But the sudden-and quiet-departure of Tom Jones, the company's director of special projects and the man who presided over the Register during much of the 23 years he worked at Forbes Inc., has thrown the publication's already dim future into question.

Though there has been some speculation that Mr. Jones was edged out at the Register , both he and Forbes management insisted that Mr. Jones resigned. "I have decided, basically because of Sept. 11 and reaching an advanced age and wanting a quieter life, to tone down my responsibilities," said Mr. Jones, who is 57 years old. As a result, he said he will continue to serve as a consultant to the Forbes organization and to write restaurant reviews for Forbes magazine.

Mr. Jones spoke with The Transom on June 4, and at press time on June 11, Forbes had yet to appoint a replacement, although there has been some speculation that the job may go to Sabina Forbes, the daughter of Forbes editor in chief Steve Forbes who works in the company's publicity department, or possibly Mr. Forbes' other daughter, Moira Forbes, who works for the family business in London.

Forbes Inc. vice chairman Christopher (Kip) Forbes, who is close to Mr. Jones, called him "irreplaceable" and said: "We will painfully try to find somebody or, probably, several people to take over the functions that Tom did so brilliantly."

Asked if his brother's daughters were under consideration, Mr. Forbes-who spoke by phone from the Forbes annual sales meeting at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia-said, "Absolutely. As my father used to say, 'At Forbes , we don't preach nepotism, we practice it.'"

Since Sept. 11, Forbes, like a lot of media organizations, has also been practicing cost-cutting, and some question whether The Social Register , which is aimed at a narrow, waning niche, can be seen as a viable proposition at a company that's operating in lean-and-mean mode. Last fall, sources familiar with the situation said Forbes Inc. staff was cut approximately 20 percent overall but that Mr. Jones' division took an even deeper hit. Kip Forbes called the 20 percent figure "an exaggeration," adding: "It wasn't that much, but it hurt."

And the summer edition of the Register shows evidence of those cutbacks. Eight years ago, Mr. Jones oversaw the creation of The Social Register Observer , a quarterly, advertisement-accepting companion magazine for the Married Maidens who subscribed to the Register. But, as recipients of the summer edition of the Social Register will find, the Register and the Social Register Observer have now been folded together.

There are other factors that don't exactly bode well for the Register 's future. In the past, Forbes family members have not exactly trumpeted their ownership of the directory, which has excluded Jews, blacks and other racial and ethnic groups-an issue that arose when Steve Forbes ran for President in the 90's.

And then there is this. "I never hear anybody talk about it anymore. It's just not cited anymore," said Tom Wolfe, author of The Bonfire of The Vanities and a journalist who has dissected society in America. "This is off the top of the head, but I think that that world of social luster has been so overshadowed by celebrities that it doesn't have any kick anymore."

Mr. Wolfe added: "There was a time when a girl of the year-that term was first applied to a debutante; Brenda

Frazier, I believe-and newspapers would send reporters down to the docks when people like that came in on a ship from England or France. That just doesn't happen anymore, unless the socialite has either done something notorious or something completely outside of the world of social distinction."

When The Transom asked Mr. Forbes if there was "no chance" that The Social Register might cease to publish, he replied: "Not no chance. Sadly, anything can happen, as we saw on Sept. 11." But then he added: "We are putting it in shape so it can survive another 113 years."

Mr. Jones said The Social Register was first published in 1886 "as an extension of a visiting list-a Victorian conceit where people kept lists of whom they'd have in their houses and whom they would visit."

"It was basically a list of one network of people," Mr. Jones said. "The first issues were descendants of the old English and Dutch families that settled this country." Later, it was "continued to include others who are part of that set." Mr. Forbes said that who does and does not make the cut was determined by Mr. Jones working with "an advisory committee," although there are some observers of the social world who are as skeptical of that advisory committee as certain New York restaurant goers are of the Zagat guide's voters.

By 1918, there were reportedly 18 volumes of The Social Register representing 26 cities, but as the celebrity culture waxed and society waned, those editions were eventually shrunk down to a single volume.

The Social Register 's archives represent a rich chapter in American history, and some observers of the Forbes family say they could represent a handsome tax write-off if they were donated to a university or museum.

