Next week, Christie's is auctioning off 250 personal items from Bobby Short's Upper East Side home.

The famed singer and pianist, who performed at the Cafe Carlyle for more than 35 years, died last March. Lot highlights from the auction include the talent's black lacquer Bechstein grand piano, his Cartier wristwatch and a wooden bird house that models The Carlyle Hotel.

The Sale at Christie's

- Riva Froymovich

If there's a glimmer of light on G.M.'s horizon, we can't find it. The company has $23 billion in cash, but owes about $30 billion. It's original projection of a positive cash flow of $2 billion this year now looks like a negative cash flow of $2 billion. To add insult to injury, G.M. has to pay Fiat $2 billion to extract itself from a foolish deal the company made in which ailing Fiat would be given the right to sell its auto business to G.M. Meanwhile, G.M.'s credit rating is on the brink of being downgraded to junk-bond status.

Perhaps the most critical factor is market share. Twenty-five years ago, G.M.'s share of the U.S. market was over 50 percent. Ten years ago, they had 33 percent, and today they have just 25 percent. G.M. is not alone: In 1999, Detroit's big three held almost 71 percent of the U.S. market; now they have just 58 percent, and that number shows no signs of changing direction. Indeed, Chrysler is basically out of business, and Ford is looking shaky at best. How did three of the world's most recognizable brand names become dinosaurs on the brink of extinction? What happened?

A complacent arrogance on the part of the U.S. automakers' management is largely to blame. Years ago, people went to work for G.M., Ford and Chrysler because they were great, cushy jobs. You didn't have to do a darn thing, and as long as you showed up and kept your nose clean, eventually you could buy a nice pile in Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills. The problem was, these coddled executives eventually became upper management, and snoozed their way through the 1980's and 1990's as the foreign auto makers blew right by them. Now they wake up to find that they don't have the engineering or the design to compete, and that the European and Japanese auto makers are eating their lunch. (In the old days, you couldn't find a place to repair a foreign car. Now the network of foreign dealerships is so widespread, it's as easy-if not easier-to get a foreign car serviced and repaired as an American model.)

And so the once-great American corporation that produced such brand names as Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Chevrolet and Cadillac-names that have long since lost their luster and market power-looks to be almost beyond saving. G.M. has announced plans to trim its bloated white-collar work force by as much as 28 percent in some departments. Not to mention that the company faces a bruising fight over health-care benefits with the United Auto Workers union.

Can G.M. turn around? The situation almost requires an extraordinary C.E.O. type to go in there and make the radical changes that might be necessary. But who would that be? And who might have the power to do it?

City Student Wins Intel Prize

S

tudents from New York City schools regularly dominate the lists of semifinalists and finalists for the Intel Science Talent Search, the country's most prestigious science contest. This year, for the first time since 2000, a New York City student has also won the top prize. And the winning project reminds us of how much the world has changed since the city's last first-place finish.

David L.V. Bauer, a 17-year-old Bronx resident, was awarded a $100,000 college scholarship for his work on developing a new way of detecting toxic substances in the nervous system. The project is a legacy of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, when New York realized how vulnerable it was to all kinds of new and deadly menaces. David, a senior at Hunter College High School, began his research when he learned that a lab worker who had been at Ground Zero on Sept. 11 had a higher level of asbestos exposure than other workers. That inspired him to think about ways to quickly measure a person's level of exposure to toxins in the event of another terrorist attack.

His research may lead to the development of a patch that could instantly detect toxins in the nervous system. As he noted, such a device would be of enormous help to firefighters, paramedics and other first responders. He conducted his research at the City College of New York, assisted by Professor Valeria Balogh-Nair.

The Intel judges have a knack for choosing talent: Past winners of the Intel contest-formerly known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search-have gone on to receive six Nobel Prizes, 10 MacArthur Foundation grants and three National Medals of Science.

Two public schools-Hunter College High and CCNY-played an instrumental role in Mr. Bauer's success. Granted, Hunter College High is not your average public high school. It's highly selective, as are public schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. But at a time when so many are willing to give up on the very idea of public education, it's imperative that we remember that students like David Bauer are thriving in the city school system.

In fact, young David himself seems to appreciate the role that public institutions have played in developing his talent. He plans to attend the City University of New York's Honors College next year, and says he hopes one day to teach at CUNY. If New York is lucky, David's future successes will not lead him to reconsider that laudable goal. You can be sure that the nation's top private universities will be bidding for his services one day.

Bobby Short

O

ne of the brightest lights of Manhattan went out last week, when the singer, piano player and entertainer par excellence Bobby Short died at the age of 80. For over 35 years, Short held court behind his Baldwin grand piano at the Café Carlyle on Manhattan's Upper East Side, performing standards by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and all the greats, reflecting back to the city an aura of sophistication that became a set piece in Woody Allen films.

Short's elegance, joie de vivre and infectious energy were born of hard work. At 9 years old, he was playing in roadhouses in his native Illinois, and when he first played piano in New York's jazz clubs, he was just 13. He started playing all around the country and soon met Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, Cole Porter and his beloved partner Mabel Mercer, with whom he performed a series of legendary concerts at Town Hall on West 43rd Street in the early 1960's. After making a name for himself in Los Angeles clubs with his carefree and assured playing style, he came back to conquer New York in 1968. As effortless as his reign at the Carlyle may have seemed, he never stopped practicing his majestic piano and refining his purring, growling vocal technique.

He infused his audience with his love of the music, from the sand in his shoes to his white tie and tails. At the time of his death, he was booked to play his regular gig at the Carlyle this spring. As he often sang in the Cole Porter song he loved so well, for New Yorkers everywhere, Bobby Short was "the best, the crest, the works."

If there's a glimmer of light on G.M.'s horizon, we can't find it. The company has $23 billion in cash, but owes about $30 billion. It's original projection of a positive cash flow of $2 billion this year now looks like a negative cash flow of $2 billion. To add insult to injury, G.M. has to pay Fiat $2 billion to extract itself from a foolish deal the company made in which ailing Fiat would be given the right to sell its auto business to G.M. Meanwhile, G.M.'s credit rating is on the brink of being downgraded to junk-bond status.

Perhaps the most critical factor is market share. Twenty-five years ago, G.M.'s share of the U.S. market was over 50 percent. Ten years ago, they had 33 percent, and today they have just 25 percent. G.M. is not alone: In 1999, Detroit's big three held almost 71 percent of the U.S. market; now they have just 58 percent, and that number shows no signs of changing direction. Indeed, Chrysler is basically out of business, and Ford is looking shaky at best. How did three of the world's most recognizable brand names become dinosaurs on the brink of extinction? What happened?

A complacent arrogance on the part of the U.S. automakers' management is largely to blame. Years ago, people went to work for G.M., Ford and Chrysler because they were great, cushy jobs. You didn't have to do a darn thing, and as long as you showed up and kept your nose clean, eventually you could buy a nice pile in Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills. The problem was, these coddled executives eventually became upper management, and snoozed their way through the 1980's and 1990's as the foreign auto makers blew right by them. Now they wake up to find that they don't have the engineering or the design to compete, and that the European and Japanese auto makers are eating their lunch. (In the old days, you couldn't find a place to repair a foreign car. Now the network of foreign dealerships is so widespread, it's as easy-if not easier-to get a foreign car serviced and repaired as an American model.)

And so the once-great American corporation that produced such brand names as Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Chevrolet and Cadillac-names that have long since lost their luster and market power-looks to be almost beyond saving. G.M. has announced plans to trim its bloated white-collar work force by as much as 28 percent in some departments. Not to mention that the company faces a bruising fight over health-care benefits with the United Auto Workers union.

Can G.M. turn around? The situation almost requires an extraordinary C.E.O. type to go in there and make the radical changes that might be necessary. But who would that be? And who might have the power to do it?

City Student Wins Intel Science Prize

Students from New York City schools regularly dominate the lists of semifinalists and finalists for the Intel Science Talent Search, the country's most prestigious science contest. This year, for the first time since 2000, a New York City student has also won the top prize. And the winning project reminds us of how much the world has changed since the city's last first-place finish.

David L.V. Bauer, a 17-year-old Bronx resident, was awarded a $100,000 college scholarship for his work on developing a new way of detecting toxic substances in the nervous system. The project is a legacy of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, when New York realized how vulnerable it was to all kinds of new and deadly menaces. David, a senior at Hunter College High School, began his research when he learned that a lab worker who had been at Ground Zero on Sept. 11 had a higher level of asbestos exposure than other workers. That inspired him to think about ways to quickly measure a person's level of exposure to toxins in the event of another terrorist attack.

His research may lead to the development of a patch that could instantly detect toxins in the nervous system. As he noted, such a device would be of enormous help to firefighters, paramedics and other first responders. He conducted his research at the City College of New York, assisted by Professor Valeria Balogh-Nair.

The Intel judges have a knack for choosing talent: Past winners of the Intel contest-formerly known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search-have gone on to receive six Nobel Prizes, 10 MacArthur Foundation grants and three National Medals of Science.

Two public schools-Hunter College High and CCNY-played an instrumental role in Mr. Bauer's success. Granted, Hunter College High is not your average public high school. It's highly selective, as are public schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. But at a time when so many are willing to give up on the very idea of public education, it's imperative that we remember that students like David Bauer are thriving in the city school system.

