(Getty Images)

70-year-old reality TV star Betsey Johnson (The Style Network’s XOX Betsey Johnson, starring her daughter) and comeback kid (she recently filed for bankruptcy) has dug into her extensive archives and rejiggered her youthquake-y creations to present a Bollywood-style runway show. Break out the neon pink bindis. After Johnson’s style spectacle, funny ladies Sandra Bernhard and Taylor Negron will do some stand-up before a dance performance by Rioult Dance NY. The evening is a fundraiser for WEP, the Women’s Education Project, which helps women in Southern India fight poverty through education and career preparation. For every ticket purchased, a young woman is able to attend WEP programs and college courses for one year. The group’s goal is to fund two years of college education for 100 students.

Angel Orensanz Foundation, 172 Norfolk Street, (212) 529-7194, 6:30-10pm, Tickets: $250 per person

Jane Fonda (Getty Images)

With so many ballyhooed movies coming out this fall, it’s hard to keep up with the classics on our “To Watch … Someday” list—who has the time to sit down with the Criterion Collection when there are so many premieres of flicks we actually want to see? Tonight the Darby celebrates the odd coupling of classic cinema and a downtown party as Jane Fonda hosts a tribute to her Oscar-winning film Klute. The paranoid drama features Ms. Fonda as a call girl on the run—but don’t fret, tonight’s klatch is all about fun. Celebrity ringleader Andy Cohen is billed to emcee the evening, interviewing the featured icon as well as stand-up raunch-tress Sandra Bernhard, who will be leading an auction for Ms. Fonda’s Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention.

The Darby, 244 West 14th Street, 8pm, tickets and information can be found at gcapp.org/klute.

Sandra Bernhard (Getty Images)

“I was high when I got dressed!,” joked Sandra Bernhard at Julie Klausner’s “How Was Your Week Live” comedy showcase. The show featured a number of entertainers expounding on topics of their choice—including Ira Glass on his favorite snacks. But Ms. Bernhard chose to munch upon the hand that was feeding her: Bravo’s late-night Watch What Happens Live, where she is a regular contributor.

The host of the recurring “Sandrology” segment joked that she hoped to take over Watch What Happens in a coup (she almost did that to Larry Sanders once!). “God knows that network could use a hostile takeover.” She adopted a highfaluting, arch tone. “Bravo, the network for the arts. What the fuck happened? We needed a franchise just for these Housewives? It’s like hell, and torture!”

She recently met Mary J. Blige at a taping of the Andy Cohen talk show. “He’s dipping into actually talented people—thank God.” How’d it go, Sandra? “Mary J. Blige doesn’t like white people. Why the fuck should she? We’re the most racist country in the world.”

Representatives from Bravo "LOL"-ed us a "no comment."

Kermit and his environmentalist, anticapitalist, socialist friends.

What is it about the preholiday season that winds everyone tighter than the postsurgery forehead of a Real Housewife? We’re trying to stay out of the drama as all of New York lets fly a seeming year’s worth of unaired grievances this week. Case in point: Ms. New York Diana Taylor’s ticked-off response to the locked-out union art handlers of Sotheby’s had more than a couple of people up in arms last week, the auction-house board member having replied curtly to a bunch of protesters interrupting a meeting that she would resign if Sotheby’s CEO Bill Ruprecht acquiesced to any of their demands. It wouldn’t have been that big a deal (what happens in board meetings stays in board meetings) except that Ms. Taylor had the misfortune of giving her brusque brush-off to the Teamsters while someone happened to be filming.

Not that you need to be Mayor Bloomberg’s paramour to get attention these days. You can also be part of his so-called “personal army” (those men in blue with “NYPD” etched into their badges). Occupiers on Seventh and Broadway went into a rage after being arrested on National AIDS Day and forced to watch their captors “sadistically” eat the free pizza that Housing Works Bookstore had sent to OWS in solidarity. Hey, whatever happened to the “feed anyone who’s hungry” plan? At least your civil servants know how to multitask: they can hand Occupiers a summons with one hand and eat a slice with the other.

And if the NYPD wanted extra spice on their pies, they wouldn’t have to use their own—they could just go to Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx, where two days ago a student injured 20 people (including the principal) with a can of pepper spray. This is the third New York City school in the past three weeks to report an incident involving the latest weapon du jour. Wonder if Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna feels hip for starting a trend that’s caught on like wildfire (and feels like it, too). Soon administrators are going to have to start carrying milk cartons around in case anyone gets trigger-happy.

But it’s not all bad news. We recently had the opportunity to sit in on TV’s tipsiest talk show, Watch What Happens Live, with Bravo’s signature “power suit,” Andy Cohen. My, does that man have the world’s nicest teeth—even when he’s polling viewers about which housewife of Atlanta has “the biggest donkey booty.” We look forward to WWHL’s becoming a five-night-a-week phenomenon come January, if only because it’s the only talk show in town that gives its audience an open bar tab. (One call-in viewer may have taken the popular theme of “Single Woman Getting Wasted Alone to Bravo” a little too seriously; she proudly announced that she had been dutifully chugging whenever Mr. Cohen said the night’s “secret word” and later revealed she was tossing back shots of Nyquil, not rum and Coke.)

Another fun piece of gossip divulged at Mr. Cohen’s after-hours party den: King of Comedy actress Sandra Bernhard revealed that she had been up for a role in Sex and the City. The brassy, whiskey-voiced comedian wasn’t reading for Samantha, but uptight Miranda. But: “The pilot script was a disaster and they were offering the worst money in the world.” Cue five minutes of bickering over whether or not any of the other women besides Sarah Jessica Parker made money off the show (premovies, of course).

Sadly, the world has bigger problems to discuss than the size of Kim Catrall’s ... paycheck. Like the fact that the Muppets are environmentalist, anticapitalist socialists from President Obama’s secret camp of puppet propaganda. It’s true! We heard it on Fox Business News’s Follow the Money, where Eric Bolling and a roundtable of ostensibly sane people devoted seven minutes to explaining how Jim Henson’s studios were destroying America’s youth with their liberal brainwashing.

“What are we, in socialist China?!” shrieked one guest host outraged at the concept of “sharing” being promoted on programs like Sesame Street. Oh, not yet, Fox Business News. Give it another year. In the meantime, we’re gonna try to unwind with a nice, spicy slice and maybe a shot of Nyquil.

