Mischief and mishaps undeniably characterized the event, but a wave of hush fell over the audience as student poets Janessa Terry and Canice Munroe performed their work at the show’s opening. Their words had audience members and celebrities alike enthralled, and highlighted the excellent forum provided by Urban Arts in enabling young creatives from underprivileged backgrounds to showcase their talent.

Indeed, there was much talent on display throughout the evening as six plays, written just a day earlier, had their first and last public airing. All the ubiquitous components of a 24 hour play were there – on-stage tumbles, corpsing and reams of questionable props. The clear favorite of the evening had to be Reservation for Rockwell: a play about Sam Rockwell, starring Sam Rockwell as Sam Rockwell. No points for innovation there.

But creativity came in a different form entirely, with Justin Long and Billy Crudup showing a lot of skin in tiny Hooters tank tops. Battling to see who could offer up the best Rockwell impression before the man himself arrived for dinner, their competition was comedy gold. Mr. Rockwell’s entrance inspired some serious slo-mo shapes being thrown onstage, and as High School Musical darling and 24 hour play participant Vanessa Hudgens so neatly surmised to The Observer on the red carpet, “Seeing Sam Rockwell and Justin Long doing a dance-off kind of blew my mind.”

Also on the red carpet at BB King Blues Club was Broadway veteran and self-proclaimed “mama hen” Tracie Thoms who agreed, “We all know the best play was that dang Sam Rockwell piece. I mean, how do you write that overnight? The tiny Hooters tops…I mean, it was a package deal, they sealed it, they win, they get the 24 hour Oscar. It’s not even fair it was so good!” Thoms starred as lady loving ghetto princess Shaneetra in Impeach the Socialist, a somewhat strange play saved by the stage skills of both her and comedy queen Kristen Schaal. Other star performances included 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer as a man who fell in love with a horse, Seth Green as a surprisingly convincing Mexican and American Pie’s Eddie Kaye Thomas as a zombie banker.

Jason Biggs, also of American Pie fame, starred alongside his childhood pal Kaye Thomas, but when it came to the zombie-off, there was only one real contender. “Eddie clearly made the better zombie,” he conceded, but Mr. Biggs certainly made an impact in the charm stakes, winning over The Observer with a refreshingly laid back attitude.

“I’ve always wanted to be on stage with Eddie, so it was really cool for me to act with my buddy on stage tonight,” he said, before revealing: “I’ve done two 24 hour plays before, and the way to do it is to go first. All night I was watching and enjoying everyone perform, but I was also fucking nervous!”

Stage fright had also plagued Precious star Gabourey Sidibe, who enthused, “I loved tonight, I had so much fun! But I always get really scared and I was like ‘I can’t do it this year.’ I always regret thinking that and want to punch myself in the face about it afterwards because I have so much fun doing it.”

Thankfully, there was no need for self-flagellation, apart from perhaps an enthusiastic pat on the back. As the afterparty – also attended by Macaulay Culkin, who shunned the spotlight in favor of a dark corner at Amber Heard’s table – continued late into the evening, the actors hit the dance floor to let off some steam. Ms. Heard had taken a somewhat epic tumble onstage during her performance, but recovered like a trooper, characterizing an evening whereby the calamities were a vital – and probably the best – part of the process.

Macaulay Culkin's older sister Dakota died on Wednesday after being struck by a car in Los Angeles. [Us Weekly]

Some very attentive Gwyneth Paltrow fans believe the actress may have recently gotten breast implants. [P6]

An ex-American Idol producer is denying Paula Abdul's claims that her stalker, Paula Godspeed, was purposely cast on the show to create conflict. Ms. Godspeed committed suicide outside of Ms. Abdul's home last month. [People]

Jean-Georges Vongerichten will take over the Greenwich Hotel's troubled Ago restaurant. [Eater]

Kay McConaughey, mother to Matthew, wrote a book called I Amaze Myself. The excerpts on her Web site seem to frame it as some kind of self-help tome. Sample:

Or three! Anyway, unofficial leaks quickly revealed that it also includes the revealation that Papa McConaughey died during sex, along with details about his, uh, anatomy.