Mr. Forbes denied that this might be in the works. The archives, he said, are "still used on a regular basis." But he did admit that the company is "looking at a less-cost-per-square-foot place to put them." Currently, the Register 's offices are housed at 381 Park Avenue South.

The next edition of the Register is scheduled to be published in November and, according to Mr. Forbes, will need to go to the printers at the end of October. Mr. Jones will be helping with the transition.

As for the transition that society is undergoing, Mr. Forbes said:

"It's changed, but it's certainly not diminished. Defining society and remembering what it was-there has always been a demand for it. Its obituary has been written many times, and somehow it keeps rearing its head."

Then Mr. Forbes said he had to go. "I'm here at our annual sales meeting," he said. "I want to go downstairs and make sure there are going to be more."

Hitch & Howell

"This is an all-star cast," paper-thin socialite Nan Kempner said as she surveyed the packed front room of Swifty's, the Upper East Side eatery, on the night of June 10. Ms. Kempner had come to celebrate her friend Jane Stanton Hitchcock's new mystery novel, Social Crimes , which will be published this month by Talk Miramax Books.

Ms. Stanton Hitchcock, friend of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, mystery writer and wife of Washington Post writer Jim Hoagland, usually sets the scene of her novels among the inhabitants of New York's highest tax brackets, and that night she'd managed to rope in an impressive number of its preternaturally preserved representatives. Designer Mary MacFadden came by, as did Republican fund-raiser Georgette Mosbacher, former Talk editor Tina Brown with hubby Harry Evans, Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman and Vanity Fair writer Marie Brenner all contributed to the crush.

ABC's Barbara Walters, impeccable amidst the throng in a lilac-colored suit, had read the book and bought extra copies for a couple of friends. "It's a very small part of New York," she said of the characters that people Social Crimes . "But people always like to read about the rich, and they always like to know the rich have troubles."

In this latest work, Ms. Hitchcock's main character is Jo Slater, a New York socialite whose billionaire husband ditches her for her best friend. It's a familiar plotline in real-life New York, but Ms. Hitchcock, who wore a fuchsia get-up and a string of pearls around her neck, claimed that "all the characters in the book" were based on "me."

Society, Ms. Hitchcock said, is fertile terrain for fiction, because "beneath those smiles there's always something different, and that is so intriguing." Right then, Liz Rohatyn and husband Felix walked in. "What a great article from Mr. Norwich!" Ms. Rohatyn immediately said, mentioning the large 1,965-word New York Times story about Ms. Hitchcock that had appeared the previous week.

"I don't believe it!" Ms. Hitchcock shrieked. "Can you believe this is happening?"

More cynical observers would have answered that yes, they could believe it-at least in regard to the Times story. Ms. Hitchcock is a longtime friend of The Times ' new big foot, managing editor Howell Raines. She was even romantically linked to Mr. Raines-who got his own extra-grand profile in last week's New Yorker -before she married Mr. Hoagland.

Asked about the connection, Ms. Hitchcock said that although she was thrilled about the piece-"it was the best thing that ever happened in my professional life"-she hadn't given a thought about her connection to the head of The Times .

"I understood from Billy that he loved the book and it was a totally professional decision on Billy's part and The Times ' part," she said. "Certainly, Howell and I are friends, but I didn't think about it, to be very honest. I think that everyone is professional enough."

According to a Times spokeswoman, "Howell was not involved in the article at all and his relationship had no influence on the conception of or the editing of the piece."

-Elisabeth Franck

Foer + Krauss = ™?

At the Border's bookstore on Park Avenue and 57th Street, 25-year-old Jonathan Safran Foer's critically successful novel Everything Is Illuminate d is prominently displayed just below the work of New York's newest literary Wunderkind, 27-year-old poet Nicole Krauss, whose first novel, Man Walks into a Room , has just been published by Doubleday.

According to sources familiar with the writers, their display-floor proximity accurately reflects Ms. Krauss' and Mr. Safran Foer's current romantic situation. Sources familiar with the couple say they've been dating for several months, and were "cozy" at the after-party at restaurant L'Acajou following Mr. Safran Foer's recent reading at the Chelsea Barnes & Noble.

Representatives for Ms. Krauss and Mr. Safran Foer did not return The Transom's phone calls.

Everything Is Illuminated interweaves a fictional account of a young man's journey to uncover his family history in the Ukraine with a magical tale of his grandfather's imagined village.

