Leonard Cohen.

Leonard Cohen returns to Manhattan to play Radio City Music Hall as part of his “Old Ideas World Tour.” The legendary sunglasses-and-black-chapeau-sporting singer/songwriter/poet’s first series of North American dates was so popular that he is back for more, so get your tickets now. Has there ever been a better song title than “Famous Blue Raincoat”?

Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Avenue of the Americas, (212) 247-4777, 8pm, Tickets $69.50-$250.

Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Avenue of the Americas, tickets and showtimes can be found at radiocitychristmas.com.

“It is an ocean of infinite intelligence. Creativity. Happiness known as bliss. Infinite universal love. Energy. Dynamic peace,” mused the 63-year-old filmmaker, dressed in a black suit and a yellow tie that was brighter than his signature silver pompadour, at the beginning of a star-studded concert he had organized at the famed venue. “When a human being, any human being, dives within and experiences this ocean, swims in this ocean, life gets better and better and better.”

Ohmmm!

He was referring to Transcendental Meditation, also known as TM, the trademarked meditation technique developed in the 1960s by Indian spiritual guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and which Mr. Lynch, himself a meditator of 35 years, plans to teach to 1 million "at-risk youth" via his namesake foundation. The concert was a benefit for this initiative.

His co-host for the evening was Laura Dern, one of Mr. Lynch’s favorite actresses, whose head-to-toe black ensemble accentuated her shiny blonde locks and bright red lipstick.

“It’s pure bliss to be on a film with you because it’s boundary-less,” said Ms. Dern (we’re noticing a “bliss” theme here!), standing next to Mr. Lynch at stage right, “and I’m just curious if the boundary-less-ness that you bring to all of us comes from your connection to meditation.”

“You better believe it!” he replied.

If Tom Cruise is the celebrity face of Scientology, and Madonna is the celebrity face of Kabbalah, Mr. Lynch has become that for TM, which has a less cultish, although not entirely uncontroversial, reputation. And as was evidenced by Saturday’s concert--the highlight of which was a rare performance by surviving Beatles Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr--he is but one on a long list of bold-faced names that use or endorse the practice. Jennifer Aniston, Yoko Ono, John McEnroe, Martin Scorsese, Kyle MacLachlin, Michael J. Fox, Matthew Broderick and Jason Bateman, though not necessarily all meditators themselves, were among the attendees.

“I’ve been meditating for 37 years,” said Jerry Seinfeld, who made a surprise appearance midway through the concert, before launching into a series of jokes about bathroom stalls and taxis.

Soon afterward, fellow comedian and 38-year TM practitioner Howard Stern took the stage.

“Mike Love of the legendary Beach Boys saw me backstage and he said to me, ‘Howard, you prove that you do not have to be a pussy to meditate!’” he said.

Other TM-ers to perform included Angelo Badalamente (to The Daily Transom’s utter excitement, he opened the concert with a flawless recital of the Twin Peaks theme song), Ben Harper (did you know he was married to Ms. Dern?), Donovan, Moby, Betty Lavette, Sheryl Crow and Eddie Vedder, who was looking very 1992 with his unbuttoned flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, blue jeans, wavy shoulder-length hair and scruffy goatee. Hip Hop mogul and philanthropist Russell Simmons addressed the audience via a taped video message, but he had appeared in person the previous afternoon at a pre-concert press conference in Radio City’s lobby.

“I operate most days from my meditation,” he said. “It gives me the ability to function in a world that is full of stress.”

The concept of TM as a celebrity cause isn’t entirely new. In fact, The Beatles were largely responsible for importing TM to the West after studying under the Maharishi in 1968 at his ashram in Rishikesh, India. The technique involves repeating a mantra with one’s eyes closed twice a day for 20 minutes.

“It was a great gift the Maharishi gave to us,” said Mr. McCartney, standing next to Mr. Starr at the press conference, and looking quite hip for his age. “It came at a time when we were looking for something to stabilize us toward the end of the crazy ‘60s. And it is a lifelong gift. It’s something you can call on at any time.”

Of course, to describe TM as a “gift” in 2009 is somewhat misleading; it costs $2,000 for an adult, or $1,000 for a full-time student, to learn the technique—not exactly the most recession-friendly investment—hence the need to raise so much money so the kids can learn it for free. (The pricey Radio City benefit generated an estimated $3 million, according to The David Lynch Foundation.)

Perhaps that's why critics have accused the TM crowd of being a bit cultish. Even Moby, a more recent TM convert, couldn’t resist making a wisecrack about it.

“Growing up, anything associated with TM and hippies scared the shit out of me,” he joked. “I thought it involved ritual animal sacrifice and moving to some country and renouncing wealth and materialism and eating bugs.”

But in the end, TM’s “simplicity” won him over.

“One of the things that makes TM so effective is that you don’t really have to do all that much,” he said,  “and as a profoundly lazy person, I appreciate that.”

To support the anecdotes, we now have cold, hard facts: Tourism grew by 11 percent in New York last year. Some 36.7 million people visited here in 1999, making New York the second-most-popular tourist attraction in the United States. The city now trails only Orlando, that "no there there" subdivision that owes its bland existence to a cartoon character and his market-savvy creator.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called the numbers "staggering" and noted that the tourism business creates or supports tens of thousands of jobs throughout the five boroughs. According to statistics compiled by NYC & Company, the city's convention and visitors bureau, tourists spend about $15.6 billion last year, proving that tourism is hardly a Mickey Mouse business.

Beyond the jobs and the money, the explosion in tourism means that New York has regained its special place in the hearts of other Americans and those from across the seas. For too long a time in the 1970's, 1980's and early 1990's, the city was the punch line of many a late-night comic, and the city itself seemed to stand for all that had gone wrong with society since the 1960's. Folks who lived west of the Hudson, north of the Bronx and south of Staten Island seemed to take inordinate pleasure in the city's troubles.

Now, however, the city is thriving, crime is down and New York–based television shows are earning wide audiences. Americans, and citizens around the world, are laughing with us, not at us, as they open their hearts and wallets to this magnificent metropolis.

We're happy to have them, happy to take their money, and happy that they seem ready to admit that maybe they had it all wrong about New York, back in the bad old days.

A Safir City

After stabilizing matters at One Police Plaza following the turbulent, and astoundingly successful, era of Bill Bratton, Howard Safir has announced his retirement as Police Commissioner at the end of August. He'll be missed, not only by the Mayor he served dutifully, but by a public that has grown accustomed to startling victories in the war on crime.

He was not a colorful character, like Mr. Bratton was (and is). He didn't have the street-smart experience and outreach of Mr. Bratton's underrated predecessor, Raymond Kelly. He didn't know how to get a great table at Elaine's. But he did understand how to run a vast bureaucracy, and he refused to allow his ego to get in the way of his performance. He understood that he worked for Rudolph Giuliani, a man who owed his political career to crime-fighting. So he knew it would be pointless to draw attention to himself; instead, he carried out the Mayor's mandates, built on the successes of Mr. Bratton and let the cops do their jobs.

Critics will note that it was under Mr. Safir's watch that police officers killed two unarmed black men-Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond. Those killings were tragic. But they were not emblematic of Howard Safir's four-year term as the city's top cop. In fact, under Mr. Safir, New York's Finest have resorted to deadly force far less than under previous Commissioners and Mayors. The Commissioner also helped maintain New York cops' admirable record of discharging their weapons far less often than police officers in other cities.

He was far more innovative than he was given credit for: He eagerly grasped the importance of DNA evidence, and he toughened the department's anti-drug efforts. And just as politicians win acclaim for presiding over good economies, a police commissioner deserves public praise when crime falls. History will note that Howard Safir was in charge of the NYPD when, in 1998, murders fell to a 34-year low.

He has had his share of clumsy moments, as when he missed a City Council hearing on crime because he was at the Academy Awards. But he leaves the city far better off for his service. New Yorkers owe him thanks for a job well done.

Stressful Happiness

New Yorkers have never been particularly good at being happy, and they tend to like it that way. Masters of melancholia? Virtuosos of anxiety? Connoisseurs of compulsion? Hey, those are New York trademarks. But happiness tends to raise suspicions. Now science may have found a way to make happiness palatable even to New Yorkers: Researchers at Ohio State University report that happiness may actually increase stress.

What better arena in which to study happiness and stress than marriage? Researchers at Ohio State began a study 10 years ago in which they asked 90 newlywed couples to talk about the ups and downs of their marriages, while doctors drew blood at 30-minute intervals. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, professor of psychiatry and psychology, recently reviewed the data and discovered that when the subjects spoke about happy moments, such as courtship, mutual attraction and the decision to marry, many of them-25 percent-showed elevated levels of the hormone cortisol, an indicator of stress. And the stress was real: Over the past decade, those women who showed increased stress when talking about the happy moments in their marriage ended up being twice as likely to divorce as the other women in the study.

So if you catch yourself in a happy mood, New York, don't feel too good about it. You might have been better off depressed.