The Daryl Roth Theater, at the corner of Union Square East and 15th Street, was home to De La Guarda for seven years before its current production, Sandra Bernhard's Everything Bad and Beautiful, began its run. And according to management, this fall the theater will be home to Hunting and Gathering.

But representatives from Ben and Jerry's, the hippy ice-cream giant, were seen earlier this morning checking out the 24,000-square-foot theater, renderings in hand that showed a giant company awning where Sandra Bernhard's luscious profile currently stares down imperiously.

The Real Estate asked the B&J peeps what, exactly, was up. Would they really convert the theater space to a an ice-cream mega-store? Their answer: yes. By August. But when we called the theater, they denied that anything was in the works, mentioning that they're booked through the year.

Property records show no activity since 2001, and B&J corporate headquarters isn't returning our calls. Anybody got any info?

-Matthew Grace

A little over two years ago, Mr. Barton resigned as director of finance for another upscale private New York school-Brooklyn Friends, the Quaker K-through-12 prep school in downtown Brooklyn-after a contretemps erupted over a budget gap of almost $1 million and how that shortfall came about.

In August, The Observer reported that the Lycée plans to finance its new, state-of-the-art school building on 75th and 76th streets, between York Avenue and the F.D.R. Drive, through bond issues, loans from the previous owner of the property, and the sale of property currently occupied by the school. The plan has attracted attention for its inventiveness, but has also raised a number of concerns. The sale of six opulent buildings on the Upper East Side near Central Park that previously housed the school have yielded disappointing returns. And to make matters worse, petroleum and other contaminants have been found at the new site.

For parents at Brooklyn Friends School, who live miles from the epicenter of this story, Mr. Barton's appearance in The Observer article provoked sighs of recognition.

Two years ago, Brooklyn Friends was set to expand into two more floors of an adjoining building, to alleviate cramped conditions created by the school's doubled enrollment. Overseeing the school's budget at the time was Mr. Barton.

Things got unfriendly at the school when its governing body, the trustees of the Quakers' New York Quarterly Meeting, performed an audit of the school's finances and found a budget gap of close to $1 million.

The trustees ended up offering the school a $1.2 million loan to address the shortfall and pay debts, but tempers flared when it was discovered that approximately $250,000 had gone to underwrite personal expenses-including a Brooklyn apartment-for the popular head of school, Jim Handlin, that may not have had board approval.

"The ship was not run tightly," said Dr. Michael Nill, who was appointed by the board as interim, and later permanent, head of school after Mr. Handlin was forced to resign in February of 2000. "That's as much as I can say. And that was partly a board issue." Dr. Nill also said that 90 percent of the $1.2 million loan has been repaid.

According to one Brooklyn Friends administrator, Mr. Barton was not forced to resign, though it may have come to that.

"He saw the writing on the wall," the source said, and offered his resignation.

Mr. Barton declined to comment on the circumstances of his departure from Brooklyn Friends or the fiscal crisis he left behind when he made his move, but he did offer this statement: "My contract ended in June of 2000, and rather than going forward, I did not renew my contract and resigned and sought employment elsewhere, and was fortunate to find it at the Lycée."

Before long, Mr. Barton found himself heading up another, even more ambitious school project: the sale of the Lycée's Upper East Side school buildings to private buyers, and the purchase of the new site.

"After hiring Kim Barton, we did what we do for any hiring: We do our due diligence," said Elsa Berry, the head of the school's board of trustees. "We made all the calls-with the auditor, with the school leadership-and we were satisfied with what we found. We've been extremely satisfied with his performance and we work very closely with him, and our finances are extremely clear."

The school recently completed the sale of its last two buildings, adjoining Beaux-Arts mansions, to the Emir of Qatar for a total of $26 million. That's not chump change, but considering that the original asking price for the pair was $51 million, the figure looks like a big disappointment. In fact, none of the buildings sold for as much as the school had hoped.

Originally, 3 and 5 East 95th Street were priced at $19.5 million and $10.3 million, respectively; they sold for a combined $15 million. Sixty East 93rd Street, priced at $17 million, sold for around $10 million; and finally, 12 East 73rd Street, priced at $8 million, sold for $3 million.

With $54 million in the bank from the sale of all those townhouses, the school does have some cash to work with. But the property on York Avenue cost the school $20 million to buy from the Albanese family, residential developers who were thwarted in their own earlier efforts to build high-rises on the site. And the Lycée is not done with the Albaneses: $10 million of the purchase price was loaned to the school by the Albaneses, at an interest rate close to 10 percent.

In any case, almost all of the proceeds from the property sales are already committed to make collateral on the bond that will fund the construction of the building. The disappointing selling prices have also cut deeply into the school's fund for building the new school: Sources said the Lycée initially planned to issue $117 million in bonds to finance construction of the new school, which would have required it to keep $55 million of collateral in the bank-$1 million more than the total take for all six of the Lycée's buildings. As a result, the school has lowered its sights and will issue only $90 million in bonds, reducing the pressure to produce collateral-but also reducing the budget for the new facility.

According to Janel Patterson of the city's Industrial Development Agency, which would issue the bonds for the construction of the new building, the bond issue has yet to go through.

Lycée administrators pooh-pooh the school's losses, insisting there will be significant cash reserves left over for the school after construction is finished.

"In terms of the process, we have worked on worst-case scenarios, middle-ground and optimistic; we are constantly tweaking our assumptions as our environment is a constantly changing one," said Ms. Berry. "Even in the worst-case scenario over the long term, we believe that we will have an endowment."

She said she could not say how much that endowment would be.

-Tom McGeveran

Rock 'em, Sock 'em

Eminem may have a beef with Moby, but that doesn't mean the blond rapper's whole posse is watching his back.

On Aug. 29, actress Brittany Murphy, who has been linked with Eminem since co-starring with him in his upcoming film, 8 Mile , attended Fader magazine's and Levi's post–MTV Video Awards show at Milk Studios with a hefty bodyguard at her elbow. And though Eminem had dissed the bald techno musician from the stage of Radio City Music hall, threatening "I will hit a man with glasses," Ms. Murphy was not about to be caught up in the controversy.