Janis Winehouse, mother to Amy, frequently speaks to the press, and gave a long interview to the Daily Mail in which gave details about her troubled daughter’s childhood, drug use, self-mutilation, and relationships:

John Voight, father to Angelina Jolie, uses the press as a means of attention-getting/communication with his daughter after she famously cut him off for prematurely announcing the adoption of her son Maddox.

Dina Lohan, mother to Lindsay, long turned a blind eye to her daughter's behavior in exchange for B.F.F. status with her offspring, but now has an E! show called “Living Lohan," which chronicles her attempts to turn Lohan calfs Ali and Cody into cash cows.

Alec Baldwin, father to Ireland, detailed his custody battle with ex-wife Kim Basinger over their daughter, calling the work A Promise to Ourselves. This is the same daughter whom he abused over the phone two years ago.

Connie Meester, mother to Leighton, is currently shopping a memoir detailing her "life journey from drug ring co-conspirator to suburban real estate agent to author." Her daughter reportedly approves of the deal.

Debbie Nelson, mother to Eminem, wrote  My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem, a memoir of her fraught relationship with her son, who famously sang about raping and killing her.

Candy Spelling, mother to Tori, has a tell-all in the works, which will presumably include her side of her on-again-off-again feud with daughter, who has already released a memoir and has another in the pipes.

Susan Ryan Jordan, mother to Meg Ryan, wrote "The Immune Spirit," ostensibly a memoir about her battle with cancer, though it mostly seemed to be about her battle with an estranged daughter.

Nancy Aniston, mother to Jennifer, recently wrote an account of her estrangement from her daughter called "From Mother to Daughter to Friends."

Kit Culkin, father to the Culkin children, wrote I Don’t Think So about his career as one of the worst stage parents in history, and Lost Boy, a collection of impressions of Michael Jackson, the bulk of which is based on the time his son Macaulay spent with him. Both are available as downloads from his Web site!

Jaid Barrymore, mother to Drew, posed for Playboy eight months after her estranged daughter did. Some other things, too, but that's what, um, sticks out.

So I wasn't too optimistic about sitting down with Rachel Miner, the 21-year-old ex-wife of Macaulay Culkin, now starring in the play Blue Surge at the Public Theater. I'd seen Blue Surge , in which Ms. Miner plays a prostitute, and I'd watched the movie Bully , in which she plays a teen who's naked a lot and masterminds a brutal murder.

It was a little after 5 p.m., and Ms. Miner was standing outside Time Café, talking to her musician boyfriend on a cell phone and laughing. I was watching her from a booth inside. A man blocked my view and urinated on the side of the restaurant. Then Ms. Miner came in and joined me. She was wearing a Japanese print T-shirt, jeans and Payless shoes. She ordered a water.

I asked what she'd been talking to her boyfriend about.

"I don't remember exactly what it was," she said. "Some joke. I laugh a lot."

Right off the bat: an evasion, an unusable quote. Publicists do such a number on their clients. Rule No. 1 is always: reveal nothing. Drives me nuts.

Ms. Miner said she'd had a "crazy New York day," what with the vegan protein bar she'd consumed for breakfast, the rain, the cars splashing her, the browsing at Barnes & Noble.

What did Ms. Miner do to escape reality?

"I love to bake. There's something very ritualistic about it, kind of magic."

Oh, brother. Then she told me about helping some homeless man the other day.

I told her I needed a story.

"I have so many!" she said. (Translation: But none for you !)

Maybe I was the problem. When I was Ms. Miner's age, I was a total fuck-up-playing Frisbee, drinking, getting fired from dishwashing jobs. She, on the other hand, was a mature adult. She was in a Woody Allen movie at age 10. Starred in The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway. Married at 17, divorced at 19. Photographers hid in the bushes all the time, harassed her. People wrote mean things. She laughed it off. At 19, I was afraid to do a semester abroad in France.

"Teach me something," I said. "I don't know anything. I watch TV all day long. Do you watch TV?"

