Wednesday 4th
If you’re a young Ivy Leaguer who was always the “class clown,” maybe toiling now for Modernhumorist.com and looking for a job that actually pays money, crash Comedy Central’s 10th Anniversary party tonight. Crash strategy : be male ; three days of face stubble ; ironic corduroy blazer . Whose rumps to smooch: the cable network’s big talents, such as thinking Democratic woman’s sex object Jon Stewart and thinking Republican woman’s sex object Ben Stein, who could use a little affection after bombing recently in D.C . There will surely also be some yuksters swaddled in South Park parkas . If you’re a woman or, as Comedy Central big cheeses would put it, a ” production assistant” go as Jerri from Strangers with Candy to protest the show’s inexplicable cancellation, then wind up cornered by some guy in a black T-shirt and a bit too much hair product who will later call you on his cell phone when you’re trying to sleep .
[Guastavino’s, 59th Street and First Avenue, 6 p.m., by invitation only, 713-7104.]
Me and Julia: We’re still puzzling out how someone like Julia Roberts perfectly pleasant woman, great complexion, lotsa hair, but really not only suckered the entire New York media machinery into believing that this was her “moment, ” but also walked away with the nation’s top acting award, which she accepted with a speech positively staggering in its narcissism, self-celebration and faux spontaneity . Tonight, two actual actresses, Stockard Channing and Lili Taylor (Ms. Roberts’ co-star in her last watchable role, Mystic Pizza) accept the grim fate of those who lack the cookie-cutter good looks and shiny teeth of Ms. Roberts: reading from DoubleTake Magazine at Symphony Space! More high-low culture downtown at a benefit for Eos Orchestra with a guest appearance by Parsons Dance Company founder David Parsons, who will perform on a trampoline. (Sounds a bit like The Man Show .) Who’s on the committee: kitsch queen Julie Andrews , Andrew Cuomo (possibly the angriest man in politics, if not the entire world ) and Isaac Mizrahi, whose fallow designing talents the Oscars could have sorely used this year. (By the way, we’re taking bets on how much longer Hilary Swank keeps poor Chad Lowe around .)
[Reading, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, 8 p.m., 864-5400; Benefit, Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, cocktails 7 p.m., dinner and performances to follow, 691-6415.]
Thursday 5th
You scratch our back Melissa de la Cruz pounds out a column called Cat’s Meow for an online magazine; now it’s a book, and today she launches it at a ladies’ lunch. The jacket copy contains the phrase “a Holly Golightly for the new millennium,” which is normally enough to make any sane person throw a book across the room then again, our own Simon Doonan did call Ms. de la Cruz “the Jackie Collins of the ‘ Moomba’ generation.” (By coincidence, we hear that the once-obnoxious Moomba has been humbled to the point where it is now holding readings!) Bonus excerpt: “Maybe the reason I turn twenty-five every year is that I feel like I’m stuck in a holding pattern. Because while I’ve done almost everything and been almost everywhere and I know almost everybody in New York, I’m nowhere on the New York Observer ‘s yearly sociopopularity index.” Maybe next year, dollface.
[Chinoiserie, 365 Park Avenue South, 12:30 p.m., by invitation only, 698-4665.]
Blast off! Former President William Jefferson Clinton (funny how he’s never called by his full name anymore, except in, umm, legal documents and such ) stood up and gave a big, stinky Razorback hog-yell when he heard Blast! perform. Today, this 60-member Bloomington, Ind., troupe of twentysomething percussionists and brass players – Riverdance meets Stomp plus baton twirling arrives on Broadway. Send your out-of-town “frienemies.”
[Broadway Theater, Broadway at 53rd Street, 7 p.m., 239-6200.]
Friday 6th
Highbrow Stagg party: The Art Directors Club tries to swipe a little of the Whitney Museum’s “edgy” glam with its own biennial, an exhibit called Young Guns , featuring erotic photographer Ellen Stagg, who has had pictures published in Nerve, CosmoGirl and Jane. (Surely the increasingly-soft-porn-looking Harper’s Bazaar will be next?) Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Arts Exchange tries to siphon off a little of the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s “controversy” at its 10th Anniversary Gala: One wacky pair will perform an acrobatic duet inspired by lava and glaciers; Jen Mitas will perform a physically intense piece about a hot-dog seller who turns into a hot dog . Sorry, folks ya gotta do better than that if you want to piss off the Mayor. Who’s on the committee: Senators Clinton and Schumer. Mr. Schumer wins “best performance” category hands-down by telling Mrs. Clinton he feels just terrible about the shellacking she’s been receiving in the media .
[Art Directors Club, 106 West 29th Street, 10 a.m., 643-1440; BAX, 421 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, 7:30 p.m., 718-832-0018.]
Saturday 7th
Conference call! Here’s another one for the “frienemies”: Leah Gray and Marianne Forti are singing about the trials of dating at the Hotel Delmonico tonight in their incarnation as Two Chicks and a Casio. “It’s kind of like Phoebe from Friends meets Wayne and Garth, ” is how Ms. Forti described their act. Said Ms. Gray: “I’ve pretty much covered the gamut in my dating life I’ve been dumped, I’ve dumped, I’ve been stood up. I’m continuing the research. Some guys have really wanted to be in the show, and some are a little intimidated. Some are completely oblivious. ” Ms. Forti said she is married, “but usually in our act I just play like I’m not. My husband loves it. We don’t write songs about him. All he cares about is buying a boat .” Men!
[59th Street at Park Avenue, 9 p.m., 355-2500.]
Sunday 8th
If you’re one of those people who have a secret fondness for bland 80’s rock the kind you may have lost your virginity to (if you were lucky, it was to something more gritty, such as Def Leppard! ) trek out to New Brunswick tonight, where Canadian crooner Bryan Adams is playing.
[State Theatre, New Brunswick, 8 p.m., 800-766-6048 for tickets, directions.]
Monday 9th
Trillin and chillin’: a bit more middle-age spread and fewer “independent” actresses ! The Authors Guild (we almost typed “Guilt”) throws its annual benefit, hosted by Calvin Trillin ; crotchety Roger Straus will be honored and ageless wonder Madeleine L’Engle ( A Wrinkle in Time ) will speak. In the crowd: Ken ‘ n’ Binky, plus perfect mom Anna Quindlen and frazzled mom Wendy Wasserstein. Your co-chairs include dirty-book writer Judy Blume and adventure-writer Jon Krakauer, the guy to blame for doughy Manhattan men in Patagonia fleece .
[Metropolitan Club, 1 East 60th Street, cocktails 6:30 p.m., dinner and program to follow, 725-7707.]
Ultrasuede-er? Yesterday was Passover; today, people recover from their Seder hangovers . But what about their Ultrasuede hangovers? Personally, we can think of no fabric more creepy (well, maybe vinyl) than this spot-treatable substance reminiscent of Lorna Luft at Studio 54 . But maybe that’s our problem. “It’s often been misunderstood because of cheaper, non-authentic versions there were so many other companies manufacturing it, it lost its cachet!” said fashion publicist Sally Spencer, in an interesting bid to lend authenticity to something that is itself a synthetic. (Expect WWD feature within the week.) Tonight, they toast the resilient textile at the showroom. Later, singer Lenny Kravitz, the human equivalent of Ultrasuede , joins tawny Gina Gershon at the Tunnel for Destination: Groove’s AIDS benefit.
[Ultrasuede, 1450 Broadway, 15th floor, 5 p.m., by invitation only, 840-0888; Destination: Groove, Tunnel, 220 12th Avenue, 8 p.m., 917-405-0415.]
Tuesday 10th
Hawke a loogie: If you call yourself “literary,” if you’re the absolute antithesis of the Comedy Central crowd of April 4 (that is, pale female worried about your receding hairline but secretly convinced that you’re a “gymnast” between the sheets ), ring up a fellow who owns a tweed blazer with elbow patches and get out some anti-panic-attack medication for tonight’s benefit for “urban storytelling” organization the Moth at the shabby-chic Angel Orensanz Foundation, home to last year’s peppy Lingua Franca 10th-anniversary basheroo. The benefit committee is such a confusion of social signifiers as to be a veritable Brown University semiotics-thesis-in-the-making: Brooke Hayward Duchin and A.M. Homes? Tiny Joyce Maynard and tubby Stanley Crouch? John Berendt and Thomas Beller? Ethan Hawke and Times fashion writer Ginia Bellafante? We can’t make sense of it, but perhaps you can. What it’ll cost you: $125, or $350 if you want a cocktail and believe us, baby, you’re gonna need it to face the dancing, storytelling and improv by the always-startling Jonathan Ames and the inevitable George Plimpton . Further adding to the incongruity, sponsors include Playboy.com and the Art Bridge Association. What they’re auctioning off: a Sex and the City walk-on , a “top literary agent manuscript evaluation ” and a boxing lessonboxing being the sport the literary elite write about to demonstrate their connection to the more”primal” aspects of life .
[Angel Orensanz Foundation, 172 Norfolk Street, 6:30 p.m., 292-0907.]
Wednesday 11th
Spend today searching for that elusive I.R.S. extension form or, if you’re a downsized dot-commoner , frantically trying to track down those lost W-2’s and mulling over your next career move . Hey, remember when screenwriting was the hot new profession? Relive the early 90’s at the Polo Ralph Lauren Columbia University Film Festival , the would-be Radcliffe Publishing Course of filmmaking that launched the career of Kimberly ( Boys Don’t Cry ) Peirce ; tonight is New Screenwriters Night (think a complicated admixture of the Comedy Central and Moth party attendees swathed in big, cream, cable-knit sweaters with hoods)! And begin planning crash strategy now for the private party on April 19 honoring The Observer ‘s own film eminence, Andrew Sarris .
[McGraw-Hill Theater, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, 7 p.m., 854-5579.]
