Monday, October 27

Whip out your pitch pipe! Good-natured GQ editor Mickey Rapkin is reading, or rather, singing, from his new book Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory, along with Kate Torgovnick, author of Cheer!, which is about college cheerleaders. It sure is getting perky around here! “I’m reuniting with my old a cappella group, Cayuga’s Waiters,” said Mr. Rapkin, who attended that depressing Ivy League college up north with the big gorge. “I should mention we are Cornell’s oldest all-male a cappella group. We have not sang together with any measure of sobriety since the late ’90s.” How’s the book selling? “How shall I say this? Not well,” Mr. Rapkin said. “Rolling Stone liked my book. So did the New York Post and USA Today. … But press does not necessarily translate into sales.” Still: “I sent a copy of my book to Anne Hathaway—an a cappella alum—hoping she’d get photographed holding it, and that Us Weekly would run that photo.” If not, there’s always Animal Fair, edited by the Janice Min of pet journalism: Wendy Diamond. Tonight she hosts a Halloween pet costume party attended by Coyote Ugly actress Piper Perabo and Howard Stern’s lady, Beth Ostrosky. “I’m not one of these people who dresses my dog up every day. I do it for a reason,” Ms. Diamond said. In this case: “to celebrate animal rescue …” Anything else? “And to give a chance for people who love to dress their dogs up to get to do that. … I heard that someone’s going to dress up as Sarah Palin and her dog as a pig!” Soo-ey! “Every type of person comes to this. It’s just hysterical. You can’t make this stuff up.” No ma’m!

[Pitch Perfect reading, Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby Street, 7 p.m., 212-334-3324; Animal Fair magazine’s Halloween Pet Costume Party, Mansion Nightclub, 530 West 28th Street, 7 p.m., 212-752-4842]

mbryan@observer.com