"No, I don't," she said. "I find it really depressing. I'd rather be living than watching other people live. I have all these rules for avoiding depression. One is going outside in the morning. I don't keep breakfast in the house, so that I have to go out first thing when I first wake up. And then I come back and shower. I think one of the things is, if you start spending the days indoors and you don't go out and interact with people, that's like a danger zone. And then another is not watching TV. Unless you turn it on for a specific show and then turn it off, I think you can just lose yourself and then you feel inactive, like you're not accomplishing anything. Instead of living and whatnot. It's like Prozac-a numbing kind of regulation."

I told her I'd get rid of the TV.

What did she do to get silly?

"I'm always silly! I'm very silly. You have to ask my boyfriend. I tend to talk in a baby voice and I'll sing and dance around. I kind of have multiple personalities, and my boyfriend has begun to name them. I've got many different voices-I have a Southern girl, an Irish girl. I have a gibberish language that you'd have to decipher. I guess I try to never take myself too seriously."

I learned more. She grew up on the Upper West Side. The Challenger explosion was a huge event for her because she wanted to be an astronaut. She was 6 and the head of the astronaut club. She has been compared to a dolphin.

"I guess because I'm playful and I have that kind of abandon and everything," she said. "And there's also something a little mysterious about them and whatnot."

She has a clean record. She's rescued a bunch of animals. Men make crude comments to her on the street and have masturbated close to her in Central Park. "I think as a woman you get hounded a lot . I know I do," she said.

She cries when she sees a beautiful sky or the moon and the stars. At the end of Blue Surge , she sobs-very convincingly-and it breaks your heart. She's reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , Elegant Universe (about string theory) and Lord of the Rings . She has a tattoo of a fairy on her lower back.

Has she ever lost her mind?

"A lot of people will call me nuts or crazy, but I've always been pretty stable," she said. "By some people's standards, I might be crazy. But I realize that I'm not going to harm anyone, and the only place that I live is within my own universe, really-so it's O.K."

So maybe Rachel Miner isn't the best interview. But she's a very fine actress and a good human, and what more can we ask of her?

Well, could she say something about Macaulay Culkin?

She did. It was a good quote.

-George Gurley

Shipping Out at The Delmonico

In the deserted executive offices of the Hotel Delmonico, a lone secretary manned the phones.

"No, he's been dead for years," she told a caller, "and the hotel is no longer a hotel."

On April 17, the Hotel Delmonico, a venerable edifice on Park Avenue and 59th Street for 70 years, closed its doors for the last time. But there was little time to get sentimental. The liquidators had arrived.

In preparation for the building's transfer to its new owner, developer Donald Trump, the Hotel Delmonico-still home to 15 permanent residents-sold its remaining contents to a team of liquidators from Dayton for approximately $1 million. The goods-160 suites of distinctly unglamorous queen-size beds, scuffed night stands and a small mountain of wall-unit hairdryers, phones and TV sets-were quickly cataloged and priced. Then the whole lot was put on sale.

The Delmonico had been a starry hotel in its heyday-Ed Sullivan lived there, and Bob Dylan introduced the Beatles to marijuana there-so naturally we wanted to see the items for sale in the hotel's celebrity suites. Inside the gray-walled Bob Dylan Suite, there was a white six-drawer dresser for $65 and a square mirror-top coffee table for $250. We were informed, however, that Mr. Dylan had never stayed in this particular suite. (Items for sale in the Beatles Suite-where, likewise, no Beatle actually slept-included a marble-top wet bar, slightly scuffed, for $245, a black Formica king-size bed for $225, but, alas, no dried weed.)

Luci and Desi Arnaz also lived briefly at the Delmonico, but did not inhabit the Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Suite, where there was an original three-disc recording of Babalu and Other Favorites (RCA) for $250, a drop-leaf end table for $125, and a used copy of Rubicon One by Dennis Jones, price negotiable. In the Ed Sullivan Suite-again, not home to the star himself-one could buy, for $95, three framed prints of the television personality, or a roll of wall-to-wall seafoam green carpeting for $80.

-Petra Bartosiewicz

Pulitzer Prize in drama for Proof ;

that was somebody else. Like a schmuck, I stood in line for two hours to get

tickets to The Producers the day

after it opened to the best reviews since Oedipus

Rex .

