"If you grow up in New York City, you will learn how to serve, and you will be expected to serve," Bloomberg told a crowd gathered at an indoor track in Washington Heights.

The event was essentially a pep rally, complete with cheerleading sections representing dozens of volunteer organizations, city employees wearing bright orange t-shirts and hats, and a jumbotron above the stage that shows live shots as the camera sweeps over the crowd on a crane.

Notables in attendance include Silda Wall Spitzer, wife of former governor Eliot Spitzer, and Matilda Cuomo, wife of former governor Mario Cuomo and mother of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

MTV News host Sway Calloway is also here. 

Bloomberg unveiled the post of "chief volunteer officer." which will be awarded to Caroline Kennedy, who was recently close to being both a senator and the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

The most notable (though not in-person) appearance was from Valerie Jarrett, who, Bloomberg informed the crowd, is one of Obama’s “closest advisers.”

Jarrett, who appeared by video, praised the city’s efforts, which take place in the run-up to Obama signing the Serve America Act.

“Thank you for endorsing our efforts,” Bloomberg said after Jarrett’s video appearance.

Bloomberg ticked off the initiatives, which include an advertising campaign—on TV, in newspapers, and on billboards starting tomorrow—and a new web site to help people find volunteer opportunities. Bloomberg also said city volunteers will have the chance to be featured on a jumbotron in Times Square.

The mayor also got some kind words from MTV’s Sway. During one exchange where Sway was interviewing volunteers in the audience, Sway said to Bloomberg, “I got your back.”

She said it was "amazing to see the number of women who were there," and said that Christine Quinn gave a "dynamite, impassioned" speech on abortion rights.

She also said she was willing to get up early this morning because of the special connection she has to the Cuomo family.

"I've known his family and him since he was a little boy. Matilda Cuomo and I used to sit in a dancing school on Parsons Boulevard watching our daughters."

Fine.

Asked about Mr. Cuomo's actual qualifications for the job he's seeking, she cited his "managerial experience," from HUD, and said that it was no big deal that Mr. Cuomo hasn't practiced law for some time now. Oh, and she took at a shot at her old friend Mark Green.

"I became a lawyer in 1960 and got married two years after and didn't practice until 1974. The law is not something you are going to forget," she said noting that within two years of entering the DA's office she was made bureau chief. In two years I was a bureau chief. Remember at HUD he supervised 350 lawyers. Mark Green hasn't practiced law at all."

—Jason Horowitz

UPDATE
The Green campaign writes in with a response.

"We think Geraldine Ferraro is far too classy to be used as a campaign attack surrogate, but we'll be glad to march Mark's experience running a consumer law enforcement agency suing hundreds of businesses for fraud, with Andrew's housing efforts. One has a history that fits an Attorney General, the other a history that fits a housing czar.

And speaking of the law, why won't Gerry's candidate disclose his clients, taxes and investments, as Richard Brodsky and then Mark Green did?"

We think hosting a breakfast to celebrate a new diet book is like holding an A.A. meeting at McSorley's , but whadda we know ? This morning at Michael's , Reader's Digest and the ladies who lunch celebrate ChangeOne , the magazine's first diet book, which encourages women to lose weight by changing one poor eating habit each day . Expect breakfast served according to the diet and many puns on the word "digest" by the mag's honcho, Tom Ryder . We predict that the first sign of "change" will be the coins we use to buy some Krispy Kremes on the way to work …. Later, those for whom morning occurs at the end of the day head down to Irving Plaza to behold the ever-increasing phenomenon we like to call "Actresses: The New Strippers!" Tonight, the Pussycat Dolls perform a burlesque cabaret show which has toured the country featuring celebs like Gwen Stefani , Christina Applegate and tonight's star, Carmen Electra . Somebody should really tell that girl that the exotic-dancing route could be damaging to her career. Oh, wait ….

[ ChangeOne breakfast, Michael's, 24 West 55th Street, 8:30 a.m., 822-8181; Pussycat Dolls, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place between 15th and 16th streets, 8 p.m., 307-4100.]