"Oh, no, there's no antagonism with [Moby]. I just met him tonight for the first time. I introduced myself," she said. "He's a very nice man."

Wait a second, Ms. Murphy. Eminem is your boyfriend, right?

"I really have no comment about that," she replied with a cryptic smile. "But I will quote Eminem when he says, 'I am whatever you say I am, if I wasn't then why would I say I am, in the paper, the news every day I am.'"

Then Ms. Murphy translated: "One thing I've learned is that, no matter what I say, newspapers and the press are going to print whatever they like, no matter how absurd it is."

Sartorially elegant White Stripes singer/songwriter Jack White, who wore a spotless Tom Wolfe suit and bowler hat, was less interested in talking about Eminem than Ms. Murphy: "You know if I answer that question, I'll end up in his next song." And though much had been made of the number of MTV Moonman statuettes that had been given to Detroit artists, Mr. White made it clear that his hometown was a big city. "The guy's from a different part of Detroit than I am," he said, referring to Eminem.

This being a party devoted to the music business, there were other grievances. Not long after New York's the Strokes played the party, the group's shaggy-haired bassist, Nikolai Fraiture, suggested that MTV wasn't as cool as all those screaming bridge-and-tunnel girls in Times Square think it is. "They haven't been that good to us," Mr. Fraiture said. "They're a big corporation. We respect that-that they control a lot," he added. "But we would like to do things in a right, cool way. And they don't really agree with that."

What did he mean? The Transom asked.

"They want to be like the rebirth of rock 'n' roll, even though it happened without them, you know?" Mr. Fraiture said, referring to MTV's reliance-until just recently-on boy, and girl, groups.

"I'm not saying that in a bad way," Mr. Fraiture said. "But it happened aside from them, and they want to sound they like re-created the whole thing.

But then, perhaps remembering that his band's video was being played on the network, he added: "Of course, it's MTV. No offense to them."

-Alex Pasternack

Spinning with Gwyneth

Picture Gwyneth Paltrow wiping someone else's sweat off the Cybex machines, and it will come as no surprise that celebrity sightings at city gyms are rare indeed. So some members of the new Equinox Fitness Center on Greenwich Street in Tribeca have found it extremely suspicious that their sweat palace has so many show people-including actors Ms. Paltrow, Liv Tyler, Alan Cumming, Matthew Modine, comedienne Sandra Bernhard and model Iman-capering about the cardiovascular equipment.

According to the members-who cough up a $395 initiation fee plus $120 a month to join the gym-the steam rooms have been rife with speculation that Equinox's celebrity clientele get free memberships, and that some may even be remunerated for their frequent, attention-getting appearances at the gym, which opened, with quite a bit of fanfare, in January.

A representative for Ms. Bernhard said the comedienne does go to Equinox for her aerobic workouts, though she meets her personal trainer at rival gym Crunch. Ms. Bernhard's spokeswoman also said that Equinox offered Ms. Bernhard full gym access and membership at no cost. When The Transom later asked whether or not Equinox had offered to pay Ms. Bernhard to attend regular classes, her representative said that Ms. Bernhard was on vacation and could not be reached.

Stephen Huvane, a publicist who represents Ms. Paltrow and Mr. Cumming said that he was not aware of any special offers that had been made to either of his clients.

"Alan is training right now for a movie and is working with a trainer associated with Equinox. I'm not sure if he's a member or if he pays per time," said Mr. Huvane. He continued, "And Gwyneth has only taken a few classes there and is not a member."

Mr. Huvane also said that "any special offer would probably go through my office, and we have not been contacted by the gym at all."

Judy Taylor, Equinox's vice-president for public relations, denied that anyone was paid to attend Equinox. And though she declined to name the gym's celebrity clientele, she did say that many of the big names at Equinox work out for free.

"We have a certain amount of comps we give out," said Ms. Taylor. "There's a certain amount of dollars in our advertising budget. We don't talk about them [the stars], we don't solicit press, but it's good for us to have them here. Like having Armani give a dress at the Academy Awards. We consider that advertising."

- Rebecca Traister

Sandra Bernhard, a lesbian who's looking hotter than ever, is the poster slut for the newly eroticized lipstick chick-literally. Sandra is the image, spokes-icon and creator of Pool Party, a new collection of makeup from MAC available at all MAC locations starting May 9.

"I researched these products for years," said Sandra in between rehearsals for the upcoming tour of her one-woman show, Hero Worship , which kicks off in June. "MAC flew me round the world-to Gstaad and the Riviera, wherever beauty awaits poolside. I talked to women about beauty and matched my shade cards to the colors of their beautiful, tanned physiques. That's how I created my hues."

The Pool Party raspberry-colored lipstick ($14) is a tad dressy: Sandra explains, sort of, "It's all about summer power."

I recommend the clam-pink Sandy B. lipstick which, as per the spokesmodel, "is all trade winds and late-night make-out sessions-very sexy, always ready for action, which is just how I feel."

The other winner in the line is a beige frosted "sheer color extract" eye/cheek tint called Belly Flop, which Sandra tells me she extracted herself from rare Brazilian plants. "I created it for a girl who's smoking a butt and drinking a beer and getting really badly sunburnt."

Sandra also has a great spiel for the nail polish, which is not surprising since she once trained as a manicurist at the Charles Ross Beauty School in Los Angeles: Mint Julep, a metallic pale teal, is "perfect for the girl who is lax with manicures-she's covered in hangnails and all her edges are jagged." Coral Gables, a pearly copper, is "for a girl who grew up poor in Brooklyn and is making it really big."

Speaking of Brooklyn: Sandra, like many of the great beauty czarinas before her-Helena Rubenstein, Estée Lauder, etc.-is a proud Jewess. "We Jewish girls have always had an innate connection to the world of glamour," Sandra said. "It's a reaction against all the dowdy shtetls and sheitels ." Those of you salivating to get an eyeful of Sandra's unique brand of sassy Sapphic glamour are going to be disappointed: Hero Worship , which Sandra calls "a 9/11 exploration," has no scheduled dates in Manhattan.

Explains Sandra, "If New York wants me, New York is going to have to beg."

She'd been here on Sept. 11, racing to pick up her daughter from school when she heard the news, but she's a true bicoastal, dividing her time between a bungalow in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley and a place in Chelsea. She's been on the road since 9/11, and now she was heading back to New York with the latest version of her idiosyncratic, ever-evolving one-woman comic-monologue cabaret act. A show that dared to raise all sorts of difficult, even dangerous questions about post-9/11 culture, just at a moment when events were conspiring to make the solidarity and certainties of the past five months seem a little more uncertain.

Suddenly there are all these questions about flags and heroes and patriotism. Has what was once heartfelt and meaningful in the immediate aftermath become schlockily sentimentalized and commodified to the point of self-parody? As in the manic, shameless exploitation of heroism and patriotism that was Fox's three-and-a-half- hour Super Bowl pregame "Tribute to Heroes"–a tribute that climaxed in that amazing moment when Mariah Carey was introduced to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" by an announcer who felt compelled (by Mariah) to remind us that she was "the biggest-selling female recording artist in history." Thus putting all of it–9/11, heroic rescue workers, brave soldiers in Afghanistan, the war against the "axis of evil"–in the larger perspective of Mariah Carey's recording career. That's history.

And now there are all these questions about flags. There was the International Olympic Committee's idiotic attempt to ban a Ground Zero flag from the "non-political" purity of Olympic competition (an obscene joke from the folks who brought you Hitler's Olympics and kept the sacred games going while athletes were being slaughtered by terrorists at the 1972 games in Munich). And then there's the controversy over just who should be allowed to sell (and who should be encouraged to wear) all that FDNY and NYPD paraphernalia sold by vendors at Ground Zero: Are they true tributes, or heroism by proxy? And should Ground Zero–still an open grave–become a tourist attraction for rubes to gawk at in order to help the economic redevelopment of lower Manhattan? What's the right thing to do, to feel?

It was a moment as well when the country's love affair with New York and New Yorkers and the victims of 9/11 came crashing back to earth with a vengeance, when Bush budget director Mitch Daniels used a fairly blatant anti-Semitic, anti-New York slur (New Yorkers are "money-grubbing") to try to cheat the city out of $5 billion of rebuilding funds.

So anyway, here is Sandra Bernhard, heading back to New York at precisely the moment we need her comic, analytic intelligence the most, with a new show she was calling Inshallah (ironically? attitudinally? in all seriousness? all of the above?), and whose opening number was a grand schlock-rock anthem that's been in the air since 9/11, "Holding Out for a Hero" (you know, the one by Bonnie Tyler, who did that other killer schlock-rock ballad, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"). And here's Sandra looking just as hot and snarly and sneering and sexy as she did when she first tormented Jerry Lewis in her underwear in King of Comedy , bursting onto the stage at Joe's Pub backed by a kick-ass guitar band and belting out "Holding Out for a Hero" straight ahead, without a wink or a nudge, but nonetheless managing–precisely because of the apparent urgent sincerity of her delivery–to call into question (ironically? attitudinally? in all seriousness?) the whole post-9/11 cult of hunky heroism. Just at the moment when it began to curdle and somehow be about Mariah Carey's career or Bono jogging around the Super Bowl half-time stage whipping up rock-star frenzy for himself while a vertical crawl of Twin Towers victims faded out to one of those fabulously "innovative" Super Bowl ads.

See, you start talking about Sandra Bernhard and her attitude and you start putting quotes around everything–you start seeing quotes around everything–although I would argue that Ms. Bernhard's innovation from the beginning was really not putting quotes around everything but to put quotes around the quotes , to ironize all-too-easy irony. So "Holding Out for a Hero" could be satirizing the cult of heroism, the commodification of "heroism." But, on the other hand, it could be putting quotes around the quotes around heroism–""heroism""–in a way that ultimately transcends irony and affirms genuine heroism. Or maybe she was doing both at the same time.

I knew I'd never really get an answer to these questions by talking to her; she doesn't like to explain herself (and who can blame her? Who does?), but I loved seeing her show so much–I found her attitude or "attitude" or ""attitude"" so smart and provocative–that I made an effort to arrange an interview. Which took place about 10 days after the show, at a place called the Bus Stop Cafe on Hudson Street, near where she used to live in the West Village.

One of the first things I asked her when we met was about what seemed like some real anger behind one of the ostensibly comic riffs in her show: about the celebrity hijacking of 9/11 for "benefits" that mainly benefited the celebrities.

"We've had so many wonderful benefits," she'd said at Joe's Pub, "and we're not gonna stop seeing benefits until every single performer who's ever graced the stage anywhere in this country has had their moment to let you know how much they love you, and to let you know how much they want to be there for you . Honey, Billy Joel's in a 'New York State of Mind'? You better believe it: His fucking career was in the shitter until 9/11."

Then she went off on a tear over the fact that so little of the celebrity-benefit money seems to actually have reached the victims' families. She's not alone in this suspicion: Bill O'Reilly has been on the case of all these celebs who were so pious in their concern but now, like George Clooney, seem busy to see what happened to the funds they supposedly raised.

"I want to investigate it personally ," Sandra said at Joe's Pub. "I think some smarmy rip-off motherfucker in Hollywood is having some fabulous Bel Air moment with the money. You know what I would prefer: to get the phone numbers of the families and send them thank-you checks. I don't need any middlemen–just give me a big list of addresses and I'll give to whoever I fucking choose to give to. Don't you be giving me any middle shit : 'Oh, but they are benefiting,'" she said, mocking the piety of the celeb benefactors. "No, you're benefiting . You're out there tap-dancing: 'I've given my all, I'm so exhausted! ' No, I just want to call them [the families] up and say, 'Hey, this is Sandra, I'm sending you a check.' Fuck this shit with the phonies that are out there. 'My career has been resurrected! Everybody died, I'm happy!'"

That's harsh, but it gets harsher and more personal: "And then we gotta suffer through Tom Cruise's speech about how the world is so poetic and beautiful. Not when you're here. All the poetry is evaporated when you walked in the fuckin' room, short boy–smiling short boy. And leave the Spanish girl [i.e., Penélope Cruz] alone . Let her go home! Let the chick go! Don't fuck her up with your mind-bending scientific science-fiction shit."

So that's Sandra onstage; she takes the crimes of celebrities–the crime of celebrity–personally. Or so it seems, unless she's being ironic. (Does she really care about Penélope Cruz?) But her anger about celebrity benefits and who really benefits seems pretty real.

"Well, this whole genre that's been created post-tragedy," she's telling me while sipping mint tea in a window booth at the Bus Stop Cafe, "I think it's cynical. It's great to raise money, but there are other, more creative ways of doing it. It's too self-serving; it can't help but being a benefit for themselves . And then you read about the families who haven't gotten anything but $15,000 to tide them over–and to me, if you're gonna do something like that, there should be immediate turnover. No bureaucracy. A check written proportionally to each family depending on the outcome of these benefits. End of discussion ! What is it with them? Where does the money go? That's what I'm furious about. I'm furious about that aspect."

She's furious, she's often angry, she's almost always ironic. But she's not cynical, she insists, and it's an important distinction to her, one that has often been lost in the post-9/11 fatwa against irony (see my own thoughts about the important distinctions that are lost by those who attack irony in my Oct. 1, 2001, column). Irony is what we should be fighting for ; irony is the difference between a theocracy and a democracy. But cynicism is something else, Sandra says, and she defines herself and her role models against it.

"Lenny Bruce wasn't a cynic," she says. "Lenny Bruce had a huge amount of passion and compassion and humanity. But the way he did it, one could easily assume he was a cynic. A cynic to me is someone who is tired of living, who doesn't really care." She does care, she insists. There's love in her ridicule; there's concern .

"I'm just a Concerned Citizen of Where We're Headed culturally and creatively," she says, not entirely ironically.

And let me go on record as saying that I've long thought of Sandra Bernhard not just as a Concerned Citizen of Where We're Heading, but the First Citizen of Where We're Heading–one of our most brilliant and prescient (and underappreciated) cultural critics.

She is the supreme analyst of Attitude, with an exquisitely attuned ear for the seismic tremors in the collective unconscious that Attitude registers and reflects. She is the most perceptive practitioner and diagnostician of irony in all its forms and flavors, a connoisseur of the subtle distinctions between sentiment and sentimentality, sincerity and schlock. And ever since her star turn as a terrorist fan who kidnaps a celebrity in King of Comedy , she's been the most incisive critic of the terror of celebrity, offering a critique so much more smart and knowing than all those cultural-studies academics who commodify their critique of commodification to advance their careers.

I've felt this way ever since the first time I saw her live, about a year after the King of Comedy came out, and she opened her idiosyncratic, comic cabaret act by belting out a full-tilt version of that great schlock-rock anthem by Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'." And you watched and you asked yourself all the eternal, unanswerable Sandra Bernhard questions: Is she doing this Journey song tongue-in-cheek? Is she doing it ironically? Or both? Or is she saying something about our conflicted, twisted love/hate relationship to pop-schlock anthems: the way we love them and hate ourselves for loving them but can't get enough of them. Is she negotiating the divide, mapping the permeable boundary between heartfelt sentimentality and air-quote irony, interrogating "the potency of cheap music" (as Noël Coward put it), embracing it or sending it up–or all of the above?

Like Andy Kaufman with his wrestling thing, she never really lets on; she never gives you a wink or a nudge to indicate how you ought to respond, which liberates a series of resonant multiple simultaneous responses that somehow let you have it both ways, as they say.

And then she'd segue into a long, "heartfelt" (or ""heartfelt"") riff in which she seemed to be reading from a letter she sent to Stevie Nicks (later it would be Madonna and then Courtney Love as iconic celebrity "friends," or ""friends"")–just Sandra talking about her hopes and dreams and how she loved to share them with Stevie or Courtney, loved hanging out with Madonna (which, of course, she actually did for a while). In her latest show it's a ballad "celebrating" to Angie Harmon. She wasn't just sending up celebrity delusions: She was sending herself up as well, as a victim of celebrity delusions just like the rest of us–the delusion that celebrity "love" was somehow real.

Most of the time she wouldn't make any of this explicit, but every once in a while she'd come out and say something about celebrity culture that stopped you dead in your tracks. Like this thing she said about terrorism and celebrity way back in 1985 that sounds rather prophetic now.

"I think that one reason there is so much terrorism is that people are constantly having it [celebrity] jammed down their throat. That there's a very exciting world they will never get to be a part of, and they get fed up with thinking they have nothing–no fame, no moment in the sun, and no resources."

Terrorism and celebrity: She was onto something, when you think of the way suicide bombers on the West Bank now make terror-celeb videotapes before they blow themselves up to insure their posthumous celebrity. The way the heavenly rewards promised to the Sept. 11 hijackers (the 72 virgins and the open bar in heaven) so much resemble the life of a celebrity rock star on earth. The way the fame of the targets (the Twin Towers, the Pentagon) was what made them targets: They were buildings that offered celebrity to their destroyers. The best literary evocation of the celebrity-terror connection can be found in Don DeLillo's brilliant 1991 novel, Mao II , but Sandra was there first.

When I read her 1985 remark on, "why there's so much terrorism" (which I'd found on LexisNexis), she disclaimed any prophetic acuity. "It was more about the domestic terrorism around back then," she says, mentioning Oklahoma City (although that was 10 years after her remark).

But a case could be made that the one insight that runs like a glittering thread throughout Sandra Bernhard's work is the way that celebrities are domestic terrorists. The way celebrity terrorizes the citizenry, hijacks the media, invades and ravages our minds and souls, tragically, savagely diminishing the value of non-celeb life.

But she doesn't just condemn it: She sees its seductiveness; she succumbs to its seductiveness and satirizes herself for doing so. She knows she's vulnerable, a victim as much as the rest of us.

That's what was so great about her performance in King of Comedy : She captured the erotic ecstasy of celebrity worship, the worship that drove her character to kidnap a celeb and terrorize him with her love. When she strips to her lingerie and croons to a trussed-up Jerry Lewis, "I'm gonna love ya, like nobody's loved ya," she captures the ecstasy of being in the presence of the celeb as secular god; she suggests the religious roots of celebrity worship, the way it substitutes for the God or the gods who seem to have abandoned us.

She's a victim like us, but a knowing victim–one who knows how to turn the tables and take revenge through ridicule, which she's been doing ever since, doing better on this particular subject than just about anyone else.

It's there in the very titles of her shows: Without You I'm Nothing and Giving Till It Hurts and I'm Still Here, Dammit . Titles which capture what the real terror of celebrity conceals: the terror of becoming nothing (without celebs–I'm nothing). The terror of being nowhere, of being not here, dammit, without celebrity to give our lives meaning with its reflected glare.

But what I also love about Sandra Bernhard is that she can condemn celebrity but still believes there are some things worth celebrating . She expresses that beautifully in the pitch-perfect pop-music choices she makes for her show.

At the Bus Stop Cafe, we talked about some of the ostensibly schlocky songs she both sends up and celebrates in her act. Perhaps her most daring and most tongue-in-cheek was "To Sir With Love." Think about it: Sandra Bernhard doing "To Sir with Love." But it's not camp, she insists. "Camp has a certain shelf life, a certain one-dimensionality. It's difficult to be camp and also to be real, and that's why camp has never appealed to me … it's too easy; you don't want to take it too deep."

And it's not sarcasm (we were going through definitions of the various flavors of irony and attitude). "Even when I appear to be sarcastic, there's something deeper going on, or at least I'm aware of what I'm doing. Even with Mariah Carey. There's nobody I talk about in my show I don't empathize and have some sympathy and understanding for," she said.

We talked about some songs that do seem to tend toward the sarcastic edge of the pop-schlock spectrum. "Like during the dot-com boom, when I did 'Salt of the Earth'" (the Rolling Stones tribute to all "the hard-workin' people").

We talked about some songs she does that we both love with a pure, burning love (she believes redheads "burn at a higher temperature"). Like Tom Waits' "Downtown Train," to my mind the most perfect New York City love song (although we argued over the Rod Stewart cover, which I like and she doesn't). And then there's her and my perennial favorite: Prince's "Little Red Corvette" (in a sly way, a song about a redheaded girl). She always used to strip down to her lingerie while singing "Little Red Corvette" to close her shows. At Joe's Pub, she took off her shirt and unbuttoned her jeans to reveal a filmy bra-and-thong ensemble, but didn't remove her jeans–probably due to the new post-9/11 solemnity of things. (I hope that doesn't mean the terrorists have won.)

And then we went back to that Journey song, "Don't Stop Believin'," her original, emblematic schlock-rock fave, the one about the "small town girl" who comes to L.A. to seek stardom.

"When I sing a Journey song, you may say it's a mediocre song, but it isn't . There's something that goes deeper than that."

O.K., and what about "Holding Out for a Hero"? Clearly it goes "deeper than that." What does it tell us about heroism and celebrity and the celebrity hijacking of heroism–the celebrification of heroism post-9/11?

She's just a little evasive:

"I just like the boldness of the song. It's a Jim Steinman song; you know, he writes a lot of stuff for Meatloaf. It's an epic song which I adore; I like anything which has that build to it. It's got a lot of power, a lot of strength, and then it's just an outrageous song–it's crazy ! But I think it's rather applicable to what people are going through right now."

"It's got a lot of layers to it. Right?" I ask.

"Fer sure," she says, mocking me (I think) with a Valley Girl response.

She won't say much more, and you almost don't want her to reduce the full range of resonances in the power-schlock ballad ("I'm holding out for a hero," the song goes, and "He's gotta be sure and it's gotta be soon / And he's gotta be larger than life"). One question her rendition of "Holding Out for a Hero" asks: What does it mean that we make celebrities–people who are famous for being famous–our "larger then life" heroes?

This is her genius: her ability to love a song like this on all levels and to hate herself for loving it and to transcend the whole love/hate thing to arrive at some synthesis that captures the moment in a profound and perfect way.

Sandra Bernhard: She's my hero. In a way, she's exactly the kind of heroic rescue worker the city needs now.

Ever since former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson swooped in to save CNN, the question has lingered: When's Mr. Isaacson going to tap his peppy young protégé, Time columnist Joel Stein, to do his lampshade-on-the-head act on AOL Time Warner TV?

CNN has, in fact, been talking to Mr. Stein for some time about an on-air role, but it's unclear what that role would be for the 30-year-old writer, whose smart-ass Time interviews and columns were critical to Mr. Isaacson's efforts to jiggy-ize the staid newsweekly. Mr. Stein insisted he's not being considered for his own CNN show. He may, however, pop up as a regular contributor to the super-ballyhooed upcoming 10 p.m. CNN News Hour, anchored by ABC News defector Aaron Brown.

And Mr. Stein doesn't think anyone should consider him a savior. He's dubious about his TV talents. "I have talked to some people over there about doing some stuff for that Aaron Brown show," he said. "I probably am going to shoot something, but I doubt they will air it. I have told them time and time again that I am not meant for TV. And once they see clips of me, I think they are going to be convinced."

Mr. Stein said he wasn't trying to be falsely modest. "Many, many shows have not used me again as a guest," he said. "So no one's going to use me as a host."

Why does he think he's so bad? "I get nervous and I don't look right–as if I look right normally," he said. "I don't know. It's just bad, trust me."

A spokesperson for CNN said the network had no comment on Mr. Stein. "We are always looking for the best contributors to CNN. However, we are not going to discuss any of the people we may be talking to," the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Stein said he is proceeding with his animated show for VH1, the long-in-the-making program he memorably discussed in a Time column last spring, after he received an e-mail from a VH1 executive bashing the show's writing–an e-mail intended for eyeballs other than Mr. Stein's.

Mr. Stein said he's about to do voice-over work for the VH1 'toon, but here, too, he was pessimistic. "We are definitely going to have a pilot," he said, "and then they'll focus-group it, and no one will like it because it doesn't make much sense, and then they'll never show it. But at least I'll have this pilot to show to my family."

Current Time managing editor Jim Kelly said he had no problem with Mr. Stein moonlighting with CNN–if it winds up happening. "I knew when Walter became head of CNN he would continue to try and find ways to use Joel," Mr. Kelly said. He added: "He and Joel go way back, so it doesn't surprise me."

Besides, Mr. Kelly thought that Mr. Stein on CNN was a good idea. "The more exposure Joel gets, the better," he said. He then laughed heartily.

Tonight on CNN, Larry King Live . Poor Mr. King just got his brilliant newspaper column spiked by those nitwits at USA Today . What knuckleheads … incidentally, The Others is a first-rate summer thriller … We like the A's in the Series over the Braves … Happy Birthday, Macaulay Culkin … Does anyone smoke a pipe anymore? [CNN, 10, 9 p.m.]

Thursday, Sept. 6

Who's got Staten Island fever? Who doesn't ? Well, who has it the most? CBS! This fall, the Tiff network is giving that underrated rock in New York Harbor some prime-time exposure as the principal set for its new, sleepily titled Richard Dreyfuss drama, The Education of Max Bickford . In the show, Mr. Dreyfuss plays a grumpy old college professor at a fictional women's college who's tormented when a former pupil and luvaaaah, played by Oscar chick Marcia Gay Harden, arrives as honorary chair of his department. Staten Island's own Wagner College (famous alumni: loathed ex-New York Jets coach Rich Kotite!) is playing the part of the leafy, ersatz New England institution, Chadwick College, and the EOMB crew has also shot scenes at the Victory Diner, one of the last diners in New York uncorrupted by Eames-chair-owning 34-year-olds. "It's been fantastic," EOMB executive producer Rod Holcomb said of his crew's reception on Staten Island. "There hasn't been anything other than tremendous cooperation."

EOMB is also filming scene work at Brooklyn College, and its interior scenes are taped at the Silvercup East studios in Long Island City (also home to Tony Soprano & Co.). But Staten Island is the principal exterior set, mostly because of Wagner, which sits on a hill with gazillion-dollar views of lower Manhattan. "It's a cool little college," said Mr. Holcomb. If there's one hitch, it's the fact that Wagner is coed (the EOMB crew occasionally has to tell the fellas to hang in the background when they need to do a wide shot). And, of course, there's the rigor of schlepping to Staten Island. "I think I have discovered every set that The Bonfire of the Vanities [film crew] rejected," Mr. Holcomb said. A Cali transplant, he recently invested in a G.P.S. to find his way around.

Mr. Holcomb said he has yet to bump into Mr. New York City Location Work, Dick Wolf, and his mammoth Law & Order crew, currently filming 84 different series for NBC throughout the city. Maybe that's one of the perks of filming off the coast of Manhattan. "Staten Island … gives us an opportunity to be refreshing, as opposed to taping on the Upper West Side," he said. Wait, you mean people are getting bored of the Upper West Side?

EOMB debuts on CBS on Sunday, Sept. 23. Tonight on CBS, Big Bother 2 –we mean, Big Brother 2 . [WCBS, 2, 9 p.m.]

Friday, Sept. 7

Shhhhhhhhh! It's being kept vewy, vewy quiet–maybe for the same reason that the weddings of boy-band members are hushed up, so as not to alienate the Soft & Dri female fandom–but WNBC's hunky Today in New York co-anchor Maurice DuBois got himself hitched on Friday, Aug. 31. According to a tip-top-secret WNBC source, Mr. DuBois wed his girlfriend of the past year, Andrea Adair, in a ceremony the source described as "small" and "private."

Congratulations, Mr. DuBois! But we feel obligated to inform you that according to today's standard of morning news programming, you and your bride were supposed to be wed in a cheesy, televised spectacle at 8 a.m., complete with a buffet, bridesmaid gowns and a band selected by a home audience of cybersurfing shut-ins. So get with the program and fork over the honeymoon video for this morning's show. [WNBC, 4, 5 a.m.]

Saturday, Sept. 8

Last week, Sandra Bernhard wrapped her "tryout" as an A&E talk-show host. At one week, it was a rather short run, considering all the obnoxious posters featuring Ms. Bernhard's smooshy, Bridgestone-sized lips A&E slapped around town. The network's suits are still trying to figure out if they want the show, called The Sandra Bernhard Experience . It was a nice concept, but really, who wudda thunk that the mantis-like Ms. Bernhard–a perennial spark plug on the NBC-era Late Night with David Letterman –would be kind of boresville as a talk-show host herself? (Though we got a big hoot watching Ms. Bernhard's sidekick, former Harper's Bazaar editor Sara Switzer, a vampy automaton who did little more than fill a chair like a stuffed panda and nod approvingly to dippy answers from guests like Chrissie Hynde and Edie Falco.)

Whatever happened between Mr. Letterman and Ms. Bernhard, anyway? She used to be on the old 30 Rock show all the time, and now she's never, ever on. We recently put the question to Ms. Bernhard herself:

"I don't really know, to tell the truth," she said. "It's very weird. When he moved to CBS, it was kind of like I was persona non grata ."

Ms. Bernhard did go on the CBS Late Show once. How was it? "Abrupt, brief, completely unspontaneous on his end," she said. "There was nowhere to go with it."

Kind of like this item! Not surprisingly, Ms. Bernhard's not a big fan of the current Letterman vehicle. "I don't think the show has the impact it had then, the freshness," she said. "There's a lot of fear and ego and limitations that these shows have."

Perhaps. At the very least, there's no doubt that Mr. Letterman's cuddle sessions with current couch flames like Julia Roberts pale to Ms. Bernhard singing a spastic, impromptu version of Maxine Nightingale's "Right Back Where We Started From," as she memorably did at 12:30 a.m. on an NBC show. A rep for Mr. Letterman had no comment.

Tonight on A&E, Biography profiles a country singer of the audience's choice. Three words, people: Billy. Ray. Cyrus. [A&E, 16, 8 p.m.]

Sunday, Sept. 9

Maybe you were passed out in your Shoshanna bikini somewhere in South-ampton and missed this doozy from Reuters: In an effort to put the brakes on his country's one-billion-plus population, India's health minister, C.P. Thakur, is recommending that his fellow citizens stop schtupping and watch more television instead (in some countries, this practice is better known as "marriage"). "Entertainment is an important component of the population policy," The Times of India quoted Mr. Thakur as saying. "We want people to watch television." Such a plan would never work in the randy U.S., however, as each Sunday night, more than 1,000 babies are conceived by couples frolicking to the blue glow of The George Michael Sports Machine . [WNBC, 4, 11:35 p.m.]

Monday, Sept. 10

Perpetually aggrieved local-TV newsies were snickering at their iMacs last week when the chippy Web site fuckedtelevision.com debuted an animated clip featuring embattled WCBS News director Joel Cheatwood squaring off in a fight against former WNBC News director Paula Madison. Entitled "TV Executive Death Match," the video features a stick-figure Ms. Madison–now at KNBC in L.A.–tussling with a stick-figure Mr. Cheatwood, before both of them are run over by an NBC satellite truck. According to fuckedtelevision's own pronouncement, the video has already recorded a staggering 55,000 hits. (That's a lot of bored associate producers!)

A rep for Mr. Cheatwood declined comment. A rep for Ms. Madison did not return calls requesting comment. Tonight, catch the WCBS News from Mr. Cheatwood's new, screen-intensive Futurama set on West 57th, where Ernie Anastos looks like he's sitting in the middle of Circuit City. [WCBS, 2, 11 p.m.]

Tuesday, Sept. 11

"Bye, bye, bye, ai-yi-yiiii!!!" Mega-hyped MTV starlet Ananda Lewis begins her transmogrification into Gen Y's Ricki Lake this week with the King World-syndicated talkie The Ananda Lewis Show . Ms. Lewis' big get for premiere week: 'N Sync, who taped their Wednesday, Sept. 12, appearance (with their mommies – awwwwww !) in August down in Dan Ratherland, a.k.a. West 57th. 'N Sync's slot wasn't without its behind-the-scenes drama: A source close to the show said that during a rehearsal, singer Justin Timberlake strained his back and a chiropractor, Dr. Jeanette Honig, had to be called in to readjust Britney Spears' beau. 'N Sync's rep didn't respond to a request for comment . Dr. Honig declined comment, citing doctor-patient confidentiality. [WPIX, 11, 9 a.m.]

They weren't kidding.

"You were warned!" said the hostess. "We had to give yours away, but we can accommodate you by the bar."

I followed the spider along the hallway and around the corner. Her sandals clicked against the polished concrete floor. Like a teacher delivering a tardy child to the classroom, she sat me down next to a wooden grid that stretched up to the ceiling, separating the bar area from the dining room. Through it, you could see that half the tables were empty.

"They're all booked." she said. In less than half an hour, every table was indeed full.

Fressen is the latest restaurant to spring up in this revitalized neighborhood, way over by the West Side Highway in the heart of the meat district, a couple of blocks below Chelsea Market and two doors down from a bar called Hogs & Heifers. It seems just yesterday that this area was as deserted as SoHo in the 60's (except for the bistro Florent, and the Hell Fire Club, where people who like that sort of thing still go to be whipped and tied up). Now the old warehouses and market buildings are being renovated and turned into apartments (Keith McNally is slated to open a hotel there), shops and restaurants are springing up and, on summer nights, crowds spill out in the cobbled streets from gallery openings, clutching plastic glasses of white wine.

The restaurant, in one of the former warehouses, is enormous and loud (but the music is actually terrific), and the sound bounces off the concrete walls. The space is cleverly and attractively broken up by the grids, Japanese screens and walls that are painted a shiny brown that looks like lacquer. There's a disk jockey by the bar with two turntables who means business. The lively crowd ranges from museum directors and ad critics, models and writers, to Sandra Bernhard, seated at a banquette with a girlfriend and six identical-looking hunks, a testimony to their gyms, who kissed each other all through dinner.

It is no accident that Fressen (in Yiddish and German it means "to eat well") is so deeply hip. Chef and co-owner Lynn McNeely cooked for four years for the artist Ross Bleckner and then worked at Balthazar Bakery. So the bread, obviously, is excellent, a basket of sliced brown and white sourdough loaves with thick crusts, served with olive oil for dipping. The menu changes every day, and it reads like the sort of thing a chef who knows his business can compile on the spur of the moment after an enthusiastic early morning run to the market.

One evening, there was octopus–not just the tentacles, but the belly of the beast, grilled and as tender a piece as you could wish for. A soft-shell crab, looking like a creature out of Jules Verne, was encased in a light tempura batter; inside, a scallion had been enfolded so that it looked like a long tendril. The batter was light, the crab juicy, and it was nicely complemented by a plum wine Chinese dipping sauce. The squid did not present such an alarming sight; it was cut in small, tender chunks and mixed with a salad of pea shoots and briny sea beans. Airy fritters made with bacalao came with aioli that could have done with an extra jolt of garlic.

Much of the produce served at Fressen is organic and the vegetable dishes are first-rate, very fresh and well seasoned. The mixed antipasto one day may consist of baby marinated artichokes, fresh anchovies and tiny roasted beets, another day it is roasted cipollini onions, grilled baby eggplant, rock shrimp and bruschetta topped with fava bean purée. Caesar salad (served "downtown style," as a friend put it) is not chopped up but made with hearts of romaine tossed in a dressing with freshly grated Parmesan and big, crunchy croutons.

Two of my favorite dishes are the grilled treviso topped with Old Chatham Sheepherding cheese (which is from upstate and like a melted brie) and the lentil tart, which sounds like some punishment devised for vegetarians but was wonderful, in light, crumbly pastry crust with a balsamic vinegar dressing.

One night there was grilled whole black bass on the menu, perfectly cooked, but I would have liked to have seen more of the artichokes barigoule that came with it. Seared sea scallops were sweet and juicy, a good foil for pickled cucumber, a mixed-grain salad flavored with lots of mint, and a yellow tomato vinaigrette. Mr. McNeely also turns out a fine pepper-crusted dry-aged rib eye, which comes with enormous onion rings.

Desserts include a warm gianduja cake, rich and gooey, with hazelnut espresso ice cream and chocolate sauce and cherry clafoutis. The panna cotta, a quivering ivory dome in a mango and ginger lime syrup, was delicious, a better choice than the peach tarte Tatin, which was on the chewy side.

The chocolate and caramel fondue, straight from the 50's (too bad Mom sold her set in her last tag sale), is served with fruit and madeleines. It also comes with, of all things, house-made marshmallows. Those, for me at least, are a first.

Fressen

* 1/2

421 West 13th Street, at Washington Street

645-7775

Dress: Tank tops, tattoos

Noise level: High

Wine list: Reasonably priced, well chosen

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses $12 to $26

Hours: Monday to Saturday 6 P.M. to midnight, bar to 2 A.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor