the bad girl. I like her style, her attitude-I like that she cuts hair. She's cool and punk rock. She's like the kind of woman I would dream of seducing me."

Played by Gwyneth Paltrow's cousin Katherine Moennig, Shane is a skinny-hipped, boyish hair stylist whose motto-"Sex with no emotional entanglements"-provides the show much of its X-rated content. (And Ms. Moennig's vagueness about her own sexuality takes up an inordinate amount of space on fan message boards.) In the Season 2 premiere, Shane, after styling Arianna Huffington's coiff, slunk off to a TV sound studio with Carmen, played by former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Sarah Shahi. The Shane character is reputedly modeled on Sally Hershberger, the New York celebrity hair stylist. (During a recent Fashion Week party to celebrate the launch of Ms. Hershberger's Shagg collection of denim and T-shirts, held at her meatpacking district salon, a constant stream of cooing middle-aged women approached her with googly-eyed flirtations. "I would follow her to the end of the world," said one blond-streaked woman from Connecticut.)

Each episode, Shane is seen lip-locked with a procession of women. Last season, she attracted the attention of a wealthy Hollywood wife played by Rosanna Arquette. Of course, it ended in tears-but not without explicit love scenes. A rarely seen study in the sexually empowered lesbian, Shane's ability to get any woman she wants was a major turn-on for several fans.

"Shane's like the poetic-asshole guy," said Ms. Joy. "I think she reminds a lot of women of their bad boyfriend."

"I like the skinny butch girl, because she's nuts," said Alisha Silvera, a 35-year-old single mom from Brooklyn. "She's just so messy with her girls."

"Shane's like Samantha, in a way," said Ms. Lynch, referring to the Sex and the City character played by Kim Cattrall. "Samantha's with this one and that one, and she's like, 'Awww, if they don't like it, fuck 'em.' Shane kind of has that attitude, too, but she's also very caring and sensitive about her friends."

Interestingly, the character who arouses the most dislike in viewers, gay or straight, is Jenny, a straight woman who moves in with her husband, Tim, then meets the lesbians next-door. Jenny is played by Mia Kirshner, who made a name for herself at age 19 by playing a stripper in the art-house flick Exotica and then kept the pot boiling with her performance as a nymphomaniac who tries to seduce her brother in the 2001 spoof Not Another Teen Movie.

"I saw two women having sex in the swimming pool," she whispers to Tim with wide eyes. Of course, curiosity kills the cat, or at least the marriage: After a tense seduction by Italian femme fatale Marina (Karina Lombard), Jenny is caught in the act by Tim. Marriage over; cue Jenny's sexual self-discovery.

"She's an idiot, because she handled it so badly. I understand that she wanted to experiment, but they way she handled it was just wrong," said Ms. Silvera.

"I feel so bad for Jenny," said Anna. "She's so confused and doesn't know what she wants. It's interesting how she's portrayed as an indecisive, flaky person and all the other women are really strong."

"I can't stand her," said Ms. Lynch. "She's always whispering. Always in turmoil. She gives me anxiety. One night, she had a guy and a girl in her room and she was still living in Tim's apartment. She broke his heart in a million pieces."

"It's a true portrayal of the way that often happens," said the show's creator, Ms. Chaiken, who confessed to enjoying people's anger toward Jenny. "But it's not even exclusively about someone who's heterosexual and falls in love with a woman. It's a story about someone who's in a relationship and thought she was committed, and then falls in love with someone else. It shows how bad some of us behave in that situation."

Ms. Chaiken was careful to point out that the show wasn't trying to mythologize lesbian sexuality or to "win converts."

"I think gay women are just as sexually troubled and/or sexually free as straight women," she said. "I think there are plenty of straight women who are fabulously sexual and liberated and who approach sex with many degrees of abandon. And there are plenty of gay women who are repressed and troubled by sex. This is a really tricky generalization to make, but I think that gay women overall may be a little more self-determined, because of having had to define ourselves by our own measure."

The Scene

New York's own lesbian scene, as tangled as Showtime's portrayal, has had its fair share of straight interlopers. According to Karen Gilliam, a bartender who has worked at the mixed gay bar Starlight for five years, more unfamiliar faces-sometimes accompanied by a boyfriend or husband-have started walking through the door.

"I think The L Word has given women a lot more confidence to check out the scene," she said. "I can tell by someone's body language that they're new. When women are there with a man, it's obvious they're both looking for a woman to share." (She added that the bar's door policy has become stricter over the years to keep out lechy guys.) Immediately after Sunday night's season premiere, there was a line-mostly women-to get in. Inside Starlight, it seemed as if the women were channeling their inner Shane.

Whether The L Word will create a new strain of Shane or Jenny wannabes is hard to say. "I do feel like an outsider peeking in on that community, and it's interesting in that way," said Ms. Joy. "I was surprised at how linked the community seemed."

Amanda Moore, a top model who's been open about her sexuality, said the show was realistic in its portrayal of lesbian life.

"The New York scene is just as glamorous as The L Word," said Ms. Moore, who at 25 has graced the cover of Vogue, was the face of Tommy Hilfiger's "Tommy Boy" campaign and is a runway favorite in Paris and Milan. "There isn't anyone on the show who I can't compare to a woman I know-and when it comes to hanging out on the scene, I have friends who've slept with friends and ex-lovers. It gets difficult sometimes."

She added, "It's really good to have people on TV who have been suppressed for so many years. But it scares me that, in bringing out people's curiosity, there's going to be a lot of daytrippers. And I don't want to be someone's experiment."

SantaCon-which began in New York in 1998-started out this year at Triple 8 Palace in Chinatown. After some early-morning dim sum, the crowd hit up Central Park, Times Square, Macy's and several bars on the way. The Transom caught up with the festivities at Jake's Dilemma on Amsterdam Avenue. Spirited Saint Nicks played beer pong, foosball and danced. The SantaCon Web site encouraged participants to be creative, and the costumes ranged from Elvis Santa to cross-dressing Santa, with just about everything in between.

"The best part is, you don't know where you're going next," said Dave Chaffin, who has taken part in SantaCon the past four years. "The Santa suit really unites everyone."

"Santas on the move! Santas on the move!" began a chant from somewhere in the bar. Quickly, hundreds of Santas swallowed their pints, lined up on the sidewalk and marched boisterously down 81st Street. Unity, indeed!

"Is this a strike?" asked one bewildered Upper West Sider, as if an army of radicalized department-store Santas tossed the children off their laps and hit the streets. She may have been confused by the protest sign reading, "Stick It Up Your Chimney," from the Union of Flying Reindeer.

The Santas headed down into the subway, to the chagrin of awestruck bystanders hoping to get a seat on a quiet train. Underground, the voices echoed loudly, and some pulled out their photocopied song books with dirty carols such as "O Come All Ye Faithless," "Deck My Balls" and "Police Navidad." An impromptu conga line broke out on the C train, while a couple of smashed Santas took pulls from a fifth of Jack Daniels.

The next stop was Rockefeller Center, where throngs of tourists lined the sidewalk, gaping at the lighted Norwegian spruce. Some mothers held onto their wide-eyed children as a seemingly endless line of rowdy Santas pushed through the crowd (however, a few less-surly Santas gave candy canes out to the kids).

"I see you when you're sleeping," said one belligerent Santa to group of giggling young women. In addition to crass comments, Santas also passed judgment on the spectators-and this reporter-deciding who had been naughty or nice this year.

"What paper you from?" asked one burly Kris Kringle.

" The New York Observer."

"Oh, definitely naughty. No presents for you."

-Michael Calderone

The Nose Knows

"This is it!" squealed a teenage girl tottering on chunky foam-platform shoes. She and a friend had come upon a velvet rope at a trendy Chelsea club early one recent weekday evening. After checking their names off on his clipboard, the bouncer pulled the rope aside, granting them admission to the club's interior, where electronic dance music thumped and scores of other adolescents congregated.

The girls had been invited to the nightclub by Steven Pearlman, a Park Avenue plastic surgeon. The soirée served as a kind of self-improvement open house, where high-school-aged girls unhappy with their appearance could consult with experts in facial cosmetic surgery, diet, exercise, skin care and hair styling.

"It's not just a nose job these days," said Dr. Pearlman, who has a Cheshire-cat grin and bears a faint resemblance to the actor James Spader. "Girls gain confidence after their surgeries and want to improve many other elements of their appearance. For example, girls with big noses often have big, frumpy hairdos. We can direct them to a stylist who can help fix that."

The evening's multi-disciplinary approach to transformation echoed trends in reality television, where programs like Extreme Makeover and The Swan show radical transformations managed by teams of surgeons, life coaches and cosmetologists. Dr. Pearlman said that many of his young patients admire the looks of media personalities like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jennifer Aniston, but they hope the surgery will yield a look that is still somehow "their own."

Plied with grown-up-looking drinks served in martini glasses (but made only from fruit juice, of course), the teens took turns sitting with a woman named Liz, who was conducting on-the-spot computer consultations, showing prospective patients how they might look with pruned proboscises. "I feel like a fortune teller," Liz giggled as a teen with a slightly hooked nose settled in at the table.