Ms. Krauss' Man Walks into a Room is about a college professor who has irretrievably lost his memory. Ms. Krauss' grandparents are also Holocaust survivors. She lives in Manhattan. Mr. Safran Foer lives in Queens. Given the commute, things must be fairly serious.

-Rebecca Traister

Crazy Like Cho

It was noon on June 7 and the comedian Margaret Cho was in Room 715 of the Union Square W hotel. She was there to promote her new concert film, Notorious C.H.O. , which will be released on July 3.

"It's just a me-fest," said Ms. Cho, who was wearing a billowy silk dress she got at the mall and sheepskin boots. "And it's stupid. It's like I went to this party last night and it was for me , and there's a big poster of me, and I'm like, This is weird. It's just this weird thing where you have this inflated sense of self-importance because people are really caring about what you're doing or they need you for something.

"That's why I think a lot of famous people that I know are super creepy-because they think that the whole world cares," Ms. Cho said. "Fame is such an illusion. It doesn't make you different from other human beings. It's just this kind of circumstance that could be temporary, but it makes people crazy."

Ms. Cho, 33, started doing stand-up at 16 and got a ABC-TV series in 1994 called All-American Girl , the first network show starring an Asian-American. It was also one of the first times that a network sitcom star seemed to have little compunction about admitting that she was bisexual. Actually, Ms. Cho doesn't like that pert little label. She prefers to be called "a slut."

After the show was canceled in 1995, she partied way too hard. Then she made a dramatic, well-received comeback in 1999 with an Off Broadway run of I'm the One That I Want , followed by a tour, a film and a book of the same title.

Her material these days is very raunchy stuff with a little motivational self-help thrown in. Ms. Cho has no trouble answering questions about the last time she performed oral sex on a woman-"Last summer!" she said-or about the same-sex relationships she's had.

"They've been awful," she said. "So heartbreaking and stupid and full of games," that Ms. Cho claimed that when it comes to women, "I've had it with them!" Not that she necessarily blames the women she's dated. "I have bad taste in women," she said.

Now she dates a British guy in Los Angeles. "I'm a big snow queen," she said. "When you enjoy the company of Caucasian men. I mean, I think it's great."

What did she think of all those white men who exclusively date Asian women who don't speak English?

"Yeah, that's great! It's totally hot. I don't know, the air of colonization is just very sexy in a relationship," she said. "I think it serves both parties very well. [The men] get a girlfriend that's probably, in quotes, 'hotter' than they would get here. There's a kind of a social-idea stereotype that Asian women have this sexual mystique about them that is very exotic and erotic and it's all a myth, but if it's believed, then it works."

So it's O.K. for white guys to have a thing for Asian women? The Transom asked.

"I love being fetishized, I think it's hot," Ms. Cho said. "I think people should appreciate a good objectification now and again." But she also pointed out that eventually that dynamic ends. "At a certain point, when you're saying, 'Why don't you fucking take out the goddamn trash for once?' you can't be fetishized after that. Relationships become real very quickly."

The Transom's eggs Benedict arrived. Ms. Cho reached into a bag for her health-food lunch, which included something called a "sun burger." She's a clean liver (meditation, yoga, a therapist) and she has one, too: That day she was marking four years of sobriety.

Ms. Cho said that she began thinking she might have a problem with alcohol in 1995 when, while driving drunk, she hit a car full of "gangbangers" in L.A.

"All these gang members came out of the car," she recalled. "I screamed at them for so long that they freaked out and left. I was so scary that they were like, O.K., fine, and they took off. And I felt bad, we sort of exchanged cards, and I was screaming and they were threatening me and I was screaming more, and it was just this fight …. Somehow I just talked my way out of it and intimidated them." She ended up feeling really guilty and sent them $200.

Ms. Cho's unfazed, extra-tolerant attitude probably comes from growing up in San Francisco, where her parents ran a bookstore and drag queens were her best friends. Was there something she hadn't done sexually that she'd like to?

"Mummification! That's where you get either wrapped in bandages or like latex and you're completely covered up and then they have like a hood and then they put straws in your nose so you can breathe. Then you're suspended-it's kind of an extension of bondage but it's about sensory deprivation. I've always thought it would be really interesting."

