Wednesday, April 1
The price for the privilege of lodging yourself into the armpit of a pimpled hipster with bad breath for 20 minutes every morning has gone up! The M.T.A.—evidently mistaking the L train for—ho-ho-ho!—a reliable mode of transportation—will be soaking commuters for ever more precious pocket change: $2.50! At this rate our commute will cost as much as our daily artisanal macchiato! But there are still reasons to suffer this manic metropolis, and they include the fact that The Devil Wears Prada is more than just the reason Darien-bred blondes straight out of Bucknell stampeded Condé Nast HR; it’s also a Christian metal band! Tonight, Manhattan’s estimated … six practicing Christians take them in at the Fillmore. Further downtown, film nerds ogle Paul Dano—best known as the psycho preacher in disturbing Daniel Day-Lewis (throb, throb, thrum) flick There Will Be Blood—at the 92YTribeca, where he’s screening Gigantic—a romance co-starring indie sex goddess Zooey Deschanel. With Dano and Deschanel, it’ll be dee-lightful!
[Devil Wears Prada at the Fillmore, 6:30 p.m.; Paul Dano at 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson Street, 7:30 p.m., www.92ytribeca.org]
Thursday, April 2
When the goin’ gets tough, the dames buy lipstick! Allure’s Linda Wells joins cosmetics company Origins at Rockefeller Center to announce a plan to recycle all the various expensive jars and tubes and bottles of women who haven’t been forced to downgrade to Cetaphil. “The E.P.A. recognizes that nearly one-third of all landfill waste is packaging,” emailed Origins’ president, Jane Lauder. In related news, Columbia professor Kenneth T. Jackson moderates “The Resilient City: New York Facing Adversity.” “Fifty years ago people thought the city was doomed,” he said. “Now, all you’ve got to do is look at the price of a Manhattan apartment and you know the city’s not doomed. You can practically get an apartment for free in Detroit!” Several subway transfers away, Germaine Greer appears with fellow feisty feminist Katha Pollitt as part of BAM’s Eat, Drink & Be Literary series. “Ahem, I don’t do readings, that’s the first thing,” Ms. Greer declared when we reached her in West Palm Beach. (“I’m on the stump here for [my new book] Shakespeare’s Wife. … I had one of those flights where the man next to me couldn’t put his knees together, the kind of man who sits with his legs splayed. … Unbelievable behavior!”) “Most of us who do books these days don’t mean them to be read aloud, and that wasn’t true before the 18th century,” Ms. Greer explained, continuing to denounce the “reading,” i.e., the preferred sexual hunting ground of n+1 subscribers. She said she will “talk about the book and then people will ask me questions about the book. … I tried to write the whole book in the conditional. What happens when people try to write a book that’s speculative, they generally arrive at a theory and then, instead of telling the story in the conditional about what might have happened, they write it in the indicative mood, which means they say what did happen. … For example, it’s a fact that [Ann Hathaway, the Bard’s wife] was older than Shakespeare, it’s a fact that she was pregnant when they got married. But the guess is that she was just lying around bored looking for a boy to get into trouble with. She probably was working!”
[Origins launches recycling program at General Motors Plaza, 58th Street and Fifth Avenue, 10 a.m.; Resilient City talk at Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, 6:30 p.m., 212-534-1672; Germaine Greer at BAM, Eat, Drink & Be Literary, BAMCafe, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 6:30 p.m., www.bam.org]
Friday, April 3
Saddle-up for Crudup! While the rest of us complain that rents aren’t actually falling that fast, Hollywood is, as usual, making the world a better place. Martha Plimpton and Claire Danes ex Billy Crudup perform in plays by underprivileged Hell’s Kitchen kids as part of the 52nd Street Project’s “Can Do! Plays on the Bright Side” at the Public Theater. Later, inscrutably monikered hipster musicians MSTRKRFT play Webster Hall. Bring earplugs and ibuprofen.
[Can Do! Plays on the Bright Side, Anspacher Hall, the Public Theater, 7:30 p.m., 212-642-5052; MSTRKRFT at Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, 10 p.m., 212-388-0300]
Saturday, April 4
Once the hottest Beatle and now just another man whose loony ex-wife has half his money, Paul McCartney headlines a benefit at Radio City for wackadoo filmmaker David Lynch’s charity—which promotes “Transcendental Meditation” as a pathway to world peace; he’ll be joined by Ringo, not to mention Eddie Vedder (what has he been up to since the late ’90s?), musician and nascent clothing designer Ben Harper, lovable vegan Moby and Sheryl Crow. Also appearing will be the yogic Russell Simmons, who recently helped happy hooker Ashley Alexandra Dupré with her side triangle pose (and bragged … errr … blogged about it). But the cause here is not world poverty; it’s teaching at-risk children to meditate! After all: “In moments of madness, Transcendental Meditation has helped me find moments of serenity,” proclaims Sir Paul in a press release. (Klonopin works, too.)
[Paul McCartney headlines David Lynch Foundation benefit, Radio City Music Hall, 7:30 p.m., ticketmaster.com]