"Do you see a good nose in my future?" the young girl asked hopefully.

In addition to glimpses of their post-op streamlined visages, there was plenty to keep aspiring homecoming queens busy. One table was manned by Alistair Greer, a hunky personal trainer from Ireland. At another station, nutritionist Natalia Rose offered tips on diet regimens designed to help teen girls shed pounds. "Personally, I eat only raw foods," Rose told one mystified mother. "What? Like a plant?" the woman asked.

All the while, Dr. Pearlman, who is the president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, moved among his guests and some of their bewildered-looking mothers, explaining the prerequisites for surgery, which can cost, he said, between $7,000 and $10,000.

Just how young are some of Dr. Pearlman's patients? "It depends on the individual, but I can generally start on girls at 15 and boys at 16," he said. "Though with the guys, you have to be careful that they're not going to be doing any sports too soon after their surgery."

He said that he knows of a surgeon in Mexico who will operate on girls as young as 12, and a presentation shown at the club that night quoted a study saying that rhinoplasty on preteens does not affect nasal or facial growth.

"Ultimately, you have to assess the maturity of the patient," Dr. Pearlman explained. "She has to be emotionally grown-up."

Dr. Pearlman's presentation continued to flash on the screen of a nearby computer, suggesting that besides rhinoplasty and chin augmentation, the repair of a cleft lip is the only other facial surgery suitable for teens.

"What's a cleft lip?" asked one girl who was watching. "What's rhinoplasty?" asked another, sipping a virgin cocktail.

-Lee Bailey

Into the Groove

In the days before she discovered Kabbalah and decided that New York was naff, one of the best places for an up-close Madonna sighting was at GMHC's annual Dance-a-thon, a sponsored event to raise money for H.I.V./AIDS programs in the city. One of the last known sightings of the singer getting her groove on was back in 1997, the year that GMHC officially retired the event due to financial mismanagement-the event no longer served as a fund-raising initiative, according to executive director Ana Oliveira, barely breaking even on its costs.

Last Saturday evening, the GMHC hosted the official "Return of the Dance-a-thon" at the Jacob Javits Center. No Madge in sight, but over 3,000 people danced to a revolving set of D.J.'s that included Danny Tenaglia and Junior Vasquez. Free pretzels, bananas and water were provided for sweaty dancers taking a break from their sponsored dance sessions.

The celebrity quotient at this year's event was noticeably thin-Naughty by Nature's Vinnie Brown, Queer Eye culture maven Jai Rodriquez and Alan Cumming, along with Rosie Perez and recently crowned Miss New York Meaghan Jarenski-perhaps owing to the widespread impression that the virus is no longer a pressing concern in the city, since the availability of drug cocktails has kept thousands of H.I.V.-positive New Yorkers alive.

"You don't see skeletal people walking around these days, but people still die of the disease," said Mr. Cumming, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Drug Dealer." (He later showed The Transom the back of his provocative garment, which was in fact promoting the "Keep a Child Alive Initiative," which gets drugs to children with H.I.V./AIDS in Africa.)

"The worst thing is that the spotlight's gone off it," said Mr. Cumming. "People aren't being educated about it, and the only form of government education is abstinence. You can't ask young people to stop having sex," he said. "That's ridiculous."

The actor, who said he intended to hit the dance floor a little later, expressed frustration at the lack of concern regarding infection among younger gay men, but thought the recent hype around drug-induced unsafe sex was overstated. "There's a lot of bare-backing going on, but it's too easy to blame it on crystal," he said.

-Shazia Ahmad

Let the Sunshine In

For most people, the highlight of the office Christmas party is watching co-workers hit on the interns and, if you're lucky, the occasional receptionist vomiting on herself. However, when you work at Ken Sunshine Consultants-which represents the likes of Justin Timberlake, Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand, Ben Affleck, Ricky Martin and Hilary Duff-the fun comes in guessing which A-listers are going to show up and let Mr. Sunshine parade them past the cubicles. On the night of Monday, Dec. 13, Ben Affleck and Leonardo DiCaprio made an appearance at the office headquarters on Fifth Avenue, stopping conversations wherever they went as partygoers abandoned their chatter to gawk. Other lower-wattage personalities meriting curious glances were Carson Daly, Mark Green and Al Sharpton. And then there was Christine, a guest dancing in front of the D.J., doing her best impression of Elaine in that infamous Seinfeld episode.

-Noelle Hancock

The Transom Also Hears …

… that Hedwig and the Angry Inch star John Cameron Mitchell is directing the next video for the emo band Bright Eyes. Mr. Mitchell is open to casting people of all sexualities, ages and ethnicities, but is especially looking for people in serious relationships. "Basically, we want open-hearted people of all kinds," said Mr. Mitchell. The production will be a night shoot, to take place between the holidays-either Dec. 28, 29 or 30. To keep things lively, Mr. Mitchell plans to host a dinner party, complete with board games, for the entire cast before the shoot.

-N.H.

… that on the night of Friday, Dec. 10, designer Zac Posen, actress Eva Mendes and singer Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas were cavorting about the palm trees of Bungalow 8, while Sean (P. Diddy) Combs made the rounds with an entourage of three, Liev Schrieber and Luke Wilson held court in a banquette, and brother Owen (dressed down in jeans and a baseball cap) was titillated by three buxom gals who kept the actor's interest by taking turns grinding up against each other.

-N.H.

"There's still a lot of urbanites here-a lot of writers, professionals," he continued. "But as real-life neighborhoods go, it's as close to …. " Here he trailed off and looked confused. "I dunno."

Maplewood? Larchmont?

The 34-year-old writer got his 15 minutes of fame when he was commissioned to deliver a pilot for a CBS sitcom tentatively titled Cobble Hill. Whether he gets to stretch Warhol's time limit is up to that notoriously fickle beast known generically to New York screen hopefuls as Hollywood, a continent away from the leafy neighborhood that Mr. Roda hopes to make into the new household word for that oft-recycled television bromide, the young, urban professional at play in the city. But when the New York Post ran a short item on the deal in October, Mr. Roda's fame soon turned into infamy.

"I hadn't even started writing and there were all these blogs expressing outrage," he recalled, mumbling over his black coffee as if not wanting to draw attention to himself among the young hipster crowd. "I think it's this feign of outrage. There's a certain amount of irony that exists here among all of us-you know, if I heard that someone was making a show called Cobble Hill, I'd roll my eyes and make fun of it too, because I think that's what you're supposed to do."

The fact that Mr. Roda had moved to the neighborhood-specifically, to the leafy brownstone block of Congress Street-only two years ago, after years of subletting and sharing apartments across Manhattan, made him that much more of an outcast among the junior media elite that has settled in along the Smith and Court street corridors of F-train Brooklyn.

"I really wanted to look at the thirtysomething generation, the Gen-X's. I thought, 'Where could it take place?'-and sitting in Cobble Hill, I thought, 'Here is as good a place as any.' That's really the only reason."

Indeed, Cobble Hill is already too expensive for Ross and Rachel and Chandler and Monica et al., the characters that ostensibly lived on Grove Street in the West Village when Friends first hit the air in 1994. But for Hollywood, finding the next bankable yuppie neighborhood in New York has become as much a part of a winning formula as finding the next hip neighborhood is for young New Yorkers. Maybe that's why everyone was so pissed off: If Hollywood catches on that quickly to your little discovery of a neighborhood, you know you never really discovered it at all.

Mr. Roda has no such pretensions. "When you move to New York, that first six-or-seven-year blur is very exciting," he said. "You ignore how uncomfortable you're feeling; you pay huge amounts of money for crap. But after a while, the smell, the sounds are not acceptable any more. You get into your 30's, and you can't live the way you used to live. My rent increased when I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, but my quality of life jumped way up. It's just more manageable.

"I was having dinner with a friend at this restaurant on Court Street, and a couple walked in," Mr. Roda continued, as if pitching a scene from his pilot. "Very sorta neat, very neat-not even J-Crew, more like Burberry. My friend was looking at them and said, 'This neighborhood is dying.' But my friend is like this power attorney. It was kind of funny. We like to fancy ourselves as having something a little extra; the Burberry couple are probably saying the same thing about the next person that comes in."

So is there any hope?

"Someone was talking about how Williamsburg had gone to shit and gotten commercialized," Mr. Roda said, referring to what was actually a satire piece in New York magazine. "And this guy-I think he was a poet-slash- ashtray-maker-quoted Vincent Gallo saying something about how the neighborhood used to be pure, and now it's like a dorm." Mr. Roda smirked. "When a caricature of hip says a neighborhood's not hip, it kinda makes it hip again."

A collective groan went up from the audience when moderator Nanette Maxim (Gourmet senior features editor) raised the topic of Rocco DiSpirito’s overcooked reality show, The Restaurant. "I was actually on that show," said Mr. Bourdain, who looks like he should play a cop on Law & Order. "I had one line and it was, ‘This utterly blows.’ Eric Ripert [of Le Bernardin] dragged me there, and the whole time I felt complicit in some horrible and ugly crime. That show was like watching a slow-motion prostate exam."

Mr. Batali added, "It was like watching a train crash with someone I knew in the caboose."

Mr. DiSpirito (who was in the building less than a day later for a food demonstration called "The Italian American Experience and Family Recipes") was not the only one on the receiving end of Batali and Bourdain’s ginsu tongues.

Mr. Bourdain also railed against the ritual of languishing seven-hour dinners. "I had a 10-course meal at Alain Ducasse recently and it felt like a year at Guantánamo Bay. Except a lot more expensive."

They pair had kind words for each other, however. When the subject turned to Mr. Batali’s cooking show, Molto Mario, Mr. Bourdain proclaimed, "It’s the best stand-up cooking show on TV." In the audience, Lisa Loeb—who has a cooking show with alleged ex-boyfriend Dweezil Zappa—didn’t flinch.

Mr. Bourdain continued, "Cooking shows are like pornography: You’re watching others do something that you’re not likely to actually do yourself."

"I relish the porn-star component of myself," Mr. Batali deadpanned. He also relishes meat, which he was quite unapologetic about when someone brought up the vegan lifestyle. "I’m proud to be at the top of the food chain," he said. "If you’re slower and stupider than me, well, pass the salt."

Restaurateur Charlie Trotter, whose unnamed seafood restaurant has yet to open in the Time Warner Center due to several postponements, endured the final blow of the food fight. "He has his waiters wear double-sided tape on their shoes so they’ll tidy up the carpet as they work," Mr. Bourdain revealed. "And the guy cooks like he’s never been fucked properly in his life."

The next day, Sirio Maccioni (Le Cirque), Drew Nieporent (Myriad Restaurant Group) and Julian Niccolini (the Four Seasons) put on their Sunday best and gathered to discuss "The Art of Hospitality." Little of the discussion pertained to good manners, and a large part of it was dedicated to Mr. Maccioni’s railings against the city unions, which he blames for having to close his restaurant at the end of the year. (Though Mr. Maccioni knows the new location, he won’t disclose its whereabouts to the public until Dec. 31.)

After the event ended, however, The Transom grabbed Mr. Niccolini and asked him about his most hospitable customers: Paula Zahn, Ralph Lauren and Bono ("He’s great fun!") were among those mentioned. And the least hospitable? "We hosted the 25th-anniversary party for Rolling Stone magazine, and even though the bar was closed, that famous drummer wanted to have more drinks. What’s his name? … Keith Richards! Yes! Oh, he jumped over the bar and started serving drinks, and I had to go back there, and he wouldn’t give up the alcohol. So I had to kick him out of there—I had no choice." And according to Mr. Niccolini, he’s never been back since.

—Noelle Hancock

Things That Go Bump in the Night

It was safe to say that everyone who showed up at the 20th-anniversary party for Jay McInerney’s novel Bright Lights, Big City on Oct. 25 was guilty. Guilty of excess. Guilty of very late nights. Guilty of badly overdoing it. Guilty of activities described in that novel. Just guilty.

But that was then. Everyone’s got serious jobs now. Gotta be responsible. Professional. Can’t stay up all night. Gotta be careful with the brain cells. Must get up in the morning, crack of dawn, get on the treadmill, the Internet, gotta deal, important meetings today.

So they started to arrive early at Odeon, at 6 p.m. As 80’s music played softly (Pretenders, Talking Heads), in walked Morgan Entrekin, Sonny Mehta, Gary Fisketjon, Candace Bushnell, Nicole Miller, Mary Boone, Bill Buford, Dick Snyder, Anita Sarko, Ken Auletta, Tatum O’Neal, Binky Urban, Stanley Crouch, Adam Moss, Terry McDonnell, Chuck Pfeifer, Taki and other scarred survivors of that glorious decade.

Waitresses offered them trays of hors d’oeuvres, white wine, cosmopolitans. It was a private party, so cigarette smoking was permitted. As for drugs, The Transom—who was staking out the legendary bathrooms for a while—can only report one incident of a gorgeous, skinny blonde descending those steps in the back for a good, head-clearing snort.

Steven Bender, a 25-year-old aspiring novelist, said he used to be called "Bright Lights, Big City Boy" when he worked on Wall Street back in 2000. "’Cause I was out running around until 4 in the morning," he explained. "Drinking, smoking, doing drugs."

Mr. Bender gave a taste of those days.

"All right, here we go," he said: "Thursday night, get home from work, pick up the dry cleaning, order cocaine, shower. Quickly change, didn’t want to be wearing business casual, meet friend in midtown, I don’t know why, happy hour. Do a few too many bumps, take a couple Xanax to edge out a little bit, you know, the normal. Dinner at Pastis, more like drinks. Trying to think where I went after that—somehow, next thing it’s 4 o’clock in the morning, Bungalow 8’s closed. We’re at an after-hours, some loft in Tribeca. So I go, ‘O.K., cool, I’m close to work, there’s a Brooks Brothers open at 7, I’ll buy a new shirt.’ No big deal. So do all that, then I think I’m taking two Advil because I know the hangover’s coming. Advil turned out to be two hits of Ecstasy. And it’s 6:45 and I’m logging onto my Bloomberg. Numbers are flying all over the room. Paranoia. My lips are white. Bright lights, bigger city."

Chuck Pfeiffer, the actor, and Taki, the writer, strolled in wearing pinstriped suits and posed for the cameras. Taki recalled reading Bright Lights, Big City while doing hard time in England for cocaine possession.

"I came here," said Mr. Pfeiffer, "it was the year of creeping socialism—we’d share, everyone would share. And then people would take advantage of it."

"I wrote at the time that the toilet bowls were redundant," said Taki. "And why not put a shelf there, put glass on it?"

"There was more substance to having fun back then," said Mr. Pfeiffer, who’s been sober for the past 13 years. "It’s not tame at all, it’s just very impersonal. They’re all poseurs."

"And people are thuggish—people were not thuggish then," said Taki.

Lewis Lapham, who is now the editor of Harper’s Magazine, recalled a big night in the 1950’s when he lost count of the number of drinks he’d guzzled.

"There was still a genuine, avant-garde, literary jazz culture in New York," he said. "And the evening started out in an apartment just off Washington Square occupied by W.H. Auden. I was young—I was 19. And I listened to Auden talk about the Age of Anxiety and the fate of the 20th century. I then took a cab, which cost a dollar and 50 cents, to go to the White Horse Tavern, where I watched Dylan Thomas drink himself to death. I’m not a major player in any of this, but this is my idea of the perfect New York evening."

The novelist Dirk Wittenborn had a good story he was somewhat reluctant to tell.

"So John Belushi and I, after Lorne Michaels’ wedding—by mistake I snorted mescaline and we came here," he said, as his gorgeous wife Kirsten tried to stop him from saying any more. "And John insisted he had a secret way to get into Odeon, but it was called ‘breaking in,’ and he began to cook. I wasn’t feeling well—I was very chagrined. I’d taken the wrong drug! I kept seeing an Indian."

And what’s Dirk Wittenborn like now?

"I’m more interested in Teletubbies and taking my daughter to school."

"The latest I’ve ever stayed up?" said Candace Bushnell. "Well, to truly put it in perspective, you have to read a lot of classic novels and you have to understand that people have been staying up until 8 a.m., 10 a.m. or, you know, noon occasionally for the last 300 years."

Did she want to hit the bathroom for a quick bump?

"No. I can’t. Because I’m good! But I think if you don’t stay up really late every couple of years, you’re missing New York."

—George Gurley

The Messenger Arrives

It’s taken over four years and plenty of post-9/11 diplomacy, but Muhammad: The Last Prophet, an animated children’s movie about the life of the founder of Islam, will finally debut in the next few weeks at two theaters in Brooklyn, the United Artists at Court Street and Sheepshead Bay.

"We’ve had a lot of difficulty finding people to distribute the film," said Muwaffak Alharithy, the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia–based producer behind the movie. "We approached all the major companies—Disney, Universal; we had several screenings in Burbank in 2000 and 2001; but we never got a proper explanation why they didn’t want it." The goal was for a potential distributor to market the film as a family entertainment with a message, much like DreamWork’s 1998 release, The Prince of Egypt. "I strongly believed that making this film was important to act as a bridge maker," added Mr. Alharithy, speaking on his cell phone from Jeddah.

Directed by Richard Rich, a former Disney veteran whose previous films include The Fox and the Hound (1981) and The King and I (1999), the one-and-a-half-hour animated feature describes the roots of Islam 1,400 years ago. Scholars in Islamic history from Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, as well as clerics at Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque, were also consulted to make sure the story was historically accurate. "What the film does is to emphasize the human reality of the prophet," said Professor John Voll, associate director of the CMCU, who consulted on early drafts of the script. "The political agenda, if any, was to try to correct the notion among Muslims and non-Muslims that what we’re involved in is a clash of civilizations. That’s the product of extremist evangelical rhetoric that’s become the norm right now."

After spending $12 million on making the film and three years of trying to secure distribution in the U.S., Mr. Alharithy had still not found anyone to touch his finished project—until he got an e-mail from Oussama Jammal, a Chicago-based distributor of children’s educational videos. Mr. Jammal’s Fine Media Group bought the U.S. rights to the film in August 2004, and now the film will be released in 100 theaters across the country on Sunday, Nov. 14, to coincide with the end of Ramadan. But don’t make plans to show up at your local cineplex for a ticket: Mr. Jammal failed to convince large theater chains to exhibit the film. (Loews in particular was, in Mr. Jammal’s words, "evasive and unhelpful.")

Mr. Jammal knows all too well about being targeted for his religious activities. He’s the president of the Bridgeview mosque in Chicago, which was reportedly under federal scrutiny for alleged financial links to Hamas, according to the Chicago Tribune. "It’s all bogus," Mr. Jammal told The Observer. "There’s no investigation going on that we’re aware about. Actually, we’re invited tonight to the F.B.I. director in Chicago, Thomas Kneir’s, retirement dinner. There’s a lot of fishing, but no fish."

So far, United Artists, Regal Cinemas and some local independent houses have agreed to exhibit the film for one week after Mr. Jammal offered to rent out screen space. "They won’t sell tickets at the door," he added. Tickets are being sold via his Web site. In New York, Mr. Jammal is hoping to get a Manhattan theater on board soon.

To help him with this and in promoting the film, he’s enlisted the help of indie-film promoters the Dinsdale Group, who specialize in promoting slasher DVD’s (including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Their current release, showing at the Village Cinema on East 11th Street, is The Manson Family. Jay Bliznick, the company’s founder, has planned press screenings for next Monday and Tuesday and hopes that word about the film grows. "In this day and age, what causes fear is ignorance," said Mr. Bliznick, who was raised Jewish. "That’s why we’re trying to market it to a Muslim and non-Muslim audience."

—Shazia Ahmad

It’s an It (Girl)!

Alice Sykes, 32, the younger sister of twin Brit girls Plum and Lucy, has borne her first child with fiancé Chris Floyd, 35. Scarlet Sykes Floyd popped out three weeks ahead of "shedool" on Saturday at 4:30 a.m., weighing a mere six pounds and one ounce. "She’s gorgeous," cooed Mom, pointing to her dainty daughter’s rosebud lips, wide blue eyes and "sticking-up blond hair—she really looks like a little forest animal. She’s very sweet, though." Ms. Sykes and Mr. Floyd were getting "take-away" in a pizza shop in Roxbury, N.Y., on Friday night during a weekend trip when her water broke, she told The Transom. They rushed back to their chic motel—the Roxbury—and the proprietors called an ambulance, which transported the couple to the nearest hospital, about 50 miles southeast in Kingston, N.Y. (No time for a St. Vincent’s homecoming!) "They were like, ‘You have to call her Roxbury,’ and we were like, ‘O.K.,’" said Mom.

Early the next morning, Ms. Sykes delivered Scarlet, whose name was chosen partly as a play on her father’s nickname, Pink (Floyd—get it?). Brother-in-law Euan Rellie, his toddler son, Heathcliff, and one of Ms. Sykes’ brothers, Tom, zipped up as soon as they heard Ms. Sykes was on her way to the hospital, arriving five minutes after Scarlet had emerged. While Ms. Sykes spent the following night in the hospital, the men had a slumber party at a nearby motel. "It was like Three Men and a Baby," joked Ms. Sykes, the publicity director for the Hollywould shoe and clothing line, who will marry Mr. Floyd, a photographer, in September. Since Scarlet arrived on the early side, the couple was unprepared. A nurse bought Scarlet her first outfit (no Jacadi here) and took Ms. Sykes’ clothes home to be washed. "I was touched," she said. "It was like country people. They thought that we were really, really mad, being English and such. They were like, ‘What are you doing?’ They thought we were pretty strange just dropping in and having a baby."

—Anna Schneider-Mayerson

Framed

You had to listen hard to make out Neil Young meowing "Rockin’ in the Free World." The stereo rocked softly at the Morrison Hotel Gallery on Oct. 21 as several dozen baby-boomers zealously reminisced about the icons of their youth as they gazed at the works of famed rock photographers Jim Marshall and Henry Diltz. Sprinkled in the crowd were a few young Hollywood types, craving that nostalgia for a time before they were born. Mena Suvari, in a Gucci hat and black blazer, whisked through with Scott Caan. She was "interested in a few different Jimi Hendrix photos," explained gallery employee Jessica Blachley. "But she was overwhelmed by all the people."

The Stones are the biggest seller for young patrons like Luke and Owen Wilson and Josh Hartnett, said Ms. Blachley. Tonight, Mick’s contemporaries seemed equally adored. "Look how beautiful that is," said a dark-haired gal in a gold brocade dress. She eyed an intimate portrait of Janis Joplin and Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane nearly locking lips. "I’d kiss either one of them."

As older attendees waxed nostalgic at the sight of Jimi, Bob and Neil, several seized the opportunity to educate a toddler in tow: "That’s Roger from the Who. That’s Jerry from the Dead."

Roaming the room, Mr. Diltz palmed a Sony Handicam and Mr. Marshall kept a Leica camera slung over his shoulder while a pair of photographers and a lone videographer documented their every movement. Mr. Diltz, in blond ponytail with hair graying at the sides, round tortoise-shell glasses and black casual suit, radiated what Love Generation–cum–New Age types would refer to as "positive energy." His counterpart, Mr. Marshall, in a gray and black tweed blazer and khaki pants, was the reality check.

Leaning close to The Transom’s ear, Mr. Diltz whispered, "Jim has a reputation for being irascible …. He doesn’t want any bullshit. He doesn’t like to be fucked with." Mr. Diltz then qualified clearly: "Jim is my fucking guru." In 42 years of friendship, this was their first show together, and Mr. Diltz was honored when his proposition was accepted. ("All I had to do was ask!" he said.)

Eager to hear from the guru and consequent student, The Transom asked: What was it like taking pictures in your day?

Mr. Diltz had a few ready anecdotes, told with the ease one develops after decades of relating such legends. Referring to the cover photo on the Doors album for which the gallery takes its name, he said, "The guy behind the hotel’s counter said, ‘You can’t do it.’ We went outside, and I saw him get in the elevator. I said, ‘Quick, run in there!’ We took one roll of film and got outta there. We went down to Skid Row and found a bar called the Hard Rock Café, and that photo was on the back of the album. [Later, the Doors] got a call from England saying"—Mr. Diltz affected a British accent—"‘Would you mind if we used that name? We’re starting a ca-fay here in London.’"

Mr. Marshall was a bit pithier with his remarks. For the steamy close-up of Janis and Grace, he put it bluntly: "It was the last frame on the roll. I said, ‘Let’s do a dykey-dykey shot.’" He chuckled. We smirked.

—Joshua D. Fischer

Brooks Brothers, that preppy bastion, was offering a weeklong 20 percent discount for Republicans who showed their delegate cards. On Sunday, however, the Fifth Avenue store was obscured behind scores of policemen, who stood out front scribbling on notepads as they received their "heightened-security" assignments. "They're blocking the doors," complained manager Beth Phelps. "I wish they would separate and move." She made a parting-the–Red Sea gesture.

Down the street at a nearly deserted Bergdorf Goodman, tennis star Serena Williams was striding around in a white tank top and a tiered, tattered white skirt, which she'd accessorized with a large wad of pink bubble gum. "It has cleared out, but I wasn't even paying attention. I was just paying attention to my shoes," Ms. Williams said, motioning to a large lavender shopping bag. "I have too many pairs. Hello, my name is Serena Williams and I'm addicted to shoes!"

"Have you seen the new Pradas?" eagerly broke in a nearby saleswoman.

It was easy to find delegates at Saks Fifth Avenue: One merely had to play "follow the Scrunchie," or the squeak of tennis shoes. In front of the store's Ellen Tracy boutique, a corporate lobbyist from Maryland named Vicky was holding up a black jacket with matching pants and skirt. "The last time I was here I bought that black St. John's suit which looks exactly the same, but feel the material," she said, thrusting the ensemble at her friend Cindy, a lobbyist from Sacramento.

"You need more color in your wardrobe," Cindy told Vicky.

Convention organizers had hopefully designated Monday Fashion and Retail Day, but that morning, a planned fashion show and breakfast at Bloomingdale's was canceled. "Not enough RSVP's," said Kelly Mauro, the store's publicist.

Over at Henri Bendel, however, the mimosas were flowing freely at an 8 a.m. breakfast and private shopping session for G.O.P. visitors. Many of them crowded the lobby for makeovers, perching primly on chairs in tasteful sweater sets and low, sensible heels.

Upstairs, Austin, Tex., resident Julie Oles was trying on a jacket by Andrew Marc while her daughter, Sterling, clutched a just-purchased skirt by Paper Denim & Cloth. Sporting matching highlights, the pair proclaimed themselves "friends of the Bush campaign."

