The Eight-Day Week

You know this can’t end well for the dog: Michelle Williams’ new film is about a broke young woman driving cross-country with her dog; it’s called Wendy and Lucy, and the U.S. premiere is at that cutting-edge house of hipster celluloid, Film Forum. Four Christmases suddenly ain’t lookin’ so bad.

[Wendy and Lucy at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, 212-727-8110]

mbryan@observer.com

“I ran the London Gay Men’s chorus for five years,” said Charlie Beale, artistic director of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, tonight performing its Holiday Spectacular at Carnegie Hall. “Which is why it’s so interesting for me—we did the marriage equality debate in London when I was there; now it feels like old hat. It’s not an issue in the straight population at all, and so to come here and find I’m doing it all again is … interesting.” Mr. Beale went on to explain that his group is “always doing outreach work with organizations in New York City; for example, an organization called Village Cares, we do a lot of singing for.  read more »

Balls for allergies! It’s that time again: the Annual Food Allergy Ball at the Waldorf! Honorees include Aquavit chef Marcus Samuelsson, while “dinner chairs” and “vice chairs” (just hanging on after selling off the art and bling, one assumes) include smoldering environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., famous wealthies David and Julia Koch, and Vogue-ette Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, all sworn enemies of peanuts. The black-tie crowd will be treated to a performance by Kelli O’Hara from South Pacific. Later, exotically named BAMcinematek, the film arm of BAM—mecca for the arty intellectuals and people who are otherwise motivated to actually go to stuff—kicks off the inevitable Paul Newman Tribute film series, honoring “his transfixing blue eyes and effortless charm.” (Oh, that men like this actually existed in Brooklyn …)

[Food Allergy Ball, Waldorf Astoria, 7 p.m., 212-627-1000; Paul Newman Tribute, Dec. 8 through Dec.11, www.bam.org for schedule]

mbryan@observer.com

Ubiquitous Bobohead Garrison Keillor kicks off his weekly December residency at Feinstein’s with a show called “Man in Tux in Red Shoes With Piano,” featuring “romantic tunes by Irving, Cole, Elvis, and others, interspersed with stories, thoughts and commentary by one of America’s most celebrated endearing storytellers,” according to an overeager press release. Pricey, nostalgic uptown dinner theater lives on!

[Garrison Keillor at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, 540 Park Avenue, 8:30 p.m., 212-339-4095]

mbryan@observer.com

Gong show Galapagos! The Galapagos Art Space in Dumbo (home to more than upwardly mobile procreative types these days, we hear!) hosts the Gong for Good Show, wherein intoxicated Brooklynites perform slapdash variety acts for the purpose of sending Christmas to an orphanage in Guatemala. “I didn’t want them to have to cut corners with their Christmas fiesta,” said altruistic organizer and Greenpoint denizen Julianne Schrader. “I started doing this as a fund-raiser because I didn’t want to be investing such effort into just throwing a party. I figured, ‘Why not Gong for Good? People seem into it.’” She added that this year’s acts include “a Janis Joplin Tribute Act named Pearl, a hula hoop act, a sketch comedy skit called Santa Baby, a traditional Indian dance and who the hell knows what else we’ll drum up.  read more »

New Yorker writer eschews big weird hair trend in favor of subdued product-tie in! Ben Greenman and his book, Correspondences, are waltzed around the room by Jack Spade, maker of high-end men’s messenger bags. (The good Mr. Greenman wrote text to adorn the nifty passport covers sold by Mr. Spade.) Is your head spinning yet? “Not that I don’t buy things, but I’m not a retail-minded person in that way,” said Mr. Greenman, who is responsible for the Goings On About Town section of David Remnick’s unstoppable rag. “If you gave me a list of three designers or stores, I could probably say, ‘Oh yeah, I walked by that once.  read more »

“My favorite farm animal is a pig because they are such intelligent and emotional animals,” said ’80s legend and 1998 lesbian crush object (High Art) Ally Sheedy the other day via email, apropos of the Farm Sanctuary “Winter Wonderland for the Animals” event she’s attending tonight at the Art Directors Club with other famous lettuce chompers, like fellow neon-decade heartthrob Corey Feldman, Legally Blonde acting genius Jennifer Coolidge, hip addict and girl-about-town Tatum O’Neal, and a blond DJ-for-our-time who calls herself Princess Superstar. “I became a vegetarian because of love for animals and then committed to being vegan because of all the education on factory farming I received from Farm Sanctuary,”  read more »

Does this pesky recession mean we have to endure an already-holiday-party-challenged month of December without even the usual haul of reindeer cookies and pecan truffles and mail-order pears from “business associates” popping up on our office giveaway table to medicate mid-afternoon existential ennui? Why get out of bed at all, we ask?! A group of people not yet afflicted with recessionitis (whose symptoms include atoning for accidental net-a-porter.com splurges with permanent bagel fast) celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, among them La Oprah, the honorary chair (who could’ve saved Citigroup herself if she’d felt so inclined!), and American Express’s Kenneth Chenault, a man rich off our $50 credit card late fees! Also there: Manhattan gazillionaires (that sounds so retro!) Jerry Speyer and Joan and Sandy Weill (who escaped the aforementioned Citigroup back when it was still paying seven figures).  read more »

