Wednesday 2nd
Wake up bloated and disconsolate from yesterday’s New Year’s Day brunch -brunch is always a bad idea, especially when the host gets “creative” and tries to serve wassail …. Today, secretly admit to yourself that you’re pleased that Mike Bloomberg is your new Mayor (and honey, we can’t wait to see what Daddy Warbucks, with his shiny suits and little jet plane, is gonna do next! Though we wish someone would teach him to smile without looking like Frodo … ). The only thing “on” in the city tonight is the perpetually twinkling lights of the Film Forum , which is premiering Eisenstein , a movie-or ” feelm ,” as those who pretend to live below 14th Street pronounce it-about the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Remember when the Soviets were the ones we were scared of? (Boppy Gen Y’ers stare blankly.)
[209 West Houston Street, 727-8110.]
Thursday 3rd
What hath Eve Ensler wrought? We thought the out-of-control self-empowerment “movement” known as The Vagina Monologues , during which pampered celebrities and Marie Claire editors donned T-shirts and emoted, was receding. But now here’s From the Mouths of Babes: New Works by Bodacious Women , a festival that starts today with an “open stage” event-a free-for-all of monologue, poetry, comedy, puppets …. A press release promises it will “heat up the winter.” ( Subtext: nudity, dirty talk, lots of use of the word “penis,” forced sense of celebration-in other words, what passes for feminism since 1990 …. ) “It’s a big, open-like situation that goes on for six nights,” said producer Emily Rems , a ’97 grad of Emerson (artsy Boston college). “There really is no hierarchy to speak of; there’s a whole big city out there for that. There are no rules-if you’re a woman and you have something that you want to share up on stage, that’s the qualification.” No men allowed? “Well, certainly they’re allowed in the room .” Fellas, start your engines!
[Women’s One World Cafe Theater, 59-61 East Fourth Street, 8 p.m., 502-3452.]
Friday 4th
The thing about January? There are tons of sales , everybody looks ashen , and the performance artists run amok! You thought Karen Finley was naughty; have a look at Deb Margolin , who helped found a troupe called Split Britches Theater Company (naughty!) and is a staff writer for Nerve (sort of a sexy version of Talk , but with readers). “I write lyrical, sensual material, stories that are of the body,” said Ms. Margolin from Montvale, N.J. “I think writing is a very sexy thing to do. For a long time I just considered myself a playwright for one, until that term ‘performance artist’ was put on me-and at first I resented it, but now I love it. It’s poor person’s theater, and I think theater is like a probe or a fork .” Tonight, Ms. Margolin sticks her fork in the subject of her messy house; the show is called Why Cleaning Fails . “I can’t clean up, and I feel like it’s because there’s something very sacred about the messes that we make. Cleaning is repressed emotion for something else. I see beauty in order, I find beauty in a bookshelf … but I find it impossible to achieve. My son will be 10 soon, and my husband just generates piles of stuff everywhere he goes . They’re impenetrable; there’s boxes with magazines and mystical envelopes-they’re too heavy to lift. So that’s difficult. He always promises he’ll ‘get to it. ‘ It’s impossible. I go through phases. Sometimes I just think, ‘O.K., you have to pick your battles in this world,’ but the house is at a point now where a professional couldn’t help me.”
[HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Avenue, 7:30 p.m., 647-0202.]
Saturday 5th
More proof carbs are back: At a crunchy “corn” festival up at Wave Hill (that’s in the Bronx-the new Brooklyn) this afternoon, Argentine native Debora Burak and her dad, Robert, are cookin’ up canelones de choclo (corn-stuffed crêpes) and Venezuelan arepas (corn patties)! Watch for suspiciously scrawny Food and Wine editors soaking up the “authentic” atmosphere ….
[675 West 252nd Street, 2 p.m., 718-549-3200.]
Sunday 6th
Gamine alert: Miramax takes no prisoners as the hot-breathed behemoth cranks up its full-scale assault for an Oscar for the hugely overrated Amélie (the story of an Audrey Hepburn–like café waitress, played by bug-eyed Audrey Tatou) with a screening at Alliance Française and a Q&A session afterward-presumably in French-with the director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Hey, French people may loathe (i.e., secretly envy) Americans and be sort of twee and self-important , but it beats being dragged to a second viewing of The Lord of the Rings by your “halfling” of a boyfriend, who thinks Liv Tyler is “a big girl, but really hot!”
[Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, 4 p.m., 355-6100.]
Monday 7th
Only eight short days till Elizabeth Wurtzel reads from her new book, More, Now, Again : A Memoir of Addiction ! To tide you over till then, here’s a book by another lissome Radcliffe grad: The Good Men by Charmaine Craig , class of ’93, a Mayflower descendant and the model for Disney’s Pocahontas . (See glamorous, pensive pose-but she’s not just pretty, she studied medieval history!) It’s a “scholarly” novel about heresy and incest in 14th-century France-with just a soupçon of Judith Krantz. Bonus heavy-breathing excerpt: “When he was close enough to her to feel her breath on his face , he touched the freckles on her nose and stroked away her tears with the tip of his thumb. She closed her eyes, and he knew there was nothing left to do but seal his fate. In one quick movement, he grabbed her by the back and the thighs and carried her down to the pallet. He pushed up her skirt and pried apart her-” Who says a Harvard education is worthless?
Tuesday 8th
Dawson’s Creek or de Kooning? That about sums up the post-post-postmodern upper-middle-class New York experience, doesn’t it ? If you have it in you , you can crash Seventeen magazine’s party celebrating its “hip, new re-look” (amazing, isn’t it, the euphemisms these people come up with for “makeover”?), hosted by its new editor in chief, Anne-marie Iverson , whom we happen to know really knows her way around eye shadow. Katie Holmes , the star of Dawson’s Creek (who your halfling boyfriend thinks is “a little swarthy-but hot!” ), is on the cover and presumably will show. Crash strategy: shiver in spring’s new “prairie” look, lotsa eyelet! Or there’s always the jug-wine-and-cheese-cube circuit: prints from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, including Braque, de Kooning, Hockney, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Picasso, Pollock, Rauschenberg and Warhol , tonight at the Marlborough Gallery.
[Seventeen party, Meet, 71-73 Gansevoort Street, 7 p.m., by invitation only, 228-5555; Prints, 40 West 57th Street, 6 p.m., 541-4900.]
Wednesday 9th
Gamine alert, part 2: Well, this has been a very girlie week, but what can you do?- New York men basically just sleep until February like hibernating bears …. Self-appointed etiquette experts Kim Izzo and Ceri Marsh fly down from Toronto, where they work as editors for Flare and Fashion , and appear on NBC’s Today Show to plug their book, The Fabulous Girl’s Guide to Decorum . “I hope we get Katie!” said Ms. Marsh, 34, echoing the thoughts of thousands of Today Show guests who dread the thought of having to stare into Matt Lauer’s leering, somewhat beady eyes …. What qualifies the two friends to dispense advice? “We met at university, or I guess you say ‘college'”-yes, we do, toots-“and we just felt we had enough life experience …. I wouldn’t say it’s like Canadians are polite and Americans are impolite, but Canadians are more subdued; they can be a little bit reserved. It’s not a reflection of a Canadian’s enthusiasm if they don’t slap you on the back.” We’ll sleep in and wait for the SCTV reruns ….
[NBC, too early for us.]