In fact, young David himself seems to appreciate the role that public institutions have played in developing his talent. He plans to attend the City University of New York's Honors College next year, and says he hopes one day to teach at CUNY. If New York is lucky, David's future successes will not lead him to reconsider that laudable goal. You can be sure that the nation's top private universities will be bidding for his services one day.

Bobby Short

One of the brightest lights of Manhattan went out last week, when the singer, piano player and entertainer par excellence Bobby Short died at the age of 80. For over 35 years, Short held court behind his Baldwin grand piano at the Café Carlyle on Manhattan's Upper East Side, performing standards by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and all the greats, reflecting back to the city an aura of sophistication that became a set piece in Woody Allen films.

Short's elegance, joie de vivre and infectious energy were born of hard work. At 9 years old, he was playing in roadhouses in his native Illinois, and when he first played piano in New York's jazz clubs, he was just 13. He started playing all around the country and soon met Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, Cole Porter and his beloved partner Mabel Mercer, with whom he performed a series of legendary concerts at Town Hall on West 43rd Street in the early 1960's. After making a name for himself in Los Angeles clubs with his carefree and assured playing style, he came back to conquer New York in 1968. As effortless as his reign at the Carlyle may have seemed, he never stopped practicing his majestic piano and refining his purring, growling vocal technique.

He infused his audience with his love of the music, from the sand in his shoes to his white tie and tails. At the time of his death, he was booked to play his regular gig at the Carlyle this spring. As he often sang in the Cole Porter song he loved so well, for New Yorkers everywhere, Bobby Short was "the best, the crest, the works."

Still, he inherited Mabel's throne and made Cole Porter, Vernon Duke, Irving Berlin and Cy Coleman more popular than ever. When he died unexpectedly Monday at 80, he drove the final nail in the coffin lid of sophisticated popular music. But I believe the purity of what he contributed to the world of popular music will still mean something. He relentlessly pursued do when everybody said don't, and in a world where music has largely been replaced by jerks and groans and flat falsetto screams programmed by I.B.M. computers that have regrettably gone mad, Bobby Short sang about love-the one thing that will never become camp. Pity the saloon singers who elect to follow in the footsteps of his patent-leather shoes.

For the poor son of a coal miner from Danville, Ill., he learned fast. Robert Nahas, his best friend and the co-executor of his estate, says, "Bobby came out of the womb attached to a grand piano." He could never read a note of music, but he played the piano in Danville saloons at the age of 9, ran away from home at 12 and landed in New York just shy of 13, quickly becoming the darling of café society. It was years before he found a permanent perch at the swank Café Carlyle, but it was home for nearly 40 years. From the beginning, he didn't hang out with the cats. He loved to sing and play black anthems by Lil Green and Fats Waller, but was more at home with the Blue Ribbon 400 than the Harlem jazzbos who frequented the old Cotton Club. His apartment was filled with trophies and awards, a testament to the fact that he was an easy person to honor at charity benefits. His society clientele were the high rollers who could afford to write $10,000 checks. Yet he successfully straddled several worlds and remained a darling of jazz purists from Sugar Hill, matrons from Park Avenue and tourists from Little Rock.

In the past few years, even after rap and rock relegated real music to museum status, a visit to hear Bobby Short sing "From This Moment On" at the Carlyle was as de rigueur on a trip to New York as a tour of Ground Zero. Wherever Bobby Short appeared, he brought back an era for his audience of faded glamour girls in their last 40 pounds of unhocked Bulgaris and aging Esquire covers who never wandered west of Fifth Avenue except to sail for Europe. Full of the old paprika, he gave them what they wanted: nostalgia and romance and take-home tunes they could hum. He was always worth the check. A soigné dresser and an eager consumer of the best life had to offer, Bobby was often accused of being too "swellegant" for words; but although he drank the best champagne and spent half of the year at his villa in the South of France, a stone's throw from the exclusive Moulin de Mougins restaurant, his three favorite words in the culinary legerdemain were "macaroni and cheese."

I never attended a Bobby Short dinner party that didn't serve fried chicken or meat loaf. And while it is impossible to imagine an elevator operator on his guest list, his snobbery had charm. He rubbed elbows with kings and queens, yet he told me one of the greatest events in his life was the night I took Alice Faye to the Café Carlyle. He played for her while she sang "You'll Never Know" seated at the table. He never recovered. Conversely, he was in high dudgeon the night he was invited to sing for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the Nixon White House. When Bobby was told his musicians would be served sandwiches and coffee in the kitchen, he was on his way to the exit door when they suddenly appeared-the royal couple, escorted along the corridor to the state dining room by Richard and Pat Nixon. They spotted Bobby, broke stride, ran to the kitchen door, swept him up in their arms and dragged him into the dinner, leaving a mortified First Family with their mouths wide open. It was one of Bobby's proudest moments.

One more anecdote: One cold winter weekend, when we were both house guests at Claudette Colbert's house in Barbados, Bobby and I were walking on the beach (a sight you don't want to see) when we passed one of those second-rate surfside motels that cater to the worst kind of British tourists. On the wooden deck, a pudgy woman red as a boiled lobster was waving frantically with one of those floppy straw hats you buy in Caribbean airport lounges. "She knows us," I said. "Oh, God, ignore her … too tacky for words," scowled Bobby, whose eyesight was so bad he sometimes mistook C.E.O.'s for head waiters. I moved closer. "My God, Bobby," I yelped. "It's Judi Dench!" His mood did an about-face. We took her home for tea.

He suffered from neuropathy, but although he limped to the piano with a cane, the minute the lights hit him, Bobby Short had sparkle and spruce. He made 32 bars sound like an overture. He made noises about retiring from show business, but he had just signed a new contract at the Carlyle. At Chita Rivera's opening, he was in pain, but we all thought it was the neuropathy. When she introduced him, he got a standing ovation and glowed with Cheshire-cat satisfaction. Last Wednesday, he was diagnosed with an irreversible blood count of white cells and died from leukemia five days later. Hours from death, he was still humming and running lyrics in his head for his next CD of Fred Astaire songs. His treasured legacy of song sheets, big-band records, orchestrations and other historically significant musical memorabilia will go to the Smithsonian, Lincoln Center and a dozen of the charities he generously supported. He left specific instructions that no memorial service was to be held. It's the one part of his last will and testament that seems unlikely to be honored. Above all, Bobby Short could never resist a good party.

Woody Is Back

I once wrote that Woody Allen on a bad day was better than everybody else on Sunday. In recent years, I've had to rescind that appraisal. In one bland, disappointing failure after another, he's proved that he can be just as bad as the next guy. That is why it gives me pleasure to report that with his charming new opus, Melinda and Melinda, Woody's got his groove back.

The renewed interest in portrait photography as art, channeled by the Diane Arbus exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, has caused a revolution. Suddenly, everyone is looking at faces in a different way. Whether it's one of Ms. Arbus' tattooed carnival freaks or the Lewis Carroll photo of Alice Liddell, his model for Alice in Wonderland, the contours of the human countenance are open to diverse interpretations. This is what I was thinking as I sat enjoyably entertained by Melinda and Melinda, a bright, jaunty comedy in a jazz tempo that mirrors two opposing sides of a single personality, dramatized by two different writers with opposite takes on life.

We open in the trendy Pastis bistro in Greenwich Village, where two of the kind of playwrights you always want to eavesdrop on at a cafe table more interesting than your own are debating the relevance of their plays to real life, and debating the plot for a new piece about a disruptive figure named Melinda. The idea begins as an anecdote and ends as a full-scale production with different sets, characters and punch lines, proving the point that no two people ever see things the same way, onstage or in life. The comedy writer (the overworked Wallace Shawn, the only actor in history, to my knowledge, who has parlayed a speech impediment into a career), thinks laughs, while the other (Larry Pine), who specializes in darkness, sees tears. What follows for 90 blissful minutes (no movie should ever last one minute longer) is two stories about the same woman, interweaving wit and sadness like yellow and black yarns in a needlepoint rug.

In Plot 1, Melinda Robichaux (Radha Mitchell) arrives in the middle of a dinner party at the loft of an old friend named Laurel (Chloë Sevigny) and her husband, an alcoholic actor named Lee (Jonny Lee Miller), and proceeds to wreck the evening by guzzling expensive scotch and launching into an exhausting emotional tirade that drains the guests and wrecks the husband's chances at an acting job he covets. Ah, but the humorist sees a comedy here with Neil Simon overtones. In his spin, which we will call Plot 2, Melinda is the neurotic downstairs neighbor of a different couple-a bumbling actor and amateur chef named Hobie (Will Ferrell) and his wife Susan (Amanda Peet), who has written an independent film she is also going to direct; the film is about a shrink, and her husband has his heart set on the role. This Melinda, who has taken 28 sleeping pills in the downstairs sublet, crashes in just as the coquilles St. Jacques are being served, ruins the sea bass and wreaks havoc on the lives of everyone present. In both of the parallel plots, Melinda hacks her way through New York with an emotional machete, leaving a trail of misery and woe while you find yourself laughing aloud at her inexhaustible supply of oblivious self-absorption. Sometimes the stories are funny when they ought to be sad, and sometimes your mouth falls open during the sight gags at how horrible life can be when Melinda is around, spreading mischievous chaos.

The two plots play leap frog. Sometimes the transitions are smooth and you don't see the seams. Other times, they butt heads. But from start to finish, Woody's dialogue is both formally structural and wryly conversational. In Plot 1, Melinda is like the title character in All About Eve-"Everything," said Thelma Ritter, "but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end." She succumbed to drugs and alcohol, left her husband and lost two children in a custody battle, killed a two-timing lover with a gun, served a prison sentence for murder and attempted suicide. In Plot 2, she is an accomplished but childless art historian whose husband left her for a beauty-contest winner. In both plots, her friends and neighbors set her up with every available single hunk they know while their own lives collapse, but both Melindas turn down upwardly mobile chances to rise in the Manhattan social dynamic, one Melinda falling for Hobie, of all people, and the other for a black musician named Ellis Moonsong (played by the unpronounceable Chiwetel Ejiofor, from Dirty Pretty Things). The Hobie role is the Woody surrogate, but Mr. Ferrell doesn't do much with it. After losing the leading role in his wife's movie and being demoted to the role of "the retarded elevator operator with the cleft palate," he goes to a shrink himself. The marriage has been in trouble for years ("The last time we made love she just lay there, staring into the darkness, like her parents had been killed in a fire.") So he tries something new and kinky-sex with a right-wing radical who posed nude for a Playboy spread on naked Republicans. This is Woody writing for himself, and Mr. Ferrell plays it with Woody's tics, vocal inflections and whining mannerisms, stuttering and talking to himself in funny asides nobody else hears, just like Woody. Too bad he has none of the charm or technique required to sustain the gimmick for 90 minutes. One sight gag, in which he gets his bathrobe caught in Melinda's front door while peeking through her keyhole, wouldn't even make it as far as a Saturday Night Live sketch. This is not a Woody Allen film full of all-star turns down to the smallest cameo. Most of the actors do their best without Woody to play off in the same shared camera space. For an actress required to be in almost every scene, Radha Mitchell is a Naomi Watts clone with range and appeal, but she may be the first movie star I've ever seen with a wart between her eyes.

But if Woody the actor is sadly missed here, Woody the director spreads his trademark flourishes everywhere. The music is rangy and wonderful, from Bach to "Take the A Train." No matter how depressed everyone gets, they all live in fabulous apartments with space and atmosphere and antiques and designer sheets. They hang out in all the places nobody in New York can afford except the tourists-and they can smoke anywhere! From Belmont Park to Bowling Green, it's a fairy tale New York, photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond like a lunar surface in a home show on Venus. Even the emergency room at Lenox Hill Hospital would be the envy of Elsie de Wolfe. But Woody transforms his settings into a part of the Manhattan dream you used to hear about in lyrics by Lorenz Hart. And best of all, Woody knows precisely when and how to end it all (as the final moment attests), with a snap of the fingers. No waiting around to feel your way into and out of things. The ignition starts in the beginning, the action cuts to split-timing black in the end. No bows, baby, just eight bars and out. Woody Allen films are like the short stories in The New Yorker back in the good old days of William Maxwell, Sally Benson and Hortense Calisher. It's a place I've never been, but I know I'm going to like it when I get there.

Very Sad Ballad

Small films about small lives trying vainly to intersect but falling miles apart can sometimes be rewarding. But The Ballad of Jack and Rose, an offbeat tone poem with an atonal dissonance written and directed by Rebecca Miller and starring her husband, Daniel Day-Lewis, is a curio that is just too self-consciously offbeat for its own good. In 1986, on an island off the East Coast, an aging hippie named Jack lives in the ruins of an abandoned commune from the 60's with his 16-year-old daughter Rose. Like the eccentrics from another recent rumination, Campbell Scott's Off the Map, Jack has sheltered Rose from the outside world and its evil influences, like newspapers, junk-food franchises, TV and sex. Most of their time is spent saving the wetlands and fighting off the developer (Beau Bridges) who is trashing the environment by erecting plastic pre-fab housing projects. But now Jack is dying of a mysterious cinematic heart ailment and realizes that Rose needs the influence of a woman around the house.

When he invites his trashy girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her two weird sons to join their privileged world of primitive seclusion, Rose feels betrayed and violated. One boy shapes and perms her hair, the other eradicates her virginity. To hurt her father, she hangs up the bloody sheet on the clothesline with a note that drives him to violence. To hurt his lady friend, she conceals a poisonous snake under the bed while you wait for something gruesome to happen. It does, and not a moment too soon. Jack, once a peace-loving man, bulldozes the model house for the new housing project and breaks the arms and legs of the boy who defiled Rose. Rose burns down the house. By the time all of this happens, I had pressed the snooze button, and so had the movie. I mean, Ms. Miller knocks herself out creating a miscellany of eccentrics, all right. But they are also something of a bore.

The actors struggle valiantly to work some three-dimensional energy into one-dimensional roles, but Ms. Miller's writing is as dusty as her direction is meager. It can't be easy to be a child of the late, great playwright Arthur Miller who wants to write. I admire the daughter for not emulating the father, but a few basic lessons in character development, cliche-avoidance dialogue and the architecture of trajectory are recommended. As Rose, teenager Camilla Belle looks older and wiser than the grownups. As the trashy, encroaching misfit, Catherine Keener is wasted. As Jack, Daniel Day-Lewis is creepier than his role. Sinewy and emaciated, with bones sticking through his skin like croquet mallets, he looks like he's auditioning for the insomniac zombie Christian Bale played in The Machinist. He's accomplished, goodness knows, but his choices here are bizarre. His heavy Scottish brogue, feral tattoos and dangling gypsy earring are dolorous enough, but would a leftover flower child from the grains-and-berries era go around wearing the kind of hat favored by the Marx Brothers? Actors directed by their own wives is a rare category in which I never expected to find the Oscar-winning star of My Left Foot, and I hope he doesn't make a habit of it. It's too late in the career of a respected artist like Daniel Day-Lewis to go around singing "What I Did For Love."

Huh?

For sewage in a cocktail shaker, there is Oldboy, a noxious helping of Korean Grand Guignol as pointless as it is shocking. What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs? Directed by Chan-wook Park, a film-festival "comer" in this nation of emerging cinematic schlock, a cheerful drunk named Dae-su Oh disappears from the phone book and is sealed in a room for 15 years. Injected with drugs and forced to sleep every night with Valium gas that hisses through vents in the walls, he has no idea where he is, who put him there, or what he did to deserve such a fate in the first place. He keeps track of the time he's imprisoned in this hole by etching a tattoo on his body for every year. Suddenly, he's released in a field from the inside of a steamer trunk, more confused than ever. What follows is an extended two-hour nightmare in which he tries to track down his captors by tracing the takeout food they fed him in his cell, while the voices of his torturers contact him on cell phones and computer chat-room Web sites. What is going on here? Nobody knows. Meanwhile, he defeats an entire gang of killers with a knife sticking out of his back. He eats a live eel. A severed hand rips out a man's teeth, one by one, with a hammer. Blood flows, there is much vomiting and incest, and more screams than Japanese kabuki. Part kung fu, part revenge-theme Charlie Chan murder mystery, part metaphysical Oriental mumbo-jumbo, all of it incomprehensible. Dae-su Oh is played by Min-sik Choi. I walked out at the point where he grabbed a pair of sharp scissors and cut his tongue off in blood-splattering close-ups. Obviously the actor is still in one piece, but I'd be willing to bet there's some poor cow somewhere in Pusan who can no longer moo. Oldboy makes strange music, but it's like a three-hour concerto played on a theremin.

If summer comes, can a plethora of new disaster flicks be far behind? First out of the chute for 2004 comes The Day After Tomorrow , a cautionary tale from doomsday chronicler Roland ( Independence Day ) Emmerich about what will happen to civilization if we don't learn from past mistakes and stop recklessly abusing our natural resources; that global warming is heading us in the crashing, splashing, smashing direction of a new Ice Age. The end of the world will not come on a battlefield, but in an avalanche of ice cubes the size of Rhode Island.

Mr. Emmerich has already proven himself a writer-director with a keen eye for the way apocalyptic fantasies look and a poor ear for the way real people talk. ( Independence Day was a laugh riot, and don't forget he also co-wrote and directed Godzilla .) So this time, with a budget to equal the fiscal inventory of Chase Manhattan, he's out to destroy the human race again, with dopey dialogue, a number of hackneyed subtexts, sensational mind-blowing special effects and a big environmentalist dig at the Bush administration. (There's even a Vice President as cold as aluminum who thinks global warming is low on the priority list and looks terrifyingly like the spitting image of Dick Cheney.) But here's the surprise: For all of its dire premonitions, foreshadowings of horror and easy targets for Jay Leno jokes, The Day After Tomorrow is eye-poppingly awesome and wonderfully entertaining.