Thursday 23rd

Well, it's official. NBC's Friends has given up its chance to be the first TV show in history to go out on a high note , having signed on for yet another season . And since a new baby is always the death rattle of a sitcom (see: Growing Pains , Murphy Brow, don't get us started on Roseanne ), the million-per-episode cast members are going to be dragging themselves, and us, across the finish line …. So, it looks like we'll be venturing out on Thursday nights for the first time in a decade. Might as well start tonight by heading over to the Waldorf for cocktails on the "Starlight Roof" as the American Psychoanalytic Foundation hands its 2002 Human Spirit Award to a confounded Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker. "My qualifications?" he said, laughing. "I don't know how I qualify for my driver's license! I guess it's because of all the people I've prevented from going into therapy over the years." Mr. Mankoff is the pen behind the famed sketch of the executive looking in his date book and saying, "No, Thursday's out. How about never? Does never work for you?" He also has a master's in psychology and was pursuing a Ph.D. when he left the field to become a cartoonist. "Cartoons help people deal with the difficult aspects of life, like death," said Mr. Mankoff. "We're the only creatures who really realize that we're going to die. There's no rational defense, and I feel like the best way to respond is with humor. One of my cartoons, for instance, showed the Grim Reaper dragging a woman's husband away as she says to him, 'Relax, Harvey. Change is good!' "

[American Psychoanalytic Foundation Benefit, Starlight Roof, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 301 Park Avenue, 6:30 p.m., 752-0450, ext. 29.]

Friday 24th

Britney Spears, N.Y.C.'s newest barfly, takes her chug-a-lug act to Miami for the launch party of Skybar at the Shore Club. Organized by plucky blond publicist Lara Shriftman - not the one who ran over all those people in the Hamptons, this is the other one -other expected guests include Owen and Luke Wilson . Crash strategy: Have a friend dress up as Justin , you dress up as Fred Durst and say you're there for Britney. She'll rescue one of you, but we're not sure which one …. But what the hell are you doing in Miami, anyway?

[Skybar, the Shore Club, 1901 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, Fla., 9 p.m., 305-534-0008.]

Saturday 25th

"Hi, we're the Radio City Rockettes and we get a kick out of riding in taxis, but we always buckle up for safety and so should you! " You'd be concerned about safety, too, if you only had secure employment three months out of the year. So support a Rockette today by signing up for "The Rockette Experience" at Broadway Dance Center. Participants will learn the choreography from the Christmas Spectacular , and go on a mock audition before a panel of "distinguished judges" ( read : Rockettes trying to look serious by donning novelty eyeglasses ), and take the Radio City Stage Door Tour. Just don't forget to get a receipt and gather your belongings when you leave …. Then hoof it on down to the Blue Heron Arts Center , because just when you thought it was socially unacceptable to use the word "Indian," tonight Theater by the Blind re-enacts Agatha Christie's famed mystery Ten Little Indians . After the plot unfolds and all the characters have been iced, the audience gets to try to identify the murderer. This is followed by a parlor game in which (if you had a problem with the Indian thing, do not pass go) audience members take turns guessing which actors are blind, visually impaired or sighted. "I've always wanted to make it a game where each person puts a dollar in a pot, and whoever guesses everyone correctly gets all the money," said director Ike Schambelan . "But the company tells me that's terminally tacky." He swears that the latter guessing game is harder than the first. "This is a mother to do," he said. "People guess incorrectly all the time. It's very difficult to tell."

["The Rockette Experience," Broadway Dance Center, 221 West 57th Street, fifth floor, 582-9304; the Blue Heron Arts Center, 123 East 24th Street between Park and Lexington, 7 p.m., 206-1515.]