 But I was performing

something akin to community service. My mother-who once saw virtually every

play that came to Broadway, but seems to have lost some of her motivation of

late and prefers reading Harlequin Romance novels in bed to just about anything

else-agreed to go to a few Broadway plays if I got the tickets.

What complicated the process is that she insists on sitting

in rows 1 through 5; row 6 and she'd rather stay in bed reading bodice-rippers.

The reason I found myself on this line, which stretched under the marquis of

the St. James Theatre halfway up 44th Street, is that it's impossible to

purchase seats by location through Tele-charge.

Normally, I start experiencing heart palpitations after five

or 10 minutes on line. But I surprised myself by my good cheer: I felt part of

something larger than myself. Broadway was back. The curse of Andrew Lloyd

Webber was finally being lifted from the stage. I was doing my part for the

theater.

And the Producers

staff couldn't have been more helpful. They supplied each of us with a seating

plan so that we needn't waste time once we reached the box office. Just so I

wouldn't clutch when my turn came, I circled rows 1 through 5, center

orchestra.

I'm not unrealistic; I didn't expect seats for the following

week. But my mother didn't care when she got seats-six months or a year from

now would have been fine with her. As I think I've already mentioned, they just

had to be in the first five rows.

Considering the show's buzz, $17 million in advance sales

and rave reviews, another person might have been willing to compromise. Not my

mother; she's a woman of conviction. Let me give you an example. On one

occasion, not that many years ago, I looked up at the sky and was struck by how

bright the full moon was shining, even though it was broad daylight.

I tried to draw my mother's attention to this celestial

phenomenon, but she refused to look. "The sun and the moon are never out at the

same time," she told me flatly. We went back and forth like this for several

minutes-me claiming the sun and moon could share the sky simultaneously, she

insisting it was impossible-until I finally got her to look.

"That's not the moon," she stated confidently. "That's a

round cloud."

Because we never, ever sit behind row 5, my family's

experience of the theater-not to mention the ballet and the opera-is somewhat

different from most. Apart from the fact that we're so close you often can't

hear the actors over the orchestra, we run the risk of contacting infectious

diseases from the cast. My wife remembers attending Starlight Express with my mother and getting soaked every time the

profusely sweating roller-skaters careened past their seats.

My brother doesn't remember much about Piaf , including who played the cabaret singer, except that he spent

the whole show looking up her skirt and getting spit on every time she belted

out "La Vie en Rose."

I don't mind my mom's second-row seats at the ballet. I have

a certain weakness for ballerinas and rather enjoy being really near them. My

brother, on the other hand-not the one who saw Piaf , a different brother-is more of a purist. "The best thing for

dance, which is a visual medium, is to sit in row O," he fumes. "It's like

trying to view The Night Watch or Guernica from three inches away."

Our seats at the opera, also row B, really ought to come

with a chiropractor. After spending three hours looking up-straight up-at the

surtitles, suspended over the stage of the New York State Theater, you feel

like checking into the Rusk Institute. When we had a subscription to the New

York Philharmonic for more than a decade-again, row B-I never once saw the

brass or the woodwinds, but my familiarity with the string section was so

complete I swear I could detect the musicians' mood swings.

I finally made it to The

Producers ' ticket window and told the agent I needed three seats, rows 1

through 5, center orchestra, didn't matter when. She shook her head glumly.

There were no orchestra seats. Period. For the next year. By that point, Nathan

Lane and Matthew Broderick weren't even guaranteed to be in the cast.

I realized it would be foolish, especially given the

thousand or so people waiting in line behind me, to try and convince the ticket

lady that the living would envy the dead were I forced to return to my mother

bearing mezzanine seats. Instead, I told her my mom was handicapped and hard of

hearing. Both of which are somewhat true; she can't hear well and does have

trouble walking.

The ticket seller, while reminding me that free headphones

were available, apparently took pity on me and returned to her computer

console. She found three seats on the side in row O of the orchestra for early

October. I didn't know what to do. The only time my mother ever sat in row O

may have been on an airplane. But I'd stood in line for two hours. These were

the hottest tickets on Broadway. I didn't want to wait to see the show until

Nathan Lane had been replaced by Regis Philbin and Matthew Broderick by

Macaulay Culkin. So I took them.