The polar cap melts, causing the worst storm system from the Arctic in 10,000 years. This is not a good thing for high blood pressure. We depend on the polar ice cap to stay frozen. If it heats up too much, where will all that water go? Washington, D.C., climatologist Dennis Quaid is the only one who knows, but the U.S. government is too busy bombing the Middle East to listen. Then Hitchcockian formations of giant birds fly over the darkening Manhattan skyline on their way south. They know something. Suddenly chunks of hail the size of basketballs fall from the sky and crush the exploding population of Tokyo. Suck funnels of massive cyclones hit Los Angeles, shredding LAX, erasing the Hollywood sign and reducing everything from the freeways to the Capitol Records building to sawdust. Hurricane winds blow Hawaii away. Fifteen inches of snow buries New Delhi. Typhoons hit Australia. Helicopters crash in Scotland when the fuel freezes in their gas tanks. Then New York collapses under a tidal wave, but enough already.

After 9/11, watching the destruction of Manhattan skyscrapers reduced to scrap rubble is not so amusing. But the movie plunges on, cataloging one opulent cataclysm after another. A blizzard arrives when the temperatures drop below freezing and the flood waters turn to canyons of snow. Some survivors hide in the New York Public Library, which in this movie's bizarre geography is located a few feet from the Statue of Liberty. They burn the world's great books for warmth and live on M&M's and Fritos from the vending machines. Here is where, in the middle of a power failure, Mr. Quaid's 17-year-old son miraculously finds the only pay phone left on the planet that works and calls his father. (They don't work in normal conditions, but in a blackout, with frozen power lines, they work underwater-and there's no charge for long distance!) While Mr. Quaid is on his way to New York from D.C. wearing snowshoes, his dedicated doctor-wife (the gorgeous, talented and wasted Sela Ward) tries to save a child with cancer in an abandoned hospital, and his son (Jake Gyllenhaal) tries to find penicillin for a fellow student suffering from blood poisoning on a Russian freighter floating down Fifth Avenue invaded by ravenous wolves. Whew! Well, I told you it keeps you awake.

There's a lot of well-researched scientific lingo to explain what is happening and what an unbalanced ecology will eventually cost the world, and there's an attempt to interject human elements of courage, bravery, heroism and the struggle to survive. But let's face it. This is not a movie about acting. In the tradition of even dopier disaster epics like Twister , the movie will pack them in for the thrills. There's something wild about watching landmark buildings disintegrate in front of your eyes, and what's left of the Statue of Liberty's frozen torch rising above the snow like a vanilla ice-cream cone. Even while the movie was being shot, so many abrupt climate shifts ravaged the globe that the filmmakers joked the movie might turn out to be a documentary. The same cataclysmic effects of global warming depicted in the movie are already happening so fast that in spite of its computer-generated imaging and its plot exaggerations, the object lesson in The Day After Tomorrow is inescapably sobering. But there's no need to dress up for depression. Strictly on the operative level of a Hollywood extravaganza, it's one helluva ride. This is not the Weather Channel on steroids. This is the end of the world in Technicolor, and we like it just fine.

Still Swingin': Smith and Short

Fortunately, there are still audiences around who crave music for sophisticated ears, and the Apple is one of the few citadels of syncopation left in the world that's fully prepared to give it to them. The people who turn out in contented throngs to pay homage to folks like Keely Smith and Bobby Short on their annual pilgrimages to Manhattan's swankier watering holes are the kind of folks who haven't the vaguest notion who the Olsen twins are, were or never will be. They have never heard of Plum Sykes or Paris Hilton, they don't give a rat's rear end about U2, Beyoncé or P. Diddy, they wear real clothes instead of rings in their belly buttons, and they don't know the difference between fruit boots and Froot Loops. They come in all ages, colors and persuasions, they dig Cole Porter as much as they do Billy Joel, they are showing up in record numbers at posh supper clubs in the Algonquin, Carlyle and Regency hotels, and they can all afford to pay the bills. Bless them every one. They keep me sane, and hopeful.

Currently, the People Who Know Things are saluting Keely Smith with enough enthusiasm to make you forget the humidity. At Feinstein's at the Regency, the casino chips on the tables are a crisp reminder of what this ageless song stylist is waxing nostalgic about: the glorious bygone 50's on the Las Vegas strip where, even if your luck ran out, the music was always fabulous. There was nothing like it. Electrified by neon, strolling past the blackjack tables on your way to dinner shows that featured such headliners as Marlene Dietrich, Noël Coward, Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, you had to walk right through the lounges, where 10 feet away from the roulette wheel, you could catch Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, June Christy, Mel Torme and the entire Stan Kenton orchestra. I was still in high school when, in the Casbar Lounge of the Sahara Hotel, I first caught the fractious jive of Keely Smith, her late husband and partner Louis Prima, and Sam Butera and the Witnesses. They were so unique and unforgettable that they performed six shows a night from midnight to 6 a.m. in that lounge, and it was always packed. Their career spanned half a century, and Ms. Smith is still an icon of swing, one of the most beloved female crooners of her generation. (Since Rosemary Clooney and Peggy Lee died, maybe the high priestess of the cult.) With a nine-piece band, most of the repertoire comes from her legendary Vegas lounge act. The orchestrations by Nelson Riddle and Billy May are lovingly restructured by Dennis Michaels, her pianist and son-in-law; the music comes close to blasting you into the traffic on Park Avenue.

Thank God nobody ever gave her diction lessons. The Southern drawl still drips like dew on a Mississippi morning. It's "Ah heah violins" on "It's Magic," and "heart" is "hot" in more ways than one. Even "I Got a Right to Sing the Blues" wails. She crashes onstage with "When You're Smiling" and right through "Sweet and Lovely," "Up a Lazy River," "Basin Street Blues," "I Wish You Love," "Just a Gigolo" and a silly medley of the old Louis Prima signature songs like "Buona Sera," "Angelina" and "Zooma, Zooma," and she rarely stops to catch her breath. Except, of course, when she passes the mike around the room to ringsiders like Jerry Vale, Neil Sedaka and tables of embarrassed tourists from Tierra del Fuego for endless choruses of "When the Saints Go Marching In." That's the way they did it in Vegas, and nobody did it better. She's in the best voice she's enjoyed in years (even on ballads, she's stronger and more self-assured than ever), and this is the most joyous show she's ever performed in New York. With her Buster Brown bangs and her salty, unpretentious personality, she hasn't changed. She's 76, but she says, "I look in the mirror and I still see a 29-year-old, 120-pound girl." Gee, every Keely Smith fan must own the same mirror.

Meanwhile, at the Cafe Carlyle, Bobby Short is presently celebrating his 36th spring season. He says it's his last. Long past retirement (he'll be 80 in September) and suffering from a painful and annoying case of neuropathy, he says he's putting his house in the South of France on the market, cutting back on his demanding schedule of concerts and club dates, and throwing in the towel. Translated, this means that the cabaret lord all other piano-playing saloon-singing serfs and vassals aspire to be is ready to get some fun out of life and smell the lilacs. If you ask me, Bobby Short will retire from show business as soon as Madonna lets her hair go natural. In other words, he will perform when he damn well feels like it. For now, get to the Carlyle and smell a few lilacs yourself. His songs are aromatic.

With a famous fondness for Porter, Kern and the Gershwins-this is especially true on gems like "Looking at You," "The Way You Look Tonight," and a jumping primer on how to win the ladies that the Gershwins wrote for Fred Astaire called "High Hat" ("You gotta treat 'em high hat / Don't let 'em know that you care / Just act like a Frigidaire / You'll win them like that")-he brings back to this dismal age everything about the elegance of Astaire but the tap shoes. He's jaunty, frisky, with just a soupçon of arrogance. In the old days, he boasted the brightest trio in town, but now he's expanded to an eight-piece orchestra, his rhythm section augmented by a full brass choir, making special material like Duke Ellington's rarely performed "Sepia Panorama" sound all the richer. A fondness for the undervalued works of the great Vernon Duke has been developing nicely through the years, and "Not a Care in the World," with lyrics by John LaTouche, is a highlight here. A recent operation for the removal of a vocal node or a polyp or some such hindrance (which to a singer is nothing more serious than a hangnail) has occasionally made his voice sound like a particularly violent gargle with Listerine. But he still has the old flair, moxie and musical prowess-not to mention the sense of humor that turns comic-revue material from the 1930's like "I Want to Be Your Mother's Son-in-Law" into arias of brash hilarity. That corn-shuck vocal roughness that signifies the maturity of the post-millennium Bobby Short also enhances a soulful blues number like Lil Green's "Romance in the Dark" with a dark and surprising passion he could never have mustered in his youth. So get some while it lasts. Bobby Short says it's over, but as John O'Hara said when George Gershwin died, "I don't have to believe it if I don't want to."

Keeps It Classicn

The newly refurbished restaurant at the Carlyle is like the set of a George Kaufman play. At lunchtime recently, it seemed that the entire cast had been assembled in the chocolate-brown dining room, which has a marble fireplace, a swirling Art Deco carpet and hunting prints on the walls. In one corner, a young man in polo shirt and khakis, hunched over a magazine, looked just right for the leading man. On the other side of the room, a Jean Harlow blonde, all in pink, sat alone with a glass of white wine and a Cobb salad, her shopping bags at her feet. A stubbornly well-preserved matron with a stiff coif of gold hair kept vigil on the banquette, a small shiny red crocodile Hermès bag on the table in front of her like a portable safe. She was joined by an equally erect, high-breasted woman whose helmet of platinum hair matched her platinum suit. In the center of the room, a John Barrymore character held forth under a crystal chandelier, beneath which was placed a giant bouquet of white lilies. "I have breakfast here every day, so I'd thought we'd have lunch," he told his companion. "Waiter! Two Dubonnets, please."