Sunday 26th

Bone up for Valentine's Day with a beginners' tantric workshop -come with or without a partner …. The class goes from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (now that's stamina), but we still don't understand why anyone would have to go through a whole bunch of complex bindu-clenching, Sanskrit-chanting exercises just to make sex fun …. Anyone else hungry? We balked at news of the $50 burger by chef Daniel Boulud, but bargain-eating football fans can get "Super Bowlfuls" of tailgating food from celeb chefs today for just $60 at Blue Smoke restaurant. Watch the game while rubbing elbows with the Harrison's Joey Campanaro, Pershing Square's Wayne Harley Brachman and Union Square Café's Michael Romano. Sponsored by Gourmet magazine, part of the proceeds benefit City Harvest. Watch for gamine Gourmet editors doing wine stands while a crowd chants "Sip! Sip! Sip!" … Meanwhile, now that every actress with the possible (and unfortunate) exception of Dame Edna has had her crack at doing The Vagina Monologues -the show that Vogue editors call "really, um, empowering" and which our parents back home in the South call " unseemly" -the curtain comes down tonight. Howard Socol , the big shot at Barneys, teams up with fashion maven Eileen Fisher to host an after-party filled with "V-festivities," the details of which we chose not to inquire about, but be our guest ….

[One-Day Beginners' Tantra Workshop, New York Open Center, Spring Street between Broadway and Lafayette, 10 a.m., 219-2527, ext. 125; Super Sunday Bash, Blue Smoke, 116 East 27th Street, 4:30 p.m., tickets available at www.tickets.com; V-Day, Barneys New York, Madison Avenue and 61st Street, 8:30 p.m., 645-VDAY.]

Monday 27th

Ahhh, January. Right about now, muddled Ivy League seniors are deciding to "give back" by joining Teach for America next year (translation: Morgan Stanley and Sotheby's aren't hiring). Tonight, the Harvard Club hosts a book basheroo for The Person Who Changed My Life , in which famous types recall favorite teachers and mentors. Matilda Cuomo, the book's editor, called in on her way to baby-sit for son Andrew and daughter-in-law Kerry Kennedy Cuomo's children. "Altogether, I have 10 granddaughters," she said. "And we're expecting another in March!" According to Mrs. Cuomo, the book includes "everyone from Maya Lin to Geraldo Rivera to the Baldwins-all of them, even the mother!" At tonight's party, Senate Armed Services Committee member Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers a lecture on mentoring children at risk ( first lesson: show the tykes how to make billing records disappear before you can say "subpoena!" ). Meanwhile, the French take some time out from hating America to send over another film, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not , starring Audrey Tautou , the goggle-eyedgamine anachronism of the silent-filmeraand star oflastyear'shit, Amélie . Advance screening cesoir . Plot: Angélique is an art student who's fallen in love with Loïc, a cardiologist, who also happens to be married. It's a love story. He's a heart doctor. It will be released on Valentine's Day . Subtlety, party of one? Though Ms. Tautou has been well-received by American critics, the French actress is less enamored of American culture. "I wouldn't mind being in an American film for a laugh , but I certainly don't want to be in Thingy Blah Blah 3 , if you know what I mean," she told The Guardian . She loves us not.

[T he Person Who Changed My Life party, Harvard Club, 27 West 44th Street, 7 p.m., 779-3350, ext. 254; He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not , the Technicolor Screening Room, 321 West 44th Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, 2 p.m., 268-3075.]

Tuesday 28th

There's no place like Oz , and unfortunately there's no place for Oz on HBO's schedule next year. So enjoy it while you can (through the slits between your fingers) tonight with a special preview episode at the Museum of Television & Radio . After the screening, the show's creators-along with actors J.K. Simmons (Prisoner No. 92S110, Vernon Schillinger) and Lee Tergesen (Prisoner No. 97B412, Tobias "Toby" Beecher)-will discuss the program and field questions. We called Mr. Tergesen and asked what it's like being on the show. "It's like being in f*cking high school!" he said. "We're in the cafeteria-we've got our lunches, our trays and, well, our shanks." How does he feel about the show ending? " Aaauuuggghh ! Terrible! When we finished shooting the show over the summer, a lot of people were pretty emotional. It was a great group of people to work with, and we're never going to get a chance to do a show like this again. I mean, how many times am I going to get to bite someone's dick off?"