My mother's reaction when

I called with the good news was swift, predictable and brutal. She was pissed.

"I'll give them to you," she snapped. "I don't have to go someplace just

because it's the thing to do."

The inference, of course,

was that I was one of those trendies who did. "If I don't see it and enjoy

it"-meaning from Row 5 forward-"I'll get furious."

The next day, I called The

Producers ' press office to see if I

could redeem myself. "If you're calling for house seats," a recording

stated, "there are none."

Things could be worse, I thought. I was sorry my mother

wouldn't get to see the show until 2012-she told me she'd write away for tickets

herself-but I was getting to go and she was paying for the tickets.

However, she called me back the following day. She wanted to

know whether to return the tickets or not. I thought the matter was settled-I

was taking them-but now she wanted to give them to me for my birthday.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. The tickets are a $300

value. But she usually gives me cash, and I had my heart set on buying a pair

of high-powered German binoculars to go bird-watching. Were seats in row O

preferable? Did I want to see The

Producers that much? How good could it be?

I discussed the situation with my wife, and we're going. And

we're taking our 12-year-old daughter. I'm sure we'll have a great time, but I

still have mixed feelings. The fact is that sitting in row B your whole life,

you get spoiled-the spittle and stiff necks notwithstanding.

it's as common as cherry pie backstage, but that's nothing to do with us.

Onstage sex is tricky. People, after all, are watching.

Voyeurism doesn't suit the communal activity of theater.

Movies are different; movies are more private. There are dirty movies, no dirty

plays. They try . Remember all the

fuss about Nicole Kidman, the real live very briefly naked movie star in The Blue Room ? Thrilling, wasn't it? You

can't get it out of your mind!

Nah …. At its ballyhooed best, the adaptation of Arthur

Schnitzler's disturbing 1900 drama Reigen

(which became Max Ophüls' movie La Ronde )

was undangerous, not erotic, modish, not carnal. It became what's acceptable in

an anemic culture-a light sex comedy of manners, or something tamely, acceptably voyeuristic. The early plays

of Harold Pinter were charged with an erotic subtext. Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses was nice and

weird. Patrick Marber's Closer , the

first cybersex play in dramatic history, on the other hand, was essentially

about everything but sex. It satirized it instead.

You have to wrack your

brains to recall a sexy play. And if you do, it's no good. Which brings us

reluctantly to Richard Nelson's sexual coming-of-age story, Madame Melville , starring Macaulay

Culkin, at the Promenade Theatre. The former child superstar-forever lumbered,

it seems, with his Home Alone

movies-is boldly trying to bust out of his own adorable screen myth, though

with spooky results. Now 20, he seems to convey both innocence and insolence in

an apparent split identity, like someone stiffly uncomfortable in his own

smooth skin.

The character he's playing, however, is uncomfortable, an awkward schoolboy, as sensitive and pure as a

poet in the making. Mr. Culkin plays a middle-aged American, Carl, who recalls

his 15-year-old self being deflowered in 1966 by his literature teacher at the

American School in Paris. Mr. Nelson's Madame

Melville is a memory play about sex and eroticism-as well as adolescent

yearning and loneliness, art and books, beauty and growing up. But I regret

that this fine dramatist, who also directs, overreaches in a slender,

intermissionless drama while adding a dollop of comforting sentiment that's

wholly uncharacteristic of him.

Mr. Nelson is the

playwright who's made a brilliant specialty of the perverse Anglo-American

relationship, with such wryly intelligent dramas as Some Americans Abroad and New

England . His recent Goodnight

Children Everywhere , about a family in wartime Britain, was exact in every

near-Chekhovian detail and contained an offstage scene of youthful eroticism

that was the more disturbing for its refined, gentle restraint. But alas, Madame Melville mostly overstates its

central coming-of-age theme, to the point of turning into a boisterous sex

comedy that might have been tailored for Broadway had it not been written by

Richard Nelson. Quotations from the Kama

Sutra get the biggest laughs. Other references-Bonnard, Bach and Joan of

Arc, if you please-are too consciously weighty even for a horny, eager kid like

Carl, the unexpected guest in the adult world of arts and letters. And while

I'm moaning, even the prominently displayed new poster of Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle jars like a brightly lit neon

signal spelling out the words "1960's Intellectual France. See Also: Truffaut."