Few among this cast of characters are probably aware that along with its revamped 1930's décor, the Carlyle has acquired a new French chef, Jean-Louis Dumonet. For instead of shocking his customers with up-to-the-minute, cutting-edge dishes like foie gras with anchovies or eel with candied violets, Mr. Dumonet has kept the classics and pared down to the essentials. He's mixed in some new dishes with the old hotel ones and added some rustic bistro items to the menu, such as pot au feu and rabbit in mustard sauce.

His intention is to let the ingredients speak for themselves. So a platter of white asparagus is just that: no fronds or swirls or dots of sauce, but five unblemished, recognizable stalks on a plain white rectangular plate. Not even a sprig of parsley! But the asparagus is perfect, juicy and tender, and comes with a lemony vinaigrette served on the side. Days later, you will still remember it. A plain boiled artichoke arrives in all its de Chirico splendor, unembellished, with a small jug containing a powerful mustard vinaigrette. A frothy vichyssoise has a julienne of summer truffle and crème fraîche. If you order the gazpacho, the waiter brings over a bowl with a mound of lobster and vegetable tartare seasoned with basil heaped in the center. Then he pours in a smooth red soup that is rich with the flavor of ripe tomatoes.

The dining room has been done over by Thierry Despont, who recently redid another famous landmark, Claridges in London (where Gordon Ramsay has installed himself), as well as the Carlyle's lobby and Bemelmans bar. Above the fireplace is an 18th-century painting of a rigid young girl in a red crinoline with a pet bird on her hand. The waiter told us it was by an Italian painter, Sebastiano Ceccarini, and for $200,000 it could be ours.

"Offer him one-ninety," whispered my companion.

Instead, we turned our attention to lunch. Sweetbreads, sautéed with artichokes and seasoned with cumin, were a little tough, and the forest of micro greens that topped it off added nothing to the dish. But the tuna Niçoise was as good as it gets, and tasted as though it had just been made (not pulled from the refrigerator) with the freshest of ingredients. The chef does it the classic way, using a first-rate canned tuna-not, as is the style of some trendy chefs, with fresh tuna cooked rare (don't get Julia Child started on this subject). The two white-haired ladies in baggy cashmere sweaters with bobby pins in their hair, undoubtedly residents of the hotel, were clearly enjoying theirs, along with glasses of iced tea.

"It's a haven, an oasis," said one of my friends. "And the ladies who lunch here are different from the 'ladies who lunch.' It's as though time stood still."

The ladies who were lunching stuck to salads, but they should have tried the veal cheeks, one of the best dishes on the menu (and nothing if not trendy since Mario Batali put them on the map; they're so popular you wonder how there's enough to go around town). Dumonet's version consists of round nuggets tender enough to eat with a spoon, served on a purée of red carrots in a sweet but not cloying sauce that's made with orange jus. The poached skate wing, classic bistro food, with lemon and capers and beurre noir is also beautifully cooked. For dinner one night, the rack of lamb persillade wasn't quite hot enough when it arrived at the table, but the meat had good flavor and was juicy and pink. And the dry-aged rib-eye au poivre was excellent. Vegetables come on the side, steakhouse style, for $8 each. The spinach was watery but the crusty, thick-cut French fries were terrific.

The wine list is expensive, with a good selection of French wines. The Volnay Clos des Chesne is only fair and costs $90.

For dessert, you can take your pick from the trolley. Rum baba! One of my friends hadn't had that since his high-school prom. Alas, it was dry and skimpy on the rum. The chocolate mousse, however, was wonderful, spooned out by the captain in twin creamy lumps with raspberry and mango sauces. And the crème caramel was sumptuous under its delicate crust of caramelized sugar.

"Last time I came here, George Feyer was playing," my friend remarked, dating himself. "We drank martinis and got completely obliterated."

Now, after dinner, you can stroll across the lobby to the café and hear Bobby Short instead, singing "You're the Tops" or "Let's Fall in Love."

From Miracle on 34th Street to Miramax on 54th Street -yes, that's how the New York City holiday season mythos has "evolved" over the past half-century …. We hear Harvey Weinstein thundering by in a Santa suit ( " Ho! Ho! Ho! " … rumble … rumble … thonk … with Ken Auletta in tights and wee elf shoes carrying his big sack )! Hey, is anyone else ready to declare a complete moratorium on the scabrous studio chief and the mind-numbing hype of his movies until, say, about spring 2003? Tonight is the East Coast premiere of the Miramax film version

of Chicago , with dusky Catherine Zeta-Jones , Renée Zellweger (we think she's sort of scrunchy, but our big-cheese editor just says she's "scrumptious, but she's got nuttin' on Shirley Bassey!" ) and the almost painfully sexy Richard Gere …. If you can't crash that (our big-cheese editor's crash strategy: "Do a little 'razzle-dazzle'" ), there's a holiday concert, organized by David Gest and snappily titled "Miracle on 34th Street," with disco gals Kylie Minogue - butt-swiveling, plasticine Aussie -and Gloria ("I Will Survive")Gaynor , whom we found at the stucco house in NewJerseyshe shares with her husband and manager of 22 years. She shared some of her recurring nightmares: "I continually dreamed that wild jungle animals were chasing me …. " They are, honey , they're chasing all of us ….

[ Chicago premiere, Ziegfeld Theater, 141 West 54th Street, 7 p.m., party to follow, Brasserie 8[1/2], 9 West 57th Street, by invitation only, 941-3800; KTU's "Miracle on 34th Street," Madison Square Garden, 7:30 p.m., 307-7171.]

Bret vs. Beller! In this corner , deep in the East Village , wearing a muted Armani suit , white shirt and thin black tie, we've got 80's-lit party boy Bret Easton Ellis , with his annual, packed and bizarrely dignified holiday bash (with "folksy" hand-doodled invitation). And in this corner , a few blocks away on the Bowery, wearing a seemingly "thrown-together, devil-may-care" outfit which was actually painstakingly constructed, we've got 90's-lit party boy and Parker Posey boyfriend Thomas Beller, whose magazine, Open City , is having a bash, where the main topic of conversation will be: "Are you going to Bret's? Can I come with you?"

[Bret Easton Ellis, somewhere on 13th

Street, by invitation only, e-mail

beastonellis@aol.com; Open City party,

Pioneer Bar, 218 Bowery, 7 p.m., 625-9048.]

Thursday 19th

Before The Vagina Monologues , there were those naughty Surrealists …. Tonight, trustafarian Williamsburg sits for What I Like About Breasts , a performance project based on a Guillaume Apollinaire drama, The Breast of Tiresius . "It's sort of his paean to the people of France to make love and not war," said director Catharine Dill, 39, who has styled props for Oprah magazine. "I saw the production elements as a great challenge: A woman gets rid of her breasts onstage and becomes a man; the man has 50,000 children." Nothing Oprah couldn't handle ….

[Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, 135 Broadway, Brooklyn, 8 p.m.,

718-499-7570.]

Friday 20th

Short people: Carnegie Hall swiftly regroups from a big Messiah blowout a couple of nights ago and welcomes champion ivory-tickler Bobby Short and the Purdue Varsity Glee Club (guess the Whiffenpoofs were booked ). Mr. Short, a dapper 76, called Special Eight-Day Week Correspondent Noelle Hancock and told her he's battling a cold, but warming up some standards: "Manhattan," "Love Is Here to Stay" and Mel Tormé's "The Christmas Song." Is he noivous? "No …. The most nervous I've been in my grown-up life was at the White House. Just being in the White House had me completely crazy! Just nutty!" Maybe it's something in the air at the White House: Haven't you noticed that the current and past few Presidents behave in a far more loopy manner than most of the general population?

[Carnegie Hall, 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, 8 p.m., 247-7800.]

Saturday 21st

Bendel over backwards! If you're fool enough to be searchin' for "some stocking-stuffers" in midtown today, say " Howdy !" to Robin Tolkan-Doyle , who's flown in from Encino, Calif., to hawk "Pin Ups," a collection of "fun" hair pins apparently popular with fleshy rock moppet Kelly Osbourne …. "They're cute, funaccessories that aren't astronomically expensive ," said Ms. Tolkan-Doyle, 29, a former beauty editor at Jump . "One thingledtoanother-the magazine folded, I was out of a job-so

I decided to just go with it . " Frédéric Fekkai, move over ….

[Henri Bendel, 712 Fifth Avenue, 11 a.m., 247-1100]

Sunday 22nd

If you're like us, you believe that basically the only proof that G*d exists is the funny way your cat looks at you sometimes …. Today, the Central Presbyterian Church performs the "Blessing of the Animals," with special celebrity appearances by 9/11 rescue dogs …. "I myself raise peacocks at my farm in Ecuador," said Reverend Douglas Grandgeorge, who's going to help out, "and I'd love-I really, really would like to get a peacock, but it's sort of hard to keep one in the city." Indeed: just ask Liza.

[Park Avenue at 64th Street, 6 p.m., 838-0805.]