["There's No Place Like Oz ," the Museum of Television & Radio, 25 West 52nd Street, 6:30 p.m., 621-6600.]

Wednesday 29th

Don't you always want to know what newscasters are saying when networks cut the sound at the end of the broadcast? Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer tells you in his new memoir, This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV . "Basically, this is a book of the stories that reporters tell each other," he said, telling us a story that involved the Pentagon, condoms in a septic tank and a fishing net. Tonight, Dan Rather and Andrew Heyward toast the CBS News chief Washington correspondent who nearly wasn't. "My mother was dead set on my being a doctor," Mr. Schieffer drawled, "but it wasn't meant to be. To this day, when people ask me what led me to journalism, my response is always, 'Comparative anatomy.' And when they ask if I graduated with honors, I say, 'No, I graduated barely -that's what I did. Honors were out of the question!'" Speaking of television, Julia Sweeney's whereabouts over the last few years are as ambiguous as her character Pat from her SNL days. No matter-she's back and starring in an autobiographical play, Julia Sweeney: Guys & Babes, Sex & Gods , and she rang us at 9 in the friggin' moanin' to tell us about it. "It's one of those 'look at me' shows where I talk about me and things that have happened to me !!! Me! Me! Me!" she said. Plot: She's in her late 30's, professional ambitions fulfilled, yet single and without children . She's at the crossroads of her life as she realizes, "Oh my God-I forgot to have a family!"

[ This Just In , Blue Smoke, 116 East 27th Street, between Lexington and Park avenues, 7 p.m., 975-4296; Julia Sweeney: Guys & Babes, Sex & Gods , ARS, Nova Theater, 511 West 54th Street, 8 p.m., 206-1515.]

But his strategy of leaking the news of his own attendance didn't exactly work. A day before the event, everyone knew he was going to come. There was much consternation as the L.C.A. organizers made room for Mr. Cuomo at table 8, where Governor George Pataki, Mr. McCall and would-be spoiler Tom Golisano were seated. Mr. Cuomo's campaign manager, Josh Isay, was placed at table 49 … out of 50.

Still,Mr.Cuomowastheman everybody was talking about, the one who carried the frisson . This has been Mr. Cuomo's pattern for the last few months. He has a way of becoming the name on everyone's lips at each of the campaign's milestones. At each campaign-finance filing deadline, Mr. Cuomo created news by raising more money than Mr. McCall. And most recently, Mr. Cuomo turned the no-news state Democratic convention into a publicity event by announcing that he would boycott it. Sometimes Mr. Cuomo has even stolen the headlines from himself, like the time he upstaged one of his several campaign kickoffs by criticizing Mr. Pataki's leadership after Sept. 11.

Still, even though there's no love lost between Mr. Cuomo and Albany insiders, they wanted him at the show. Not having him there would have made this annual Albany highlight less exciting. There aren't that many black-tie affairs in Albany, so everyone gets dressed to the nines, brings their spouse and really makes an evening of it. They do this despite the fact that the event is held in the Albany mall's concourse, a drab underground strip of shops and restaurants linked to government buildings that allows aging State Senators to conduct their business in the winter without ever going out of doors.

Mr. Pataki had declined the opportunity to offer a rebuttal to the show's mockery. In fact, because he had to be on Long Island to present the trophy at the Belmont Stakes, he missed the reception and the entire first act. While reporters seemed tired of Mr. Pataki, who is running for a third term, the barbs against him were mild, mostly centered on his appeals to Latinos and unions. "I'm proud to be a Dominican / And I'm Puerto Rican, too / My roots go deep in Mexico / Bronx Democrats are cool," went one refrain, to the tune of "God Bless the U.S.A."