It's no one's fault here

that any play set in Paris automatically declares its superior calling card to

the gullible classes. Look at the pretentious work of Yasmina Reza, if you

must, or proceed to Neil Simon, of all surprising people. Mr. Simon's Broadway

hit, The Dinner Party , is set in

Paris with French characters-the better to convince us the play is brimming

stylishly with sexy-sexy ideas about marriage and life and the big wide

existential monde out there. Come on!

It's about as French as Felix Unger. Not that it matters. Everyone knows it's Felix Unger, and Everyone

likes him.

Mr. Nelson is in a

different category to the journeyman boulevard dramatist. Yet Madame Melville's

book-lined Parisian apartment strangely possesses no atmosphere of anything

authentically French-including the books. The set by Thomas Lynch could be more

or less anywhere. It might be the apartment of a lucky graduate student. But

then its owner, Madame Melville (the excellent Joely Richardson, using a

hypnotic Anglo-French accent), appears for a bewildering chunk of the action in

pigtails. Pigtails! Ms. Richardson is young enough without being made to look

about the same age as Macaulay Culkin. Yet Madame Melville is supposed to be in

her 30's-a somewhat seasoned lady who fancies a naïve, willingly seduced boy,

age 15. Their relationship should appear to be illicit, not safe or basically

wholesome and embarrassed. But if the lady possesses little more than the

giggly, dithery flirtatiousness of a pigtailed teen out to get the simpering

schoolboy, where's the eroticism and what's the fuss?

It's true that memory distorts. But so much? The boy, now

middle-aged, looks back in nostalgia to his night and day with the woman who

changed his life (and set him on the road to becoming a writer). The echoes of

Tennessee Williams in the opening moments comfort and intrigue us. The first

sight of Macaulay Culkin, seeming to greet us stiffly with a half-smirk on the

face of a fallen angel, intrigues us the more. And perhaps Mr. Nelson's

distorted sense of Madame Melville is deliberate. The hero remembers his first

love and infatuation much younger than she really was, as a painter filters

shapes through the dying light.

If so, the sophistry is

too much to sustain in a memory play that otherwise spells out everything else,

including-we learn manipulatively at the curtain-the early death of Madame

Melville from cancer. The dramatist always writes elegantly, but the clichés of

melodrama are uncomfortably present. The heroine is less the enigmatic mystery

we're led to believe, more a petulant tease who's just split up with the

married math teacher. Madame M. is also an aspiring novelist, writing an

earnest version of Joan of Arc. Her

friend and neighbor, Ruth (the winning Robin Weigert), is a concert violinist

and dropout Jersey girl in Paris who's fleeing a stormy marriage. She's a

thirtysomething quasi-bohemian who discovers she's got crabs. And into this

free-spirited place steps Macaulay Culkin's sweet and innocent schoolboy Carl,

whose parents are worried.

Mr. Culkin doesn't look sweet and innocent to me. He's far

more interesting than that. He seems odd and trapped and insinuating, capable

of dissolute things. He should have seduced her! If the roles had been reversed

and Mr. Culkin's Carl had seduced an innocent Madame Melville, we would have

been onto something. But not the play Mr. Nelson wished to write.

Until his June 1998 nuptials with Ms. Miner, Mr. Culkin, who is one of seven children, had been living in the apartment of his mother, Patricia Brentrup, at 124 West 60th Street. Mr. Culkin grew up in that apartment, and four of his siblings still lived there when it was destroyed after an electric radiator set the family Christmas tree on fire last December. Ms. Brentrup was sued for leaving the apartment door open after fleeing the apartment, an act that city officials said contributed to the deaths of four people in the building and prompted a citywide debate about the importance of landlords installing sprinkler systems in their buildings–a cost-creating course that developers like Donald Trump, who personally lobbied City Council Speaker Peter Vallone on the issue, would prefer not to take. After the fire, the family moved in with the newlyweds.