Monday 23rd

Squashy bellies are jolly if you're Santa, but they quickly get you bounced from the cruel mating lottery that is Manhattan …. Women who fancy themselves too "hot-blooded" for yoga's chilly poses try a beginner's belly-dancing class. Instructor Amira Mor told Special Eight-Day Week Correspondent Noelle Hancock : "Classes are booming, thanks to Shakira. All the movers and shakers are doing it . Literally ." Everyone's a comedian!

[Broadway Dance Center, 221 West 57th Street, 7:45 p.m., 582-9304.]

Tuesday 24th

By the way, have you noticed that over the past few years, New York's Jewish community has turned Christmas Eve into some kind of big frat party? … Comic's comic Dave Attell performs at the late show of What I Like About Jew (no relation to aforementioned What I Like About Breasts -we think ), a revue of comic songs led by Blender magazine editor Rob Tannenbaum (recently spotted doing commentary for a "booty" special on VH1), which includes an ode to circumcision titled "Just a Little Off the Top." Meanwhile, there is some massive Jewish singles event called simply "The Ball," hosted by a Web site, Letmypeoplego.com . You buy a "Jewniversal Pass" and are shuttled around to Lot 61, the Park and Eugene . "Definitely dress up like you would for any nice Saturday night out," said bubbly organizer Angele Zebley , 31. "Some people wear cocktail dresses or those fancy, blousy slacks." We'll say it again: Ho, ho, ho!

[ What I Like About Jew , 9 p.m., Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, 219-3006;

the Ball-must we?]

Wednesday 25th

Sic transit Gloria? It's Christmas! So let's call Gloria Gaynor again … because we can … and ask her plans! "This year, there will be a little less baking," she said. "I'll be making my stuffed peppers and a fish casserole, and I'll be making a chicken, broccoli and pasta dish, and then I'll be making some cookies- some macrobiotic cookies -and probably some sweet-potato pie." Any advice for 2003? "Of course we all want to make money, we want to make our fortunes, but if you're doing what you are mainly meant to do, and you focus on doing your best at that, the rest of it is just fringe benefits. The things that you regret are the things that you look back and saw that you did that were outside of your character."

Thursday 26th

Brits go bats! Well, Christmas is over, but the Rockettes are still doing their crotch-flashing kicks, and the English will persist in celebrating Boxing Day , that holiday when they "regift" things, drink all your booze and try to borrow money …. What's happen' at Tea & Sympathy , the kooky little haven for expat Brits on Greenwich Avenue (popular with supermodels because British food is so bad, they don't actually have to eat it)? "The usual madness and mayhem," said co-owner Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett, who then had to ring off with "Bloody Microsoft!" because he was dueling with a computer virus. Anyway, the restaurant is open today, and actor Rupert Everett might show up and help himself to some spotted dick if you know what we're saying …

[108-110 Greenwich Ave, 807-8329.]

Friday 27th

Shearling anxiety … Snuggle into a big shearling showroom sale - piles of lambskin outerwear (suggesting creepy 10th-grade prophylactic fumblings ), marked down from $995-$2,995 to a "moderate" $595-$1,395 …. The Eurotrash love 'em! "I call them 'good winter shelter'-it keeps you warm and toasty," said Shearling Selection New York owner/salesman Guy DeVincenzo. "People don't want anything heavy on their backs. Years ago people wore fur, but I think people now are more comfortable in shearling."

[Shearling Selection New York, 224 West 35th Street, 10 a.m., 268-3844.]

Saturday 28th

Gangs ka-bang! The Miramax Gangs of New York promotional blitz -schmancy premieres, exclusive screenings, elite-media magazine covers-finally filters down to "the little people" with a Harvey Weinstein–greenlighted walking tour of the Five Points, including the ominous-sounding "Murderer's Alley." Leave the tots at home with their PlayStations. "This is an adult tour," said tour operator Seth Kamil . "There's a lot about the 'sporting culture,' in which men would go on sprees that involved alcohol and swarming women on the street. We're gonna talk a lot about sexuality, prostitution and my favorite, the history of walking tours." How's the movie? "I think it will get some Oscar nominations-frankly, if it doesn't, I think this could sink Miramax."

[Southeast corner of Broadway and

Chambers Street at City Hall Park, 1 p.m., 439-1090.]

Sixty dewy ingenues- including the daughter of the Earl of Glasgow, a couple of princesses and a few kids of new-money C.E.O.'s -zip their whittled frames into white ballgowns and flit to the Waldorf for that retrograde, vaguely offensive occasion, the International Debutante Ball, which has a pink-and-silver theme. Special Eight-Day Week Correspondent Noelle Hancock got the scoop from Margaret Hedberg (the niece of the ball's founder, Beatrice Dinsmore Joyce ). " Grmffphh … I just put a clementine in my mouth-I'm so sorry," she said. "The criteria is kind of arbitrary: People recommend their cousin or their niece-it's like a little network. There are two boys for every girl, which is about the only time that happens in life. I guess we keep these traditions, like the white dress and the formal receiving line and these things, because if we get rid of everything, then it's just a dance . It's a rite of passage and a chance for the girls to form lasting friendships. It's a happy memory, which is nice because that's what you need when you get old." That and a boatload of Botox, girlfriend.

[301 Park Avenue, 7 p.m., by invitation only, 861-5911.]

Sunday 29th

Love Canal? It's sort of a slow, dull day -must be because the Modern Language Association is in town for its convention , which is kind of like BookExpo, except with bestiality seminars and without Grove/Atlantic wild man Morgan Entrekin …. Meanwhile, only a couple more days to paw through the racks at Canal Jean Co., every eighth-grade girl's favorite discount temple, which is shutting down in January to make room for a big, shiny Bloomingdale's. "We're holding our own," said an employee. "We have no idea what's going on."

[M.L.A., various venues, (646) 576-5000; Canal Jean Co., 504 Broadway, 9:30 a.m., 226-1130.]

Monday 30th

Movie Monday! Into the cold void of this winter Monday , Sony Pictures hurls Love Liza , a hit at Sundance that stars the creepy but good character actor Philip Seymour Hoffman . It was written by his brother, and we don't think this is a high-concept prank à la Adaptation …. Gordy Hoffman, 38, called from his house near the Scientology Center in L.A. to talk about their childhood: "There's not really too much Behind the Music with Gordo and Phil Hoffman. It was like your typical situation: I'm the older brother and he's following me around and we're running through the woods; we have our problems and we admire each other and we're protective of each other and we have a rivalry and we support each other …. After all the hoopla and the festival circuit and the opening and all the stuff, I kind of just want to get a little nitty-gritty. I just want to get back to what I was before this circus came to town in my life. Just get back to Gordy doing the weird stuff with the camera. There are all these expectations, and they're like barnacles ." Um-what's the name of your movie again?

[777-FILM.]

Tuesday 31st

Everyone likes to bash it, but we think New Year's Eve is kind of fun, though the invitations aren't exactly streaming in , hel- lo …. We found everyone's favorite party planner, Colin Cowie , at Pearl River shopping for a Chinese fancy-dress ball. "The one thing you don't want to do is wind up being a loser somewhere-you want to land up with your feet in the right place somewhere, you know what I'm saying?" he asked in his plummy South African accent. "You either need to get to a real big party, where you know a lot of people or you can blend in easily, or, alternatively, it's fun to have a dinner party for up to 12 people -any more than that is huge amount of work for any one person to do, and help is almost impossible to get that night."

[Colin Cowie will be celebrating at Costa Careyes on the Mexican coastline-he doesn't "do" New Year's Eve-but visit his insane Web site, www.colincowie.com,

or sit mesmerized watching him wield a cocktail shaker on the We channel.]

Wednesday 1st

White people with dreadlocks and $5,000 book contracts flock to the Poetry Project's New Year's Day marathon reading with spoken-word devotees like Patti Smith, Richard Hell and Maggie Estep . Everybody else rolls over, hits the snooze button and begins subconsciously plotting the novel/HBO

series/movie they're definitely going to get rolling in 2003, which stretches forth like a big slab of mystery meat.

[St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street,

2 p.m., 674-0910.]

Week

From his secluded Skywalker Ranch in the California redwoods, George Lucas has built a billion-dollar empire putting comic books on film. Grown-ups with the arrested development of 12-year-olds have been sleeping in the street waiting to get into Episode II-Attack of the Clones . When they do, they laugh all the way through it. They know, despite the hype and secrecy and marketing hysteria, what the rest of us have known for years: None of the money, power and fame that have made Mr. Lucas a legend in his own mind and an éminence grise in Hollywood can turn him into a good director. He knows everything about technology and not a damned thing about how to tell a story coherently. After fanatic fans and jaded critics alike declared Episode I-The Phantom Menace a bomb, it piled up $431 million anyway. So welcome to the fifth of the six installments in this Saturday-afternoon kiddie jamboree of silly sequels and prequels with Flash Gordon space guns, a matinee serial told backwards. As Jar Jar Binks, the insulting black stereotype and most obnoxious character in the Star Wars galaxy, might say, "The Force done be left me years ago." But that won't stop this feeble blaze of clanking puppets and flying Frisbees from lining Mr. Lucas' pockets with enough revenue to rebuild the World Trade Center.