For Christmas this year all the right people want a photo of themselves with an international charity logo in the background! Tonight, UNICEF obliges with a Snowflake Ball honoring lovely confection Lucy Liu. Expect the socialite contingent to be out in full force as junior co-chairs include omnipresent socialite Maggie Betts (daughter of developer and Bush ally Roland) and lame-duck presidential daughter Barbara Bush (embarking on a new career in fund-raising to keep the flow of town cars steady post-Secret Service!), and the gala committee includes uptown socialites Muffie Potter Aston, Cynthia Lufkin, Eleanora Kennedy and Gillian Miniter. Has that damned ball dropped in Times Square yet?

[UNICEF Snowflake Ball, Cipriani 42nd Street, 6:30 p.m., www.snowflake.unicefusa.org]

mbryan@observer.com

“I’ll make fun of Mira Nair, but only up to a point,” said Daily Show correspondent and Mumbai native Aasif Mandvi, calling to discuss his gig hosting the Gotham Independent Film Awards.“I’m the only Indian actor that she still doesn’t know is Indian,” continued Mr. Mandvi of Ms. Nair, a presenter at the awards. “’Cause she’s never hired me. So obviously she must not know I’m Indian. I’m excited to let her know I’m of the tribe!” Presenters (and comic fodder) include Mickey Rourke, who has just been getting progressively stranger since 9 ½ Weeks; scruffy divorcee Ethan Hawke; perky Amy Adams  read more »

Let the holiday party begin! Oh wait … News Corp., Hearst, Viacom, ABC News and Newsweek have already canceled holiday shindigs (and we’ve noticed our Big Cheese editor has been particularly slow to bring in his special homemade Yorkshire pudding!), and Goldman Sachs execs—well, let’s just say they’re too busy crying over those chivalrously relinquished bonuses (what, you didn’t get the press release?) to care about pedestrian traditions like holiday cookies—but the surest sign of the apocalypse around here is S. I. Newhouse canceling on the Four Seasons. What will the media columnists write about for December? At least there’s some good to come out of this: In honor of today’s  read more »

Obama’s Power Puffs: Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign policy authoress and all-around badass who was forced to resign her post on the Obama campaign after calling Hillary Clinton a “monster” (a “monster” who’s about to take her job at the State Department, that is!), lands at the 92nd Street Y. What the heck, ask her to clarify the “monster” remark.

[Samantha Power at 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street, 7:30 p.m., www.92y.org]

mbryan@observer.com

Just two more days of eating cheese out of your parents’ fridge and arguing with your sister until you can—phew—go back to the office! Until then, how about some comedy to pass the time. (It’s pretty much that or Reese Witherspoon vehicle Four Christmases!) Letterman writer and Emmy winner Ted Greenberg stages The Complete Performer at the Huron Club, billing it as “A One-Man Comedy Show With Balls” (hot!) and even offering to give audience members a ride home afterward. (Maybe this would solve Broadway’s woes.…) Later, catch famed Observer cover caricaturist Philip Burke’s exhibit, Face Nation, at Symbolic Gallery (we’re saving up for a bust of Obama for our sitting room).

[Ted Greenberg’s The Complete Performer, Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, 10:30 p.m., 212-691-1555; Philip Burke at Symbolic Gallery, the Fuller Building, fifth Floor, 595 Madison Avenue, 702-507-5263]

mbryan@observer.com

Ready, set, shop! Oh, wait … The Cutting Room fills the gaping culture void around here with Pape Mbaye, an outed gay Senegalese refugee making his American debut, having fled Africa for Harlem after he was photographed at a gay wedding party and subsequently endured mob attacks. (Gay wedding party, mob attacks: This is all sounding awfully familiar!)

[Pape Mbaye at the Cutting Room, 19 West 24th Street, 212-352-3103]

mbryan@observer.com

Baste the tofurkey! and brace for invasive questions about when they can expect grandchildren or maybe you’re gay is that it, is that it? They would like to know, please, because after all you could still have kids, look at Rosie? But first! Search furtively for high-school pot stash; how else to watch Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? Meredith Vieira, Al Roker and strangely seductive square Matt Lauer host the 82nd incarnation of our mother’s favorite televised event of the year, featuring new floats like Horton the Elephant and Buzz Lightyear (again, if we’d just managed to procreate, we’d know.…) and the usual lineup of cheerful C-listers in fuzzy hats looking to resuscitate sagging careers: songstress Ashanti, country singer Trace Adkins (sample tune: Honky Tonk Badonkadonk), whichever coifed dope is Miss U.  read more »

Feeling like a turkey because you’re going broke and somehow you just don’t care anymore and your shrink keeps telling you some crap about whenever one door closes another one opens? Two choices today, possums: Endure enervating hours of travel in close proximity to pie-bearing New Yorkers or stop by Vanity Fair photographer Mark Seliger’s 401 Projects Gallery in the West Village for an exhibit, “A Procession of Them: The Plight of the Mentally Disabled,” featuring photographs by former Life and National Geographic photographer Eugene Richards of forgotten subjects in mental institutions in Mexico, Argentina, Armenia, Hungary, Paraguay and Kosovo. Suddenly yams with Aunt Agnes doesn’t sound so bad, now, does it?