Despite the family's reputation for being menacing neighbors–they were reportedly the source of many complaints over the years in their old building–the couple selling this apartment was relieved to meet the family's main breadwinner and his wife. "They turned out to be very reasonable people," said the apartment's seller, a Manhattan-based attorney named Carol Schrager. And they saw the deal through, to the relief of broker Emily Tannen, who drew up eight ultimately failed contracts for this apartment during the last two years to, among others, an antique collector, a doctor, a young socialite who wanted the space to house his guitar collection, and a European man who, according to Ms. Tannen, "said he had an incurable illness and did not have long to live … [and] wanted to buy the loft for his girlfriend who was a model and needed lots of space for her clothes." (That particular buyer, who wanted to pay for the condominium with a suitcase filled with small bills, never signed his contract.)

"I'd be in the middle of a trial," recalled Ms. Schrager, "and I'd have to rush back to my office … and I'd do it–I'd get them the contract, and they'd just peter out." According to Ms. Schrager, Mr. Culkin and his wife were much easier to do business with than the apartment's other suitors.

The apartment, which was on the market for $1.75 million at the time the actors saw it, contains three bedrooms and two baths, plus a big L-shaped space encompassing the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Originally the headquarters of the Socialist Workers' Party, the apartment was rented in 1974 to Bruce Gitlin, a metal-fabricating factory owner who converted it from an essentially raw space to a livable apartment. Ten years later, when Mr. Gitlin was facing eviction from a landlord who wanted to sell the building, he hired Ms. Schrager as his real estate attorney. Not only did she win him the right to stay and buy the loft, she joined him there as his wife in 1986. This year, the couple moved with their 8-year-old daughter Sarah to an Upper East Side town house.

Since the wedding, the Culkins–and the rest of the newly homeless brood–have been living in a penthouse in the West 60's, where they ought to stay until they give their new digs a facelift. "You know when you walk into a place and say, 'God, this place needs to be done over,'" said one broker familiar with the couple's new apartment. "It was one of those." Such a sobering prospect may have been the reason rocker David Bowie sold his never-moved-into ninth-floor loft to software executive Michael Odell for $1.85 million last February.

TRIBECA

ISN'T LIFE SWELL FOR CYNTHIA ROWLEY IN HER NEW $1.2 MILLION LOFT? Life is indeed swell for Cynthia Rowley. There's a baby (a 6-month-old daughter), a new book ( Swell: A Girl's Guide to the Good Life ) and a new home. In September, Ms. Rowley paid $1.2 million for a swanky 2,650-square-foot loft on Broadway near Franklin Street.

The fashion designer and her architect-artist husband had been living in Ossining, N.Y., and renting a small place in the city. Now, when they're in town, they're swimming in space in TriBeCa. The loft features a first-rate kitchen (cherry cabinets, Sub-Zero fridge, microwave oven, dishwasher, granite countertops), a fireplace, 12-foot-high ceilings, oak floors and french doors that open onto a 900-square-foot "entertaining" terrace; there's also a second terrace, just because. The building is newly zoned as residential–it's a former office furniture warehouse that underwent major renovations and an additional six stories for conversion. Ms. Rowley was unavailable for comment. Broker: Douglas Elliman (Patricia Dugan, Peter Rodis, Robert Gross).

UPPER EAST SIDE

360 East 72nd Street

Three-bed, two-bath, 1,600-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $875,000. Selling: $830,000.

Charges: $1,277; 50 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: two weeks.

THEY HAVE NO LIFE OUTSIDE THE 10TH FLOOR. A lawyer and a doctor had lived here happily since the building opened in 1964, raising two children. Now that the kids are grown, they decided it was time for a change of life style and bought a loft downtown–how hip. Lucky for them, some neighbors squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment were looking for more space and didn't want to leave the building–or the floor, in fact. They could have waited for any number of apartments to become available in this huge building, with its 35 floors and six elevators. But they wanted to remain on the 10th floor–the only floor in the building with 9 1/2-foot-high ceilings (a whole foot higher than those on any other floor). The apartment has an enclosed balcony, renovated bathrooms, good light and a kitchen that could use some fixing up, which the buyers plan to do. Broker: Corcoran Group (Charles Russell).

799 Park Avenue

Three-bed, three-bath, 2,000-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $1.175 million. Selling: $1.21 million.