Since I snoozed through whole chunks of this drivel, the best analysis of the soporific "plot" I can come up with is this: 10 years after The Phantom Menace , there's still a lot of gibberish about trade federations, warring androids, rechargeable laser swords and the mysteries surrounding the Sith. Much unrest in the galaxy. The former Jedi and evil renegade, Count Dooku (Christopher Lee, from the cheesy old British Dracula movies, who wreaks havoc from a flying motor scooter), has led the separatists away from the Republic, and there aren't enough Jedi left to protect it. So a secret army of clones has been assembled like General Motors parts on the planet Kamino.

Backed by the Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, Intergalactic Banking Clan, Techno Union and Corporate Alliance, Dooku has crossed over to the Dark Side with the aid of a villainous bounty hunter, Jango Fett. Are you still with me?

Meanwhile, the former Queen of Naboo has grown up to become the blank-faced, cleavage-baring Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), and the whiny little Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) has turned into a pouty, arrogant, rebellious Jedi trainee under the patient tutelage of our old friend Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). Assigned to guard Amidala after an assassination attempt, Obi-Wan's apprentice falls in love and disobeys orders at the same time, chasing off to Tatooine, Naboo and Coruscant for fun and frolic. It's so easy to see why he'll eventually turn into Darth Vader that when Obi-Wan says, "Why does something tell me you'll end up being the death of me?" the audience roars with laughter. The exposition scenes would lull even children who aren't suffering from attention-deficit disorders to sleep. The dialogue is sub-mental, but Toronto commercial pinup Hayden Christensen, as the reckless, lovesick and corruptible Anakin, and Ms. Portman, as the monotonous, gooey-faced Amidala, are so relentlessly wooden they make the moronic script by Mr. Lucas and Jonathan ( The Scorpion King ) Hales sound even worse than it looked on paper. Without a coherent narrative or riveting dialogue for caulking to hold the silly digital effects together, the movie just hangs out, like the moppets at the popcorn machine. In the first Star Wars trilogy, there was always an amusing toy or unexpected scene to talk about later. I couldn't remember anything in Episode II-Attack of the Clones 10 minutes after I lumbered through the exit door.

Clearly, the Lucas fantasy is an old dog that no longer barks. Now they're just beating it to death. With nothing but blue screens in the background, the actors play to a blank wall, then get upstaged by the high-definition computer-generated action figures superimposed later, in postproduction. Even a pro like Samuel L. Jackson, reappearing as Jedi counselor Mace Windu, looks bewildered, then catatonic. Sensing disaster from recycled droid wars and a love story out of Her Highness and the Bellboy , Mr. Lucas drags in new characters I can't spell, pronounce or identify, as well as old familiars like the clanking C-3PO; the chirpy little automaton R2-D2; the scrap-metal Stepinfetchit, Jar Jar Binks, with his incomprehensible Jamaican patois; and even old Yoda, the 800-year-old wizard who dispenses dopey wisdom on a whoopee cushion and looks like an animated subway rat on a high-carb diet. This time Yoda joins the fray, tossing away his cane and grabbing his rechargeable light saber to fight off 79-year-old Christopher Lee, who is actually swinging knives at empty spaces. Is it any wonder the movie looks like it takes place in an asylum? The fun has even gone out of Yoda. Still the voice of Frank Oz but no longer a hairy, wiggly-eared puppet, Yoda has been reduced to a digitally processed, squinty-eyed Mickey Mouse with glaucoma. Dreadful acting, a funereal pace and a lot of old toys wheeled in just to remind you what it was you liked about Star Wars 25 years ago don't say much for the future of a worn-out idea that has woefully run out of jet fuel. The young lovers land on a conveyor belt dodging giant staple guns, the three stars are sent to a Roman-style forum to be executed by whatever unused monster was left over from Jurassic Par k, and it's a fight to the death with those damned neon hockey sticks. Haven't we been there before? Even the title is a fake: There is no attack of the clones. At the end, thousands of them march into spaceships to launch a clone war, but they're only paving the way for (oy vey!) next year's Star Wars: Episode III . The prospect fills me with as much anticipation as a margarine shortage.

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I used to say that Bobby Short was almost as necessary to a New York visit as a trip to the top of the Empire State Building. I've changed my mind. The events of 9/11 have elevated Mr. Short, now in his 34th spring season at the Café Carlyle, to first place as a Big Apple icon. He's more fun than the Empire State Building, and you don't need a photo ID to get in.

The same friendly staff still greets you, but there's no question about it: Under the new owners, only a vestige remains of the Carlyle's former elegance, and after the unceremonious way they dumped the great Barbara Carroll, I join the legions in protest who will never again set foot in the Bemelmans Bar. But in the Café, Bobby Short is a one-man good-will ambassador. Opening with rarities like the Gershwins' "Oh Gee, Oh Joy!" and the obscure "Do I Hear You Saying I Love You?" by Rodgers and Hart, he makes it clear that this is the time of year when a young man's fancy turns to love-and a middle-aged survivor's fancy turns to love songs. Rolling expressive eyes while relishing every line of the Vernon Duke evergreen "Takin' a Chance on Love," he's a little bit of Ethel Waters and a whole lot of Avon Long. But mostly he's himself, and we wouldn't have it any other way. "I've Got the World on a String" is full of dreamy Harold Arlen reflection; he's in a reverie. "Don't Ever Leave Me," a tribute to Helen Morgan, recaptures the rapture of that tragic chanteuse, while the racy carnival atmosphere of Cole Porter's "Pilot Me" turns into a saucy tribute to both Charles Lindbergh and fucking. For people who forget what an accomplished and swinging musician Mr. Short is, there's plenty of evidence on his new solo-piano CD and in the nine-piece orchestra onstage at the Carlyle, which includes Bobby's trio augmented by two trumpets, three saxophones and one trombone. The result is a cool, bluesy brass choir that sounds like strings on ballads like "Bye Bye Blackbird," and like a Basie jam session on a fractious free-for-all like "It Ain't Got a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing." From old standbys like "Sand in Your Shoes" to witty discoveries like Billie Holiday's first recording ("Yessiree … I wanna be … your mother's son-in-law"), Bobby delivers the goods. Nothing careless, nothing slovenly, nothing second-rate-just a lifetime of dedication to the classic songs you can still fall in love listening to, all performed in his own inimitable style. Bobby Short is one of the last throwbacks to the saner, happier and less complicated years when music reigned supreme and elegant people ventured out after dark to do more than stuff their guts with pretentious $400 meals in trendy, overpriced restaurants and then head home to fall asleep during Leno and Letterman. Welcome back, Bobby. Stay as long as you can.

Like a Fine Wine

Keely Smith, another keeper of the flame, Las Vegas style, is at Feinstein's at the Regency Hotel through May 25. She hasn't changed a bit since the raucous years when she and her late husband, Louis Prima, were headliners on the famous Vegas strip. Accompanied by a foot-stomping nine-piece band, Ms. Smith's chops are in better shape than ever. The blackstrap molasses in her Virginia drawl still radiates charmingly ("You speak and ah heah violins," she croons on "It's Magic"), and there's plenty of barrelhouse, boogie and blues to please every taste. Hip, self-assured, polished and time-resistant, she is, at 69, living proof that age is only a state of mind. Expect the old favorites she performed with Louis Prima and Sam Butera and the Witnesses ("Jump, Jive an' Wail," "Just a Gigolo"), and watch your surprise when she tackles Sinatra's seldom-performed "The House I Live In," which is as patriotic as it gets without a flag. Pianist and arranger Dennis Michaels, who is also married to Keely's daughter, provides lilting, finger-snapping support. Whether she's showcasing her sensitive phrasing or kidding around with salty barbs, Keely Smith is a seasoned performer to see and hear, a hearty reminder that everything old is new again-and vice versa.

Even in Porter's serious ballads, love is rarely consummated. The object of desire is often distant, just beyond the subject's reach, veiled by dreams ("All Through the Night") or distance ("I Concentrate on You"). Perhaps the emotional reserve of Porter's music grew from his inability, given the times, to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality, or perhaps it was simply a mannerism of his aristocratic New York circle, a cultivated, urbane world-weariness.

Either way, the reticence in Porter's work requires supremely robust performances to supply the emotional core. His songs don't benefit from sweet or timid interpretations. Yet that is frequently what we get.

Many of his interpreters seem to think that in order to "do Porter right," it's necessary to capture the gaiety and whimsy of Porter's social milieu. In fact, it's the hard-nosed interpretations of Porter that really work.

Which brings us to the Indiana Historical Society's You're Sensational: Cole Porter in the '20's, '40's, & '50's , a three-CD follow up to Ridin' High: Cole Porter in the 1930's . Although this collection certainly has its moments, it unfortunately accentuates the effete Porter over the more emotionally piercing Porter.

The collection includes songs written during the years surrounding Porter's most prolific and successful decade, the 1930's. There's a lot to choose from, both in terms of material and performances: everything from a 1919 recording of "Old-Fashioned Garden" by Olive Kline to a 1988 recording of "The Tale of the Oyster" by the singer Joan Morris and her Pulitzer Prize-winning composer-husband, William Bolcom.

Over half of the tunes are bona fide standards. There's a lot of material from Porter's most sustained musical score, Kiss Me Kate , including two regal Alfred Drake numbers, "Were Thine That Special Face" and "Where Is the Life That Late I Led?"

