Too bad Valentine’s Day falls on a Saturday, denying us the pleasure