Charges: $2,065; 50 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: one week.

THE WALLS HAVE FEELERS. This postwar building, with a 24-hour doorman, a parking garage and a common roof deck, is nothing special. And there are other apartments in this city that would do more for you. But it all comes down to location. And this apartment, on Park Avenue near 75th Street offers … ultra-smooth walls. The seller is a widow who was rather fanatical about walls, so she had extra sheet rock put up in every room: the place is very quiet as a result. The buyers are semi-retired shrinks who write books and lecture; they're also, by the way, friends of Mayor Giuliani (so don't mess with them). They sold their apartment–a Park Avenue duplex–because they wanted a single-level apartment. But they didn't want to leave Park Avenue. The buyers are living in a hotel as their new home undergoes various renovations. Broker: Sumitomo Real Estate (Cecilia Serrano); Douglas Elliman (Debbie Solomon).

CHELSEA

240 West 23rd Street (Arcadia)

One-bed, one-bath, 1,000-square-foot prewar co-op.

Asking: $439,000. Selling: $425,000.

Charges: $645; 50 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: two weeks.

ADVERTISER LIBERATES CHELSEA CO-OP FROM SAN FRANCISCAN WEB SITE DESIGNER. The buyer is a single guy who works in advertising. He previously owned a co-op on West 102nd Street, but wanted to be downtown. Now he's cool and Chelsea, happily settled in this place with 10-foot-high ceilings; exposed brick in the living room; a walk-in closet with a built-in chest of drawers; a big, open kitchen with a dishwasher and two ovens; abundant light and courtyard views. The Arcadia was built in 1930; it's small (only 21 units), self-managed (meaning no doorman) and has a common roof garden and laundry in the basement. The seller is a Web site designer who has been living in San Francisco for the past few years, so his apartment needed, how shall we say, a bit of freshening up. But no matter: The advertising fellow saw the apartment on the second day it was shown and made an offer. There was already a contract on his 102nd Street place, so he needed to move fast, and did. Broker: Corcoran Group (Margaretta Douglas).

GREENWICH VILLAGE

Fifth Avenue near 11th Street

Three-bed, two-bath, 1,500-square-foot co-op.

Asking: $925,000. Selling: $855,000.

Charges: $1,289. 50 percent tax-deductible.

Time on the market: nine months.

THEY'RE BUILDING A PORTAL INTO JULIA ROBERTS' APARTMENT. Sometimes the answer to all your problems lies directly beneath you. And in this case–the sale of a co-op on lower Fifth Avenue–that answer is not Julia Roberts, one of the building's newest residents. The sellers of this seventh-floor apartment decided to follow the have-kids, hit-the-road-to-the-suburbs path. But their apartment, which lacked expansive views, was not selling, lovely as it is. As soon as they lowered the price, a buyer rose right up in the elevator. A couple of investment bankers just downstairs decided to buy it and make a duplex. The apartment they've purchased has an eat-in kitchen, stained glass in the bathrooms, and various original, prewar details (the Stanford White-designed building went up in 1903). The buyers are new to the parenting game; now there's plenty of room for everyone! Broker: Corcoran Group (Robert Manzari and Bonnie McCartney).

PARK SLOPE

576 Fourth Street

Three-story town house.

Asking: $1.1 million. Selling: $1.085 million.

Time on the market: two weeks.

ONE MORE TOWN HOUSE TO CRY OVER. You'll kick yourself after you read about this place. A five-bedroom 1890 limestone house was gorgeously renovated (including new kitchen and bathrooms) by a married couple with no children who left it in magnificent condition. The dining room has oak paneling and beamed ceilings; there is elaborate plasterwork in the foyer and parlor; a center staircase; finished English basement; a library; central air-conditioning; and a landscaped backyard garden. Oh, and try not to bump your head on the chandeliers. After four years, the sellers are moving to upstate New York for a taste of country life. The buyer, an international tax attorney at Baker & McKenzie, is single but (sorry) engaged. He had been renting in Manhattan, but, after just walking through this place, he made an offer immediately. Broker: Brooklyn's Corcoran Landmark (Minette Stokes).