And nobody felt confident in Mr. McCall's ability to entertain. "I haven't seen him confident in months," sighed one high-level Democrat, a McCall supporter. That seemed to be the prevailing sentiment: Mr. McCall's "rebuttal" to the reporters' roast was placed first on the schedule of three-Mr. McCall, then Mr. Golisano and finally Mr. Cuomo.

A Starring Role

Despite holding his own against Mr. Cuomo in the polls, the early-morning line still has long odds for Mr. McCall-something like Sarava, who won the Belmont Stakes with 70-to-1 odds. The pundits and predictors just aren't sure that he wants the Governor's office badly enough, or that he'll work hard enough to get it. "But in New York, a dark horse won," Mr. McCall said, beginning the traditional post-roast rebuttal with a reference to the Belmont Stakes. And then he gave everyone the what-for.

His shtick was a slide show, a day-in-the-life of a political candidate. Even by the standard of these events, it was very self-deprecating. "Here I am, fund-raising," Mr. McCall said, clicking to a slide that showed him scratching off a Lotto ticket. There was even a photo of the J.P. Morgan offices when Mr. McCall talked about fund-raising. "Oops! That's not supposed to be here," he said. (The Comptroller has been accused of soliciting the Wall Street and real-estate firms that do business with the state pension funds.)

There was also a slide of the endorsement by the Reverend Jackie Jessen in Rochester at 9:15, followed by the endorsement by Jackie Jessen Jr. (who is about 5 years old) of Andrew Cuomo at 9:17. This is, of course, a reference to the endorsement split between Jesse Jackson and Jesse Jackson Jr. (The elder is for Mr. McCall; junior is for Mr. Cuomo.)

There were frequent shots of Mr. McCall waiting in a diner, at various points playing with the sugar, wearing a Yankees cap and falling asleep reading Hillary Clinton's best-seller, It Takes a Village . "I was supposed to meet with Senator Clinton to discuss her endorsement," went the narration accompanying these slides. "Unfortunately, she had a scheduling conflict."

There was even a photo of a sign saying "The Irish Brotherhood Welcomes Carl McCall." Deadpanned Mr. McCall: "Surprise!" In 1994, it's been said, Mr. McCall won handily upstate because voters thought he was Irish, not black.

And then he supplied the kicker, singing the refrain of his own campaign jingle, "I'm the real McCall."

The performance produced a standing ovation from a crowd that had expected little from Mr. McCall. Afterwards, attendees murmured that they couldn't remember any other standing ovations in the history of these L.C.A. rebuttals. And the applause was led by Governor Pataki, who hugged his rival as he returned to table 8. "It's hard to be self-deprecating," commented Pataki press secretary Mollie Fullington approvingly after the applause died down. "It's hard to carry it off."

But then Mr. Cuomo had to try, too. Despite (or because of) their 12 years as Albany insiders, the Cuomo family is not loved in the state capital-they were portrayed in the L.C.A. show as a family of vampires, with Matilda Cuomo, Mario's wife, as the Bride of Frankenstein. "Yell like your Dad used to do" was the refrain of the song they performed, to much applause and cathartic laughter, to the tune of "Walk Like a Man." In another segment, AndrewCuomowas described-ironically, of course-as "evil,calculating and ruthless."

Ofcourse,Mr. Cuomo knows this. "I had a kitten once …. " he said in his rebuttal, his voice trailing off. (Aides say he wrote this line himself.) And then there was his "explanation" of why he is really an outsider: "I grew up the son of an outsider, who much later became an insider. And I was a Washington insider, which automatically made me a New York outsider … and I'm an in-law of an insider, so that makes me an outsider."

He also poked fun at his ego: "I myself drive hundreds of miles just to hear myself speak," he said, setting up the speech he "would have" given at the state Democratic convention. And later: "Arrogance ultimately works. Arrogance works."

Maybe it will. Maybe the confidence of Governor Pataki or the cockiness of Mr. Cuomo will prevail. But on this Saturday night in Albany, Mr. McCall's humble pie provided the most satisfying dessert.