"We feel so lucky to be here!" the elder Ms. Oles gushed.

Sophie Shah was lounging on a round orange sofa in the shoe salon as a friend of hers modeled fuchsia ballet slippers. Both of them are natives of Houston. "When my friends come up from Texas, they head straight to Bendel's," said Ms. Shah, a Smith grad who works as a trader on Wall Street. "It's younger than Saks, which is where all the old Republican women will head. Bendel's is Jenna and Barbara, definitely."

Yet the twins were nowhere in evidence; it was their mother Laura who was headlining the event, bright-eyed and natty in a smart black suit. A handler barred The Observer from approaching the First Lady, but resident Bendel perfumer Lawrence Applebaum divulged that she "was very nice to me and thanked me for coming in early," adding that he'd been recommending the scent Aquaba by Miriam Mirani to the lady Republicans.

A few blocks up, a matronly looking group had poured into Barneys for a late-morning breakfast reception and fashion show. Afterward, they swarmed the Marc Jacobs shoe table. It was a well-groomed bunch, trim in pantsuits, nicely tailored dresses and heavy gold bracelets. One woman wore a giant choker around her neck, with elephants interlocked at the trunk.

"They're really blond," whispered one shopgirl to another.

"It's like The Stepford Wives," came the reply.

Stylish twentysomething Trish Wilson, another "friend of the Bush campaign," had eschewed the formal presentation-"I don't need anyone to show me what's hot," she huffed-and was upstairs on the trendy Co-Op floor, pawing through next season's capelets. "Even in the cities, it's hard to find items this current down South," she said, her round-toed Nine West pumps peeking out from bootcut jeans by True Religion.

"Honey, how do I look? Is it me?" a flaxen-haired delegate from Kentucky asked her mate, as she struck a model pose in a $4,390 black feathery jacket by Alexander McQueen. They both laughed, and left without buying.

The salespeople had been barred from making potentially political remarks to reporters.

"It's been very Jackie O., I can say that," said one.

-Noelle Hancock and Sara Vilkomerson

End of the Affair

For some reason I felt uneasy as I pulled up to Fabiola Beracasa's "End of the Summer" party on Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton on Aug. 28. Ms. Beracasa, the half-Venezuelan daughter of Veronica Hearst, grew up in New York and spent six years in a Swiss boarding school; now she's 28 and works in public relations. She chose as the party's theme the Clash's "Rock the Casbah." She'd invited 150 friends, such as Emilia Fanjul, daughter of Cuban sugar baron Pepe Fanjul. Ms. Fanjul works in public relations, too.

The house was on the wrong side of the highway, but impressive. I idled my powder-blue 1986 Mercedes and looked down the driveway: Between two very tall hedges stood some mooks-dark-suited security guards with clipboards. Not to mention six off-duty local cops.

I was technically invited-I'd spent enough summers as a wee lad in shorts in the Hamptons-but I wasn't drunk enough to feel comfortable. I pictured myself standing around the party, awkward and fidgety. Plus my driver's license was expired: I'd likely get drunk and get pulled over. I'd be spending the night in jail. And I didn't like the look of those mooks-the kind of thick-necked hired muscle who were just itching for the chance to pop some wiseass like me in the jaw.

I pulled the car up on the grass, got out and unzipped my pants: whizzzzzzzz.

I got back in the car and drove home. I switched on the TV news: two men had been brought in for questioning for plotting to blow up parts of Manhattan. That made me feel better: God bless racial profiling, I thought. Then I felt guilty. Then I remembered that involuntary bad thoughts often occur in the Hamptons. Earlier that day, for instance, walking around Main Beach, I'd noticed a lot of trash (packets of Red Lobster tartar sauce, etc.) and had some misanthropic and classist thoughts.

Well, at least I don't say these kind of things out loud.

I drank some wine and called my friend Henry, who offered his services as a designated driver. He and his girlfriend Ashley and I arrived back at Ms. Beracasa's at midnight. The party was going strong. The hostess was decked out in a jeweled Thai dress and elaborate headgear. (I figured Thailand was close enough to Morocco.) Four bars were sprinkled throughout a big backyard, which had been transformed into what a party planner might think a Moroccan nightclub would look like. There were tents with Oriental rugs, pillows, backgammon boards, lanterns and hookahs. Tons of food, no one eating. It looked like a Hollywood set.

The male guests were either prepped out, or looking like dopes in tunics, and the women wore either skintight spaghetti-strap dresses or Moroccan hooker-inspired outfits. I spotted socialites like Lulu Kwiatkowski, Tinsley Mortimer, Liz Cohen and Fernanda Niven. I was thinking about the white slave trade (more bad thoughts!) when I saw designer Stacey Bendet, the petite, curvy Democratic fund-raiser. She was wearing a black top of her own design, a Moroccan vintage necklace and a white calypso skirt. I thought about what she must look like naked, but asked about the convention. She said she was glad not to be in the city.

"I think it's gonna be rather sort of dysfunctional and a bit of a mob scene," she said. "It is sort of nice and surreal to be out here at a party like this. The Moroccan state of mind suggests total surrealism and sexual fantasy and being away from everything. But I don't think I'm totally there, because I do realize that I have to be back in New York in my office tomorrow afternoon."

She looked around the pool area. "It's just a great party, it's fun, it's the end of summer, it's happy and very Hamptons," she said.

She went off a little on President Bush: As far as I could tell, she didn't like his positions on the Iraq war, gay marriage, "everything financial," abortion, "his religious fervor," stem-cell research and the convention itself.

"I mean, why do it in New York?" she said. "You know, great: They caught someone trying to bomb 34th Street, but why have to worry about that? Of all the places!

Nearby was Chris Cuomo, the son of former Governor Mario Cuomo and brother of Andrew Cuomo. Mr. Cuomo said he thought that the party's Moroccan theme had significance.

"If you think Morocco, you think Muslim," he said. "But you think the Brahmin class, the wealthy Muslims. And out here you have the wealthy Republicans, the people who come out here are the monied class; the ideology is second. And when you think of Morocco, they may say, 'Well, it's Muslim, maybe it's in sympathy,' but it's not. That's the wealthy class also. So it's the money meeting the money."

I didn't really have a clue what he was talking about but appreciated his insights. I started to look around for a waiter; I needed a fresh cold one, and fast. Mr. Cuomo was on to another analogy, this one between the traffic in the city and the convention's ideological congestion.

"There's going to be a lot of ideas that don't get out in the way they should, it's like idea constipation," he said.

Could he sum up the crowd at the party? "This is the classic: lots of white rich pretending to know how to dance," he said.

One of them was John Theodoracopoulos, an heir to the Greek shipping fortune and nephew of right-wing writer Taki. "The only observation I would have is that you see people carry on here, and it's just not how the rest of the world lives," he said, looking around the swimming pool area. "A lot of privileged people enjoying themselves."

Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss, the fashion designer who dated Jerry Seinfeld before he married that girl from his gym, told me that her "hot-ass husband," a Coast Guard Reservist, was on a boat right then in the East River.

"That's all I'm thinking about right now," she said. "Worried about him, worried about New York. Bad traffic, bad traffic, bad traffic."

I asked about her outfit.

"It's black, heavily gilded-it's a good dancing outfit."

"What are those babies?" I asked.

"Boobs!" she said laughing. "We call these boobs."

It was after 1 a.m. when I sat down with Elisabeth Kieselstein-Cord, the 23-year-old daughter of the fancy belt-designer couple. She was wearing a tight pink vintage Halston dress. Her hair was sun-bleached. She wasn't wild about the Republican convention being held in her hometown.

"I have a feeling this may have been a Vanity Fair–type situation-for Giuliani, trying to host something so significant in the city, and saying we're equipped to do it," she said. "I have to say I find it a little bit irresponsible, to take up such a huge responsibility, just because it's such a hard city to patrol-I'm repelled by the idea that anyone would say, 'It's all right, come here, endanger our city further'-no matter who they were."

She went back to her date; I hadn't had the heart to tell her that Giuliani was no longer Mayor. I looked for Henry, but I didn't see him.

-George Gurley

They "R: The Party"

"First a Suburban filled with the girls' friends and family members is going to pull up, and then the girls are going to arrive in separate Suburbans," a clipboard-wielding publicist instructed the members of the ravenous media pack, each of whom was jostling behind barricades for position before the arrival of Barbara and Jenna Bush.

For their first solo public appearance of the convention, the Bush Twins were making a no-interviews-allowed red-carpet arrival at Roseland Ballroom on the night of Sunday, Aug. 29, for "R: The Party," an otherwise B-list concert held for the benefit of young Republicans. The first Suburban arrived around 10:30 p.m. and disgorged a dozen members of the first daughters' entourage-most of whom quickly traversed the red carpet and looked vaguely embarrassed as the photographers lowered their cameras in collective disappointment at the lack of boldface names. (The entourage included people like Elise Jordan, a recent Yale grad and friend of Barbara's who works in the White House speechwriting office.)

Women wore tame summer outfits, while blue button-ups and stone-colored khakis were standard attire for men.

"Disco Inferno" could be heard echoing from inside the cavernous club. Her male companion fiddled nervously with his Blackberry. Republicans are never ones to miss an important e-mail.

Veteran G.O.P. pollster Steve Lombardo was waiting in line with a posse of suit-clad men. "Do they have to be sober quotes?" he asked The Transom.

"We're very big fans of the Bush twins. We support them in-uh, what are they doing? They're hosting? Announcing?-Well, they're supporting their father and we're supporting them. Oh, and I'm Bill Kristol from The Weekly Standard!" He started cackling.

Jenna or Barbara? "I gotta go with Jenna. Barbara is more cerebral, but Jenna is probably a little more wild. But I don't know why it has to be either/or-they're not mutually exclusive, are they?"

"It's going to be a fun party; although I'm not a very good dancer, so I think most of the people here are going to hope that I don't dance. The fact is people think Republicans don't know how to have fun and we do. We're just a little more discreet."

He grabbed a glass of 12-year-old single malt out of a friend's hand and tried to down it. "I don't want the ice!" he frowned.

When the twins themselves hit the carpet outside, they terrified the media pack by walking into the ballroom almost without pause-before stopping a cool 45 seconds to pose for the cameras.

"Jenna, what are you wearing?" one reporter called out.

"Rebecca Taylor," Ms. Bush replied, breaking the no-interview rule in reference to her petite black jacket-and-jeans ensemble. Her sister, Barbara, also in jeans, left unanswered the question of who designed her slinky white tank top.

"Let's see a little over-the-shoulder action," one of the photographers suggested to the twins, who sheepishly complied, and traded a sisterly giggle.

And then, they were gone-inside to host a private party for their friends inside a curtained-off corner of the V.I.P.-reserved second level of the ball room.

The twins had left, entourage in tow, by 12:15 a.m.

-Blair Golson with Gabriel Sherman and N. H.

Mr. Negative

When you're talking about the Great Republican Smear Machine, as Democrats like to these days, Rick Wilson takes it a little personally.

"It's bullshit," he said Saturday night, sipping champagne at the pre-convention media party at the Time Warner Center. "Look at the Democrats in 1996. Bill Clinton fucked Bob Dole harder up the ass than anyone. They said that [Mr. Dole] was going to kill granny and throw the baby into the snow."

If Mr. Wilson sounds a little defensive, it's because he occupies a special place in Democratic demonology.

In 2002, he made a television ad for Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss that featured his opponent, Senator Max Cleland, along with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Cleland is the triple-amputee Vietnam veteran who introduced Senator John Kerry at the Democratic National Convention, and the ad-which helped unseat the Senator-is now a standard example of Republicans' willingness to question veterans' patriotism.

"I watched what they did to Max Cleland last year," Mr. Kerry said in 2003. ''Shame on them for doing it then and shame on them for trying to do it now."

Mr. Wilson's telling is, of course, a bit different.

"Just like John Kerry, [Cleland's] position was, 'I'm a war hero, don't ask me any fucking questions," Mr. Wilson recalled. "But he wanted to hold the homeland-security bill hostage to labor unions." That, Mr. Wilson says, is what the famous advertisement was about, and its text-which he recently posted to his blog, thebadrepublicanman.com-bears him out.

The consultant hardly looks like a bad Republican man. He's a medium-sized man in early middle age with spectacles, ears that stick out a bit and a mild demeanor belied only by his wide, creative use of profanity. (He was worrying that evening because an anonymous quote he'd given included the word "assload," a sure giveaway of his authorship.) Wearing a checked jacket and a bright blue shirt, he fit in nicely with the journalistic horde.

But Mr. Wilson is a rare political professional willing to defend in public what many concede in private: the political power of going negative.

"The fact of the matter is that that's what works in a campaign," he said. It's not, he realizes, a popular position.

"That Annenberg thing [otherwise known as the Annenberg Public Policy Center] puts out a study every couple of years deploring the rise of negative campaigning," he said. "Blah blah blah blah blah."

Democrats don't always know how to fight back. Mr. Cleland "fucked it up at every pass," he said. And he sees Senator Kerry going down the same road. "It's the death of 1,000 cuts," he said.

Mr. Wilson only works for Republicans, and he'll happily hammer away on their favorite themes from security to abortion. But before he skittered away in the direction of an aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg-Mr. Wilson has worked for Mayor Giuliani, and he's always on the lookout for business-he added a personal note.

"You know, I'm not really that right-wing," he explained. "I'm an operative."

-Ben Smith

Manhattan Mugging

William Miller sat on the patio of the Bryant Park Grill Sunday afternoon nursing a bloody Mary and recalled his political awakening.

"I was arguing the virtues of President Nixon when I was 9," said Mr. Miller, a 41-year-old investment banker from Park Slope, Brooklyn. Proclaiming his grade-school allegiance to Republicanism, he went on: "But the Carter-Reagan election was when I really started paying attention to politics." Wearing a blue blazer, tan slacks and delicate metal-framed glasses, Mr. Miller was exactly the kind of conservative, nerdy guy so many New Yorkers imagine when they summon for themselves a picture of a Log Cabin Republican, those Republicans whose combined passions for gay and Republican politics an idea that seems so strange here.

And yet, if there are liberal Republicans to be found, it's here, isn't it? To Mr. Miller, the gays don't get it.

"If you tell a gay New Yorker you're a Republican," said Mr. Miller, "they just look at you and say, 'why?'"

The Log Cabiners had swarmed excitedly to New York City to watch George W. Bush take the reigns of the party in the upcoming election. It had started out nicely enough. Cabin members from around the country checked in to the organization's official hotel, the Melrose on 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue; some carried golf gear, others attended strategy workshops on the 18th floor; most all wore pleated khaki pants. For a change Mr. Miller, rather than being the odd one out in New York's Bush-bashing gay community, was surrounded by hundreds of fellow travelers, with 200 of them in attendance at the much-touted Sunday afternoon event celebrating "Big Tent" Republicanism where Mr. Miller spoke to The Observer.

But, as on television, pundits who dissected what they saw as a movement of the Republican party to pick up support from moderates were seeing a different story.

By Monday morning, the Log Cabin executive director, Patrick Guerriero, found himself at a press conference announcing the release of a television ad on behalf of Log Cabin Republicans claiming that the convention and the party platform had been mugged by the radical right: It would include a plank calling for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He issued a statement saying in part, "We are here today … to tell those on the far right that they do not own the Republican Party. This party belongs to no one person and no one group. It is time that our platform recognizes this reality."

Late efforts by Log Cabin Republicans to include even a plank acknowledging some Republicans differed on the subject of marriage, to supplement the marriage-amendment plank, were also rejected.

In fact, things had turned sour before any of the media, or most of the Log Cabin delegates, arrived at the Melrose Hotel. Christopher Barron, the group's political director, had arrived in New York last Tuesday and the next day attended the committee hearings discussing the final wording of the G.O.P.'s 93-page platform document.

"I went in hoping that we would be having an open discussion on the possibility of adding our party unity plank that we had proposed a couple of weeks before with the Republican Youth Majority and Republicans for Choice," he said, "and that we would be able to convince the committee not to take a position on the constitutional amendment, especially given that the Vice President had come out the night before and spoke from his heart and made it clear how divisive this issue had been and how he still opposed it. But I got there that morning and saw [the language was in the platform]."

Senator and presumed 2008 hopeful Bill Frist was present at the hearing and spoke to Mr. Barron. The conversation the two men had was "private," but Mr. Barron said that he spoke to the Senator about the specific language that ended up in the document.

In the days that followed, Mr. Barron and 40 Log Cabin delegates and alternates began lobbying incoming convention delegates to consider taking the fight to the floor of the convention.

Asked about the response they'd received from delegates so far, Mr. Barron only mentioned one name. Congresswoman Mary Bono, Sonny's widow and the representative from Palm Springs, Calif., had voluntarily opted to skip the convention and cited one of the reasons as the president's support of the Federal Marriage Amendment. "We never even asked Congresswoman Bono to take this position," he said.

-Shazia Ahmad

"Flip-flops on Fifth Avenue!" groaned double nominee Michael Kors, his arm around aspiring starlet Molly Sims, whose fringed frock swept the floor. "I'm wearing high heels right now because when you have a model as a date, a guy needs a little height." He lifted up his chunky shoes.

"Bikinis with cellu- leet !" shuddered Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley, who had opted for a teal and yellow muumuu.

"Wearing no clothes," said Martha Stewart, her mouth settling into a firm line. Ms. Stewart was wearing a white satin jacket and black cigarette pants; mercifully, she'd ditched the Birkin bag, arriving with women's-wear nominee Ralph Rucci on her arm instead. For at the so-called "Oscars of the fashion industry," the hottest accessory proved to be the designers themselves. Actress Natalie Portman had a Zac Posen copper flapper dress on her bod and the cream-sateen-clad Mr. Posen by her side (he would go on to win the Emerging Talent statue), while West Side power wife Jessica Seinfeld brought Narciso Rodriguez.

"You can't make no mistakes in fashion," declared hip-hop's Jay-Z, who arrived almost an hour before his alleged girlfriend Beyoncé and was instantly swarmed by eager partygoers. "Fashion is about your attitude, because we all basically shop at the same places, so it's about how you wear something. You gotta wear the clothes, don't let them wear you. I gotta get me a drink now."

What are people excited about wearing this summer?

"Baby barf!" said the singer Seal, who has been playing proud step-papa to luscious model Heidi Klum's 5-week-old baby, Leni.

"I'm just happy if I fit into anything right now," said Ms. Klum, who was poured into a gleaming red Kors gown that puddled around her feet. Encircling her wrist was a delicate rose-gold bracelet with her daughter's name inset in rubies.

"My cheap Chinatown slippers!" said model Alek Wek, swilling orange juice on the rocks.

"I have bought a Pucci bathing suit-I'm very excited about that," said Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour.

The library's ballroom was awash in color, with crystal candelabras and clear vessels of emerald liquid twinkling down long parallel tables. In the foyer, curtains of green crystals hung from the archways. Stepford models had been scattered throughout the room, wearing austere ponytails, blue strappy heels and borrowed fuchsia Marc Jacobs frocks.

Across the street, the inevitable PETA pack was hoisting signs with a photo of an about-to-be-clubbed baby seal, protesting "[Donna] Karan's Killer Look." Ms. Karan was one of the last guests to arrive, after some trouble with the lace overlay on her lime dress. "It's caught on my shoe!" she said, staggering a bit. "I've learned my lesson about lace!" And with that she hurried into the ballroom, leaving those in her wake with an eyeful of black thong.

-Noelle Hancock

Howard's Friends

Dr. Ruth Westheimer was squealing with pleasure. "I love parties!" she yelped as she trotted around the inner courtyard of Tavern on the Green, clutching a glass of Diet Coke with Lemon. "Who would have thought that I'm going to be at a party where there are all these security guards, and where the Mayor's going to come and the Governor, and everybody knows me? Even Cindy Adams knows me! It's wonderful to be Dr. Ruth!"

It was 5:30 p.m. on a steamy Monday evening, and the good doctor was in a state of near-ecstasy as politicians, media moguls, business machers and demi-celebrities from every walk of New York life began pouring into the old Manhattan boîte for one of the year's great schmooze-fests: the 50th-anniversary celebration of Howard Rubenstein's public-relations firm.

The affable septuagenarian, the soirée proved, was capable of being friends with just about everyone. Which is why the party seemed like such a sublime rat-fuck: By night's end, some 3,000 people had crammed the corridors of Tavern on the Green to pay tribute to the father of spin.

"I'm not his client, but still I celebrate Howard," said Dr. Ruth, who was small enough to fit in a pocketbook, and looked like the consummate bubby in her dark slacks, blue-striped silk chemise and sensible shoes.

"I told Howard's wife that I would like someone like him as a husband-but without a wife. I told her because I wanted her to hear it from me, not someone else," she added, before her attention was diverted by a popping flashbulb and she stage-dived into a photograph with Regis Philbin, Cindy Adams (who looked positively hieroglyphic in thick Nefertiti eyeliner) and the man of honor himself, Howard Rubenstein. Later the sly "sexpert" repeated the move just as a photographer was about to snap a rare photo of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Reverend Al Sharpton. Nestled between the unlikely pair, she beamed for the camera like the clueless love child of what might have been the world's strangest political union.

There was Michael Bolton (remember him?), that sensitive soft-rock crooner, talking politics with a gaggle of hard-boiled local electeds in the restaurant's glass-cased rotunda; the craggy-faced Rupert Murdoch squiring Wendy Deng, his youthful wife No. 3, through the crowd of publicists and media vipers; Cardinal Egan rubbing elbows with the divorced Duchess of York.

Indeed, during his 50 years as the city's pre-eminent spin doctor, Mr. Rubenstein (or "Mr. Ruben," as Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert called him during the press-conference portion of the evening) has been nothing if not a master at managing prickly personalities. He has represented Democrats and Republicans, unions and management, a cancer hospital and the Tobacco Institute, somehow stitching them all together into one seamless, if motley, portfolio.

"He is the Gretzky of Rolodexes," said former Mayoral contender Mark Green, smiling at his sports reference. "He's the Great One."

"It's like he's my uncle: He gives me a place where I'm able to be myself," said Duchess Fergie during a fidgety and somewhat depressing speech about the way Mr. Rubenstein had helped her turn her life around after her split from Prince Andrew in 1991. (Among other things, he was the fairy godfather who helped turn her into the Weight Watchers spokeswoman seven years ago.)

"He's gotten me out of many scrapes," she told The Transom a few minutes later, as two Secret Service agents ushered her and her black stilettos out of the event. "My whole life's a scrape."

Indeed, if there was one theme that popped up again and again during the golden-anniversary celebration, it was the 72-year-old spin maestro's uncanny ability to "get people out of problems with the media," as Senator Hillary Clinton put it.

"Now I wouldn't know anything about that," she chuckled as she stood at the podium, a large topiary gorilla looming behind her. "And I didn't meet Howard early enough to have avoided a lot of that. But ever since I did make Howard's acquaintance and develop a friendship with him, it's just remarkable that I've stayed out of trouble as long as I have."

-Lizzy Ratner

Napoleon Complex

Jared Hess, the 24-year-old creator of Napoleon Dynamite -an offbeat comedy to be released in New York on Friday-was recalling the first time the film was screened at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

"I was dry-heaving," Mr. Hess said.

How vivid! He was sitting on June 8 at a sun-drenched table in the dining room of the Essex House on Central Park South.

"I was just pacing outside. I expected to hear crickets. But people laughed from the very first shot to the very end. We got a standing ovation. It was a dream come true."

That dream has brought the Midwesterner to New York for the first time. A little less than five months later, on the eve of the film's release, Mr. Hess appears relaxed and confident, but wholly out of place-wearing a plaid cowboy shirt, jeans and a pair of gray suede New Balance shoes-in the ornate dining room. But it is, after all, the Muse of Not Fitting In that speaks through Mr. Hess. Napoleon Dynamite , about a gangly, bespectacled mouth-breather from rural Preston, Idaho (Mr. Hess' hometown), played by newcomer Jon Heder, is a unique, refreshing homage to the awkwardness of high school, and if the buzz surrounding it is true, it could very well be the sleeper hit of the summer.

The buzz began after that first Sundance screening. Offers from studios-"everyone that I can think of"-began pouring in. His producer's rep, the savvy veteran John Sloss, advised him to hold off scheduling meetings until the end of the second screening the next day. When that time came-before he could say, "Get Harvey!"-Mr. Hess was in a room with what seemed like the entire executive staff of Fox Searchlight Pictures, including president Peter Rice.

"They were all like, 'We love this movie,'" he gushed from behind of a pair of brown rectangular glasses. Mr. Hess, who was in Park City with his wife, Jerusha Hess (who is also the co-writer of the film), said that the Searchlight team seemed "genuine." They outlined how they'd like to market the film and when they'd like to release it. According to Mr. Hess, then they gave him an ultimatum: "We're not leaving until we have this film. And by the way, we have a screening at 5, and if we have to leave and go to that and we haven't closed the deal, we're not coming back for it."

Impressed by their group effort and their track record-especially the success they'd had with the indie thriller 28 Days Later -Mr. Hess, a Mormon who'd only recently dropped out of college, gave the O.K., and Mr. Sloss disappeared into a separate room with the studio's attorney. He emerged, reportedly, with a deal between $3 million and $4.75 million for the film. Mr. Hess has yet to be paid, but he said that was customary until certain "delivery requirements" had been met. He assured The Transom, however, that he'd recently met his contractual obligations and hopes that "the ship will be arriving soon." The film cost $200,000 to make-money producer Jeremy Coon secured through a relative, who will now be reimbursed.

But even though things seem to be working out quite well, Mr. Hess still remembers times on the set when he was more like Napoleon than the next Wes Anderson: "While we were shooting the film," he said, "I was dry-heaving every morning of every day for the two weeks."

-Jake Brooks

Silent Treatment

The Museum of Modern Art never promised you a rose garden, but a garden of some sort would've sufficed for the institution's 36th annual Garden Party, held at the musky Roseland Ballroom on the evening of Monday, June 7.

Ongoing renovation-how long has it been now?-at MoMA's West 54th Street headquarters had forced the revelers from the cool and shady stone yard of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, where MoMA clever-clogs usually find themselves when it's time to celebrate.

But MoMA had no problem getting its generous benefactors-the Lauders, the Rockefellers and Agnes Gund included-to slum it for the evening along with the odd celebrity. This year, MoMA honored a very odd one-Steve Martin, the Hollywood man of letters-for his support of contemporary art.

The actor's collection reportedly includes works by Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, Francis Bacon, Edward Hopper and David Hockney.

Sporting a pencil-thin mustache-he's currently playing Inspector Clouseau in a remake of The Pink Panther -Mr. Martin arrived early and alone and quickly parked himself in a dimly lit corner of the ballroom's bar. The Transom had been advised that the actor wasn't talking to press, and indeed Mr. Martin's mustachioed lips were tightly zipped. Attempts to engage were swiftly deflected, thanks in part to an overzealous male chargé d'affaires by his side.

"Here's the problem," said the zealous chargé d'affaires by his side. "He's been shouting on set for a couple of days, and really we're just standing here and not even talking to each other just to save his voice, so I don't mean to be rude," the aide said.

Mr. Martin nodded and appeared to have taken on the look and mannerisms of the socially awkward, poker-faced Inspector Clouseau.

The Transom moved on to another mustachioed, less anxious guest, John Waters. Asked what he made of Mr. Martin's MoMA seal of approval, Mr. Waters was inscrutable.

"I think it's great," he said. "Collectors are honored with everything from having a door named after them in a museum to having their names on boards. He's setting a good example so other movie stars become collectors."

Mr. Waters, himself a collector of "art that makes you mad," was less jovial about his own recent honor, presented to him by the MPAA: an NC-17 rating for his new film A Dirty Shame .

"From whence I came," smiled Mr. Waters. "It's no use in whining. I've had NC-17 ratings in my life for Female Trouble and Pink Flamingos . I personally was shocked this film got one. I lost the appeal. Here we are again: 'NC John.'"

Was this a throwback to the culture wars of the 80's, The Transom wondered?

"I don't speak ill of the dead yet," said Mr. Waters. "Let's give it a week."

-Shazia Ahmad

Nap Time for Nicky

"I need these now," Nicole Kidman announced, placing a pair of squared-off glasses on the bridge her patrician nose. She was about to present a Tony Award to Hugh Jackman for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Yet no librarian glasses could hide what was clear to everyone lining the red carpet on June 6: Nicole Kidman was tired.

It was hard not to think of reports that had came out earlier in the day that, after months of editing and 11th-hour additions, nothing and no one had been able to sharpen the vision behind the beleaguered remake of The Stepford Wives , due to hit theaters the following week.

In the end, a three-month production turned into an eight-month epic. "It was a long time, and I don't do well with long times," Ms. Kidman admitted to the New York Post at a press conference held June 3.

Something was very wrong on the set of Stepford -and it was no secret. Since cameras started rolling, rumors have circulated of fighting among the fembots and the men who love them. Specifically, Ms. Kidman and Bette Midler were said to have been at odds, while Christopher Walken reportedly bickered with director Frank Oz, who himself was having difficulties with the Paramount studio heads.

It couldn't help matters that the night of the Los Angeles premiere, Ms. Kidman was busy reading from a teleprompter at Radio City Music Hall, throwing more support behind The Boy from Oz .

"She's been a great supporter of mine," the musical's star and Ms. Kidman's fellow Australian, Hugh Jackman, said later. "I know exactly how busy she is at the moment, and for her to be there tonight just meant the world to me."

Even Ms. Kidman's Stepford husband, Broadway star Matthew Broderick, attended the premiere, leaving real-life wife Sarah Jessica Parker to present the Tony Award for Best Musical with his Producers partner, Nathan Lane.

Yet Ms. Kidman stood by her man-her countryman, that is-whom she'd met through his wife, Australian soap star Deborra-Lee Furness. A longtime friend of Ms. Kidman's, Ms. Furness even offered up her couch to the fluffy, strawberry-haired ingenue when she first moved to L.A.

Now more than a decade, a marriage, two kids, a divorce and one embattled movie later, that same hair was blond, blown straight and anchored back in a taut ponytail.

Glasses on, a decidedly sharp expression on her face, Ms. Kidman announced her friend as the winner. A short, businesslike congratulatory kiss followed.

"[Nicole] said to me, 'If it's not your name, I think I'm going to read yours out anyway,'" Mr. Jackman later recalled fondly to The Transom. "So I would have had a Tony for about 30 seconds before someone came and took us all to jail."

At least she could have gotten some rest.

-N.H.

Rocky's Road

Here's a way to beat the tedium of being an editorial assistant: call up the head of a rival publishing house and tell him you're feeling like your life is all work and no recreation. Explain that you're a singer, looking to get back into practice. Maybe he wants to get together and jam sometime?

That's how Rakesh Satyal, a 23-year-old who works in the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group of Random House, got to know Jonathan Burnham, a classically trained pianist and the president and publisher of Miramax Books.

"I was having lunch in the city one day with Edmund White, who was my creative-writing teacher at Princeton, and he suggested that I contact his friend Jonathan," Mr. Satyal said. (Mr. Burnham spent several years as editorial director of Chatto & Windus, which publishes Mr. White's books in the U.K.) "I felt all right doing it because I had a legitimate point of connection, but I was kind of expecting him to say no."

Mr. Burnham's improbable acquiescence led to the birth of a cabaret act called "Rocky and Johnny," in which Mr. Burnham accompanies Mr. Satyal in a program of show tunes and jazz standards by the likes of Gershwin, Bernstein and Elvis Costello.

Last Wednesday at Danny's Skylight Room, in Danny's Grand Sea Palace, a restaurant where "Bangkok meets Broadway" on West 46th Street, Rocky and Johnny were scheduled to perform at 9:15. The décor was more Thai than nautical: ginger-colored tablecloths, black lacquered chairs, glass panels with etchings of lilypads and carp. By 9:11, there were 15 people in the crowd: a trio in town from Miramax's London office, a friend of Mr. Burnham's and her daughters, a couple from Bloomsbury, plus six friends of Mr. Satyal's from college. No one was sure about the balding guy with the magazine.

"If they don't show, we'll wait another five," a technician said as he consulted the guest list. The small group tried to figure out how to meet the $10 food-and-drink minimum without going over it. Coronas, mostly, though the couple took the cheesecake.

Mr. Burnham, an urbane, well-built man in his 40's, peeked out from the stage door, which doubled as a bus station. Minutes later, Mr. Satyal, who has a slim frame and an excitable manner, emerged from behind a curtain and made his way to a stool in the center of the stage. He was wearing a navy pinstriped suit with a crisp shirt and tie. His hair was parted far on the side, and it looked Brylcreemed, like Mr. Bean's. He apologized for having a cold, which he'd contracted, he explained, trying to paint an apple-tree mural on the wall of his apartment.

"When I'm singing, I'm Nina Simone; when I'm speaking, I'm Joan Rivers," he warned.

In spite of his sinus problems, Mr. Satyal launched into a snappy love song called "All I Care Is About," in a deep yet fresh voice that was startlingly good. His soulful delivery sometimes seemed at odds with the flightiness of his monologues (Madonna! Star Jones! D.I.Y. interior design!), but Mr. Burnham, playing with a tucked chin and bobbing shoulders, followed his partner's fluctuations expertly. A dusky blue light came on, and Mr. Satyal sang Fiona Apple's "Slow Like Honey," kneading the vowels with his voice until "honey" sounded more like "home." The girl from Bloomsbury began to reach for her companion under the table. The room was entirely still-save for the sound of the busboy emptying beer bottles-as he hit the reaches of his falsetto.

The duo practices about every other week, usually on Sundays, at Mr. Burnham's loft in Tribeca, where he keeps a baby grand. Their tastes in music complement each other: Mr. Burnham knows the old stuff, and Mr. Satyal introduces him to singers and songwriters like Fiona Apple and Rufus Wainright. Then there was the Enya Incident.

"I assured Rakesh that this was the only time this particular artist had ever been played in my apartment," Mr. Burnham remembered.

Occasionally, the talk tends toward their day jobs-"We'll talk about proposals we've both seen, and who's taken what and who's rejected what," Mr. Satyal said-but more often, it doesn't.

"The relationship is really through the music," said Mr. Burnham, who, as a student until he was "about 30," earned extra money playing cabaret in bars in places like Oxford, Paris and Venice. And while Mr. Burnham allows that the group, thus far, has drawn a largely literary following, he decried the notion of Rocky and Johnny as a niche act.

"I don't want to make it a mandatory office thing to come," he said. "And we're trying to get it to be more than a publishing crowd."

Mr. Burnham continued to play quiet foil to the star as they reached Mr. Satyal's favorite part of the set, the "Moon River"/"Fly Me to the Moon" sequence, which provoked a flare of a grin from Mr. Burnham, who had spent most of the monologue shuffling through his music and trying to look serious. It was the "Mr. Cellophane" (from Chicago ) finale that had the audience laughing hardest. Mr. Satyal feigned haplessness with real talent as he slumped and pouted and sang, "Mister Cellophane / Shoulda been my name / 'Cause you can look right through me / Walk right by me / And never ever know I'm there."

Mr. Burnham left quickly after the performance, but Mr. Satyal stuck around talking to his friends, several of whom were old a cappella buddies. "Hey-somebody left a full drink," one of them observed, pointing to a watery vodka cranberry at the Miramax table.

-Lauren Collins