But there's also a lot of effete cocktail jazz, and You're Sensational fizzles when it moves in this direction. "I'm in Love Again," by pianist and singer Daryl Sherman, and "Looking at You," by the duo Jackie and Roy, both suffer from a lack of moxie. There are worse: A version of "I Love You, Samantha" by a six-person a cappella group, the King's Singers, is unbearable. Not far behind is the 1949

version of "I Love You" turned in by Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan.

How a song like "Now You Has Jazz," which pairs Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby, made it into the collection is a mystery. Even as a piece of kitsch it fails. Porter, who knew nothing about jazz and was under instructions to compose a song about jazz, conducted research by attending concerts and talking with Fred Astaire. You can tell just how unsuccessful Porter's research was when you hear Crosby's introduction to the number: "Dear gentle folk of Newport, or maybe I should say, hats and cats …" Ugh.

One consequence of the collection's editorial bent is that Mabel Mercer, the black English singer with the lavish and stately voice who is one of the première interpreters of Porter's work, gets stuck with only one song, "Ace in the Hole." It's from her luminous album, Mabel Mercer Sings Cole Porter (WEA/Atlantic/Rhino), which anyone with even a passing interest in Porter or American popular song should have. Meanwhile, Crosby–not the bold Bing of the 1920's but the hammy Buh-Buh-Bing of the 1950's–and Fred Astaire get four songs apiece.

Still, there are a number of winners. One of them comes from Porter himself as he tackles "Two Little Babes in the Wood," piano accompaniment and all. Be warned: You've never heard anyone sing quite like Cole Porter. And after hearing it, you may never want to again. It's an acquired taste, but it works. Porter's fancy voice and dainty piano playing underscore the creepiness of a song that, after all, is about a bearded old man who picks up two young girls in the forest, takes them to New York and gets them drunk.

There's also a sexy 1928 version of "Don't Look at Me that Way" by the Corsican cabaret singer Irene Bordoni. The pianist and singer Leslie Hutchinson, a friend of Porter's and a precursor to Bobby Short (more on him later), does a highly stylized version of "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)." It's successful principally because Hutchinson takes his "sophisticated" rendition all the way, cultivating world-weariness by not bothering to enunciate the do it 's of the song's chorus.

Other high points include versions of "Let's Misbehave" by Banjo Buddy; "Let's Be Buddies" performed by Ethel Merman and Judy Garland in 1963, 23 years after they first premiered it in Panama Hattie ; and a delirious "Let's Not Talk About Love" by Danny Kaye. Elaine Stritch draws all the longing out of "Why Don't We Try Staying Home?" Lee Wiley captures the desperation of "Hot House Rose." Mae Burns sounds like she might jump out of the speaker and slap you silly during a rambunctious version of "The Laziest Gal in Town." These are the best moments, when the emotional remove inherent to Porter's work is offset by gritty performances.

A lot of listeners will be satisfied simply hearing Porter's gorgeous melodies sung by anyone who can carry a tune. But even the sublime melodic line of a track like "Dream Dancing" can't overcome the lameness of the lyric "dream dancing, to paradise prancing" in the final verse. Then there's Bobby Short, the Upper East Side cocktail-jazz impresario, tinkling a Fender Rhodes and backed by a 27-piece string section on a jazz samba rendition of "I Am in Love."

I've actually heard people speak glowingly of Mr. Short as the exponent of an elevated form of cocktail jazz, but this does little to convince me of his talents (or perhaps more to the point, his taste). Porter wrote urbane, educated and witty songs for an urbane, educated and witty crowd. Perhaps it's only natural, then, that his songs would find their poets among the pianists and singers of cocktail society. It's too bad, though. Porter always fared better on the other side of the tracks.

–William Berlind

Schneider: Duking It Out

Maria Schneider, a petite strawberry blonde from the Minnesota prairie, blew into New York in the mid-80's with a master's degree from the Eastman School and no jazz track record to speak of. In short order, she was serving as aide de camp for one of her musical idols, the arranger-composer Gil Evans. By the late 80's, she had assembled her own big band from the crackerjack sidemen who are endemic to this city and, even more remarkably, she has been able to hold it together.

For a five-year stretch in the 90's, the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra was playing every Monday night at the now-defunct Visiones club. But things change. As Ms. Schneider's profile has continued to rise with prestigious commissions and European concerts, she's become a rarer commodity around town. Her upcoming gig at the Jazz Standard (Oct. 3-8) and her new album, Allégresse (Enja), only the third of her career, provide an opportunity to answer a question first posed by Rogers and Hammerstein: "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"

Well, not a problem exactly. But it is fair to say that Ms. Schneider is coming out of a symphonic jazz tradition that, outside of a fairly nerdy circle of jazz educators and European radio orchestra directors, doesn't get all that much respect. Beginning with the hugely successful band leader and violinist Paul Whiteman, conventionally well-trained white musicians have been trying to make a lady out of jazz since the 20's. As the simplified genealogy goes, the Whiteman Orchestra begat the Claude Thornhill band of the 40's, which begat one renegade genius, Gil Evans, who would rescue the musical family name by teaming up with Miles Davis. Three exquisitely lyrical Evans-Davis collaborations from the late 50's– Miles Ahead , Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain –helped transmute prissy symphonic jazz into "cool jazz," and today they're still the standard for jazz composers who choose to emphasize orchestral color and detail over sledgehammer sectional riffing.

Amazingly, Ms. Schneider's 1992 debut effort, Evanescence (Enja), came close to meeting that standard. The debt to Evans was honorably discharged in the title composition dedicated to her late mentor, who died in 1988. The band's sophomore disc three years later, Coming About (Enja), was a dodgier affair, despite the distinctive voices of tenor saxophonist Rich Perry and guitarist Ben Monder.

The first two cuts from the new album, Allégresse , did not make me feel any more optimistic. "Hang Gliding" is a measured outing that becomes less interesting the longer it stays aloft, and the band's fine pianist, Frank Kimbrough, can't purge the Chopin-derived "Nocturne" of its sacheted scent.

But enough with the negatives. Two Schneider pieces that form the album's ample middle, "Allégresse" and "Dissolution," are wonderful examples of inventive through-composition. "Dissolution," nearly 21 minutes long and anchored by a long solo on that reliable treacle-dispenser, the soprano sax, didn't seem especially promising on paper. But saxophonist Tim Ries assumes a fierce snake-charmer persona, undulating through a souk's worth of elaborately arranged musical settings. On the album's title track, we get the aural spectacle of trumpeter Ingrid Jensen's intense post-bop solo framed by great elephantine wheezes from the reed section.

At her best, Ms. Schneider sheds that Eastman A-student persona completely, entering into an unpredictable jazz impressionism that suggests the noble lineage of Ellington and Strayhorn.

–Joseph Hooper

Osborne: Is Boring

Back when Joan Osborne was still riding the surprise success of "One of Us" from her 1995 album, Relish , she promised that her next record would be far better realized. Ms. Osborne, the only worthwhile exponent of the largely useless early 90's blues-jam rock scene that produced the Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler, has finally released that follow-up album, Righteous Love (Interscope)–and though she has kept her promise, the result is too safe by half.

The album's producer, Mitchell Froom, who has twiddled knobs in the past for his ex-wife Suzanne Vega, as well as Elvis Costello and Cibo Matto, sounds like he's spinning his wheels here . Relish 's tracks tend to be dressed in either tasteful but anemic roots-pop or Beatles-esque effects: a Leslie-speaker-fed guitar wash here, some Indian-music ambiance there.

Although this last technique bespeaks a lack of imagination on Mr. Froom's part, it suits Ms. Osborne. Her one stylistic leap, evident on "If I Was Your Man" and "Running Out of Time," is that she favors a Qawwali inflection in her singing. Imagine a huskier-voiced Eartha Kitt after an apprenticeship with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, with whom Ms. Osborne studied before his demise.

Elsewhere, she takes on cynical Staple Singers-style secular gospel ("Safety in Numbers," "Angel Face") and widescreen Phil Spector pop (the title cut). Throughout, she brings to mind the time-honored acknowledgment that has been uttered by a thousand crusty musicians: "That bitch can sing!"

But ultimately, that's not enough. You proceed through Righteous Love taking note of the unimaginative song titles: "Baby Love," "Grand Illusion" and every song I've mentioned to this point. You scratch your head over Ms. Osborne's decision to record two songs–Gary Wright's "Love Is Alive" and Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love"–that have been covered ad nauseam. And, most of all, you keep waiting for something on the album to transport you.

Then, just when you least expect it, something does. "Poison Apples (Hallelujah)" should have been the final cut of Righteous Love instead of the penultimate one. It's far more luminous than anything else on the album.

On it, Ms. Osborne sings like Karen Carpenter reborn, but with far more soul. Her cries of "Hallelujah!" are spellbinding, and she follows them up with the one truly affecting couplet of the record: "If I die before you do / Believe me, I'll be haunting you."

Righteous Love could have used a few more tracks as tremendous as "Poison Apples." Without them, Ms. Osborne is going to have to take a back seat to this year's adult-pop darling, Shelby Lynne, whose album I Am Shelby Lynne is the adult-pop record to top this year. And that's too bad; I was rooting for Joan.

–Rob Kemp