Ms. Cho said she's not "into" pornography but she watches it. Sometimes she even checks out violent porn. "There's an incredible like rape culture in Japan, that's really like weird," she said. "There's all those films like Rape Man , which are so like-have you seen those? It's so intense. It's just so violent, like there's all the Guinea Pig movies, have you heard of those? They're these Japanese films that are like snuff films. They don't have a lot of sexual content, it's all about straight-up violence."

According to published reports, Japanese law-enforcement officials investigated the Guinea Pig films and found them to be made with special effects, but, just based on Ms. Cho's description, they're pretty disturbing.

"There's one where they make this girl listen to music super loud!" she continued. "Then they have her drink a big bottle of whiskey and then they put her in an office chair and then spin her super fast. There's no nudity, it's just straight up 'let's just fuck with this woman until she dies .'" Ms. Cho said. "To me that kind of stuff is fascinating cause I'm like, Why is this for the general public, what is this for? I guess it serves the same function as films like Faces of Death .

And according to Ms. Cho, one of the guinea pig movies proved to be too intense for one reputed American connoisseur of porn. Guinea Pig I , II , and IV are still available, she said, but it's hard to get Guinea Pig III: Flowers of Flesh and Blood after actor Charlie Sheen saw it and alerted the F.B.I.

"Like [ Guinea Pig III ] is just completely unavailable because Charlie Sheen was so traumatized," she said. "You really have to do something to traumatize Charlie Sheen and make him get up and do some shit."

-George Gurley

You can feel it in the air, can't you? After the longest of waits, Oxygen is finally on the verge of bubbling into Manhattan.

You remember Oxygen-the super-duper cable network of Oxygen Media, the company founded by X-chromosome power brokers Oprah Winfrey, Geraldine Laybourne, Marcy Carsey, Caryn Mandabach and token Y-man Tom Werner in 1998.

Oxygen was a big deal when it launched. The only problem was-and this was a weensy hitch, as it turned out-you couldn't see it in Manhattan, the Media Capital of the Planet, since Oxygen had yet to crack through on Time Warner Cable.

As a result, Oxygen became the Canadian girlfriend of television-a network that allegedly existed, though no one you knew had actually confirmed its existence.

But now that's changing. On Dec. 19, Oxygen is cracking through on Time Warner Cable's Channel 61.

The Oxygen people, naturally, are delighted that their existences now have meaning in their hometown. "Everyone's quite excited that they'll be able to see their product," said Oxygen spokeswoman Laura Nelson.

The trouble, of course, is that in the time since its launch, Oxygen has morphed from its original format of female-oriented entertainment to 24-hour coverage of dirt-bike racing. "Yeah!" said Ms. Nelson, playing along. "It's all dirt-bike racing, but with chicks!"

Actually, Oxygen is now a weird mixture of original programming and shows with intelligent, congenial hosts who were all pretty famous, like, eight years ago: Candice Bergen, Isaac Mizrahi, Carrie Fisher ….

Said Ms. Nelson : "We've started to really offer some extraordinary original programming."

Oprah's got a show on Oxygen, too, called Use Your Life, on which she touts community leaders and friends whose stories have touched her. (Maybe Jonathan Franzen can get his "high art" tooshie invited on this thing.) Oxygen also has sports coverage, animation and full sets of Kate & Allie and Cybill reruns. "It's a really great mix of entertainment," Ms. Nelson said.

Tonight on Lifetime (let's see if Oxygen can take a bite out of them ), Nicolette Sheridan recovers from a stroke in A Time to Heal. [LIFE, 12, 9 p.m.]

Thursday, Nov. 22

Whoopsy-daisy! After leaving the podium at a California speaking engagement the other day, Jeff Greenfield busted his ankle backstage, putting him on the shelf for a few days. The CNN senior analyst is expected back in New York by the end of the week; in the meantime, his substitute on Greenfield at Large has been Keith Olbermann, who's been plopping down on CNN from time to time in the wake of his (not-so-)kissy-faced parting with Fox Sports.

Tonight is Turkey Night, so argue with your drunk relatives over which one's which on Hannity & Colmes . [FNC, 46, 9 p.m.]

Friday, Nov. 23

Bark if you missed it, but this week The WB11 News at Ten aired a two-night series on that wonderfully disgusting (and newsy !) topic that rears its ugly head every now and again after a particularly worrisome meal from New Yum Fun: "Hey, do you think there's any Fido in that?"

"While most Americans may consider it repugnant to eat a pooch, the dish is a delicacy in Korea, where it is believed that more than two million dogs annually are tortured, cooked, and eaten-allegedly for reputed health benefits," cried a release from Channel 11. "Rumors of a New York black market in dog meat have circulated for years, but with little documentation."

You know where this puppy is going. Working with the Humane Society, Channel 11 videotaped the sale of what a Flushing restaurant called "boshingtang," or dog stew. Then a team headed by WB super-reporter Polly Kreisman tracked the "dogmeat trail" to a Wurtsboro, N.Y., farm. The price: $350 cooked, $450 uncooked.

Rarf! Tonight, see what's cooking on The WB11 News at Ten . [WPIX, 11, 10 p.m.]

Saturday, Nov. 24

Wasn't there supposed to be some big ABC news show devoted to the new serious age ushered in by Sept. 11?

There was, and it lasted less time than Bob Patterson did! It was called America.01 , and while it was well-intentioned-it aimed to analyze and interpret American life in the aftermath of the terror attacks-hardly anyone watched the thing after it premiered at 8 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 2.

"It became too difficult to launch a news-magazine [show] in that time period," said an ABC spokesperson. "We'll continue to work on the program during its hiatus as the network tries to find a more suitable time period."

Two words, people: dog meat! Tonight on ABC, super-snoozy NCAA College Football , featuring Washington and Miami. [WABC, 7, 8 p.m.]

Sunday, Nov. 25

Did you know that Jeff Probst is more than just the mildly grating host of TV's super-hit Survivor ? He's also an award-winning independent-movie director!

Mr. Probst called from the Survivor Quatro set in French Polynesia (who's paying CBS's Sprint bill?!) the other night on the heels of news that he'd been named one of the "Ten Directors to Watch" by arts organization American Cinematheque. A film Mr. Probst wrote and directed called Finder's Fee has kicked up a small fuss on the indie-movie circuit.

"I'm extremely proud of it," Mr. Probst said of the thriller, about a guy who finds a wallet containing a winning lottery ticket. "But it's a small movie. It can't compete with Pearl Harbor and Mission: Impossible II. "

Well, neither PH nor M:I II had James Earl Jones-which Finder's Fee does. Mr. Probst was totally giddy about Darth Vader signing on to do his flick, and credited him with helping to calm some of the more excitable young male actors on the set. Mr. Probst said that on his first day, Mr. Jones leaned across a table to actor Ryan Reynolds "and goes, 'Luke, I am your father'- slight pause-' motherfucker .' And the room broke up, because in one sentence you heard James Earl Jones say the one line everyone wanted to ask him to say, and you heard him say 'motherfucker.'"

Mr. Probst, who's still seeking a distributor for Finder's Fee , said he's itching to do another film.

But he said he's having a good time with Survivor . At the end of each episode, Mr. Probst still gets to send the campers packing by extinguishing some rube's tiki torch. "The snuffer is working just fine," he said.

No Survivor jokes, please! We've had enough of those for the next 3,000 years. Tonight on CBS, the abominable Upper West Side paean You've Got Mail. [CBS, 2, 8:30 p.m.]

Monday, Nov. 26

On tonight's episode of Miracle Pets on fam-friendly PAX, a dog saves a family from a fire ( boring) , a lost cat finds its way home after two years ( zzzzz) , and a girl with a brain tumor recovers with the assistance of a horse (now we're talkin' !). [WPXM, 31, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday, Nov. 27

The holiday season is upon us, and you know what that means! Yup: time for a rollicking Tom Jones Christmas concert at the Vatican!

You thought that the Vatican didn't do Vegas schtick? Think again, Dean-o !Tom Jones shakes his groove thing for the Holy Father tonight in a WLIW 21–PBS jamboree entitled A Musical Christmas from the Vatican . "Tom Jones in Europe is not perceived as having the Las Vegas tiger image," said one of the show's producers, Sherman Heinig, sounding slightly protective of Mr. Jones.

Well, he should know. Mr. Heinig, who's from Germany, is the guy in charge of getting pop stars to perform at the Vatican. The gig is actually tougher to get than you'd think.

"The Vatican actually has a shit list," he said. "They have their own criteria-like, Liza Minnelli is a no. They don't tell you why."

Whitney Houston was also turned down by the Vatican, Mr. Heinig said. They're apparently down on gay performers, too. "So Elton John is obviously not an option," Mr. Heinig said. "Neither is George Michael."

What about Britney Spears? "No," Mr. Heinig said. Gay? Nope. " Too sexy ."

Well, who is up to snuff for the Vatican? Mr. Heinig ticked off some of the people booked for the 2001 show, which is not part of tonight's special: the Cranberries, Lisa Stansfield … Mark Knopfler is apparently close to signing on … Ray Charles is a maybe …

Man, that is one rocking concert! To make matters worse, Paul Anka just canceled.

Before we left him, we wanted Mr. Heinig to settle that long-standing issue of whether or not Baywatch 's David Hasselhoff is indeed big in his country.

"Well, he's not so much a big singer anymore," Mr. Heinig said. "He only had one No. 1 hit in Germany … but he still gets $50,000 a night."

To sing ? Tonight on WLIW, jam with the Holy Father. [WLIW, 21, 8 p.m.]

In Hollywood, where timing is everything, Michael Keaton has made a career of marching out of tempo. He's talented, versatile, charismatic and … underrated. He just can't get a hit movie, even at gunpoint. Except for Clean and Sober , I can't remember a great Michael Keaton movie, and that film was a commercial flop. In his most viable box-office success as Batman, Jack Nicholson stole the spotlight and the reviews. Why isn't this guy as busy and popular as Tom Hanks? Clearly, he needs some of Bill Clinton's advisers. In every lousy movie, he is never less than fascinating. In Desperate Measures he's even more so than usual. But you've gotta be a Michael Keaton addict to get through it.

Directed by Barbet Schroeder and written by David Klass, Desperate Measures is a violent thriller in which Andy Garcia clenches his jaw as a tough but anguished San Francisco cop whose gravely ill son needs a bone marrow transplant. So he does what any desperate single father would do-he breaks into the secret computers in the Justice Department to find a donor with a matching blood type. (Don't try this at home.) The only DNA match that registers on the screen is a homicidal maniac serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison. This is where Mr. Keaton comes in. Buffed, tattooed, burr-cut and in battle mode, he gets a real change of pace. In the past he would have played the Mr. Mom who needs help. This time he's the sociopath killer who pulls the strings.

It's always fun to watch a hardened criminal who is smarter than everybody else. But this wacko is just too good to be true. On his way to the hospital, he stages the first of a series of elaborate escapes only a Hollywood screenwriter on a caffeine high could dream up. For a thug who has spent most of his life behind bars, isolated from the world and even the rest of the prison population, this reprobate knows things about drugs it takes doctors eight years of medical training to master, the latest technology, and survival techniques that would defeat James Bond. He takes over all of the computers. He sets the operating room on fire. He sews up his own bullet wounds. He takes the poor doctor, played with moronic naïveté by Marcia Gay Harden, hostage. He knows how to knock out the hospital's electrical system and neutralizes a big city medical facility the size of several parking lots.

What a guy! He does miracles with hypodermic needles and propane gas, and can smash his way through security systems with his bare hands. Meanwhile, Mr. Garcia has to keep him alive or his kid will die. They could have avoided the whole thing by performing the bone marrow transplant in the prison hospital in the first place, but then there wouldn't be a movie. There isn't much of a movie, anyway. Desperate Measures is so preposterous you laugh more than you sweat. It's one of those absurd action fantasies in which everyone gets to cuss and blow up things, nothing is impossible, and everyone is indestructible except the extras.

The movie is awful, but it's nevertheless a lot of fun watching Mr. Keaton upstage Mr. Garcia all over the place. And he does have one memorable line: "If you can't eat it, drink it, fuck it, or fire it, I ain't interested." In the future, that should include his choice of movie roles.

Jones and Schmidt: Still Fantastick

One of the first shows I could afford to see after I arrived in New York was The Fantasticks , a musical of intimate perfection with cut-rate ticket prices down on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village. It became the longest-running show in New York theater history, and it catapulted to fame its brash young creators, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, two fellows who met hale and hearty as classmates at the University of Texas and moved to New York with stars in their eyes. They broke all the rules, modernized and captivated the jaded New York theater scene with sassy revues and experimental Off-Broadway work, then moved uptown to Broadway to write lusty, pithy, passionate scores for hits like 110 in the Shade and Gower Champion's two-character smash I Do! I Do!, starring Mary Martin and Robert Preston. Now their work is enthralling audiences of all ages and musical interests all over again in a fitting retrospective of their songs called The Show Goes On at the York Theater Company's new headquarters in St. Peter's Church in the Citicorp Center. The show is aptly titled because it shows no signs of running out of steam.

Mr. Jones, who conducts workshops on how to write musicals and is the author of a new, informative book on the subject called Making Musicals , published by Limelight Editions, is a member of the bright and breezy cast, while Mr. Schmidt, who remains one of the country's top illustrators and graphic designers in addition to his talents as a songwriter (his artwork is on display in the lobby), accompanies the performers on piano. The boys are no longer boys, their roofs are covered with snow, and they've had their ups and downs, but their hearts are still as young as when The Fantasticks first opened in 1960, and their songs are timeless. They call this musical celebration of their accomplishments "a portfolio of theater songs," and while it's a most entertaining show-business venture, it also has the warming ambiance of a party in the authors' living room where the audience is privileged to be treated like invited guests.

Mr. Jones does the talking, Mr. Schmidt does the playing, and the rest of the intimate cast is rounded out by Emma Lampert, JoAnn Cunningham and J. Mark McVey (a strapping blond baritone best known as Valjean in Les Misérables on Broadway). Strangely enough, the first act, which concentrates on commercial hits, includes only one song from The Fantasticks and three different versions of the spinster song from their 1963 version of The Rainmaker , which came to be known as 110 in the Shade , demonstrating the metamorphosis a song can go through when tailored for three different leading ladies. Mr. Jones tells engaging anecdotes about how certain songs appeared first in his imagination and how they ended up on stage in versions that were significantly altered.

In Act 2, the focus is on more obscure songs from flops like Colette , which starred Diana Rigg and was shuttered in Detroit, and from works in progress including an ambitious, unproduced musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's Our Town entitled Grover's Corners . Throughout the evening, there is abundant evidence that these "boys" still have a cornucopia of untapped talent waiting to be shared. My favorite example is "The Room Is Filled With You," a pulverizingly poignant ballad that has yet to find its way into a Broadway musical. Molding so much rich material into such a charming vehicle, the Jones-Schmidt team from Texas provides all the information you need, just the right number of jokes and a cup running over with songs that delight. I hope this show goes on forever.

Dearie's Warm; Kitt's Red Hot

Two icons of the supper club scene are back. Blossom Dearie and Eartha Kitt are as far apart as Revlon and Urban Decay, but they have the same ability to dress up a cabaret with music. Ms. Dearie, the aging bobbysoxer who looks like a music librarian at Wellesley, is dishing up her warm, bubbly jazz ambrosia at Danny's Skylight Room, adding a refined feminist touch to Stephen Sondheim's "Ladies Who Lunch" and playing gently swinging Brazilian samba chords on Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Wave." To her usual repertoire of standards by Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, and Duke Ellington, she's added two gorgeous, sophisticated new ballads-"Go Away With Me," written in collaboration with both Michel Legrand and the fine lyricist Jack Segal, and "Make Some Magic," which she wrote with the gifted British songwriter Duncan Lamont, with a "Cole Porter ending" provided by the great Johnny Mandel. Breathy and romantic, delicately playful, or swinging solidly, Ms. Dearie is one of the few holdovers from the golden jazz years of Manhattan night life still worth cherishing.

Flirtation and feral in flaming fire engine red, Eartha Kitt, at 70, is turning the posh Cafe Carlyle into her own unique Den of Iniquity with a voice that says Yes, a wiggle that says maybe, and a look that says watch out. She's been kidding sex so long we've forgotten what a good chanteuse she is, or how piercingly she can penetrate a torch song. On the Billie Holiday classics "Don't Explain" and "Good Morning Heartache," she throbs like a zither. Seducing the crowd in French, Swahili and Turkish, too, she gives everything her own spin and is worth every penny of the steep cover charge. If you don't want to be in show business, don't sit under her nose or she'll make you part of the act. But if you're a really big Eartha fan, take a New York cab and you may hear her voice twice. It's just the right end to a purrr-fect day.