[A Procession of Them: The Plight of the Mentally Disabled, 401 Projects, 401 West Street, www.401projects.com]

mbryan@observer.com

Double-check your Klonopin stash, brave stultifying airport traffic en route to suburb far, far away for rendezvous with stocked fridge and too-small college sorority sweatpants. Alternatively, bask in city’s eerie, deflated emptiness, when restaurant reservations are finally easy to come by and everything’s on sale. Or! For those with the energy, ageless rock legend Tina Turner appears at the Prudential Center in Newark—and today’s her 69th birthday! Somebody bring this nice lady a slice of cake! If you must stay home, then Netflix Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

[Tina Turner at the Prudential Center, Newark, 7:30 p.m., www.ticketmaster.com]

mbryan@observer.com

Obama, meet Abe! Harold Holzer, co-chairman of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and author of Lincoln, President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-61, turns up at the New York Historical Society to discuss with Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter the relevance of Abe Lincoln’s president-elect period to Barack Obama’s. (Perhaps they can touch on where we can apply for a job?) “Aside from Adams-Jefferson—which was just personal—aside from that one, Buchanan-Lincoln, Hoover-Roosevelt and Bush-Obama are the most fraught transitions in history,” said Mr. Holzer when we called him up. But Mr. Obama is so far doing just fine: “He’s been reading some Lincoln; I don’t know if it’s mine,” said Mr.  read more »

Following Barneys’ unveiling—  WHOOSH!—of Simon Doonan’s brilliantly whimsical hippie-chic tableau, Saks and Bergdorf’s unveil their holiday windows, featuring a more traditional “Snowflake Spectacular” lit by Tory Burch (Saks) and fully clothed, non-titillating  “Calendar Girls” theme (Bergdorf’s). Later, what will avant-garde theater types carry on about now that the election’s over? Well, the election, of course! The latest theatrical interpretation of La Clinton, HILLARY: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending, opens at the Living Theater on the Lower East Side. “The premise is that fate is much more determining of characters than their own choices are,” said Susan Bernfield, the artistic director of New Georges, the theater company responsible.  read more »

Our five-day mashed potato binge is on the horizon—how to pass the time? How about by watching acclaimed indie films not yet picked up for distribution—that’s how cutting edge we are—at MoMA, part of a series called “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You!” Our personal favorite, Afterschool, advertises itself as “a haunting portrait of a student at an elite New England prep school who, preoccupied with surfing the Internet for pornographic and violent imagery, inadvertently videotapes the fatal drug overdose of the school’s popular ‘It’ girls.” Oh, boy.

[Afterschool, MoMA, 11 West 53rd Street, 5:30 p.m., www.moma.org]

mbryan@observer.com

Saarsgard’s shlong? The last time you saw it was in the movie Kinsey, about that wild and randy mid-century sex researcher, played by Liam Neeson. Now you can have a gander at an exhibition called “Kinsey’s Women” at—where else!—the Wild Project Gallery, featuring photos of women in various stages of undress and orgasm. (We have a feeling this will just make us feel worse.)

[Kinsey’s Women, closing today, Wild Project Gallery, 195 East Third Street, 212-228-1195]

mbryan@observer.com

Sharpton image: Celebrity photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and former Times movie critic Elvis Mitchell open “The Black List Project” at the Brooklyn Museum, featuring the visages of prominent African-Americans such as Toni Morrison, Chris Rock, Serena Williams, Colin Powell, P. Diddy, Al Sharpton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and a series of filmed interviews by Mr. Mitchell. Later, the aggressively hip new 92nd Street Y Tribeca screens Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, a 1981 celluloid gem featuring Laura Dern and a brutally hot Diane Lane as members of a punk-era girl band called the Fabulous Stains—complete with pink eye shadow and mullets. (Look for it on runways come Fashion Week!) Bring a mop.

[The Black List Project, Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, www.brooklynmuseum.org; Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, 92nd Street Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, midnight, www.92y.org ]

mbryan@observer.com

>A royal flush? One wouldn’t think that now is the ideal time to stage an Inaugural Royal Gala at the Waldorf, but that’s exactly what those can-do youth drug preventionists at the Mentor Foundation are doing, inviting upwardly mobile Hollywood types to a mixer with some authentic, landed European royals (who are perhaps under the impression that our film industry still produces classy dames such as Grace Kelly?). The hosts are Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden, the Mentor Foundation’s founder, and Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of VH-1’s brilliantly trashy Celebrity Rehab; expected attendees include Terrence Howard, indefatigable Russell Simmons, Brittany Snow—some sort of actress, we think?—opera singer Renee Fleming and, of course, more titled folk: His Royal Highness Prince Turki bin Adbul Aziz Al Saud (That’s Prince Turki to you!), Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, and—weird—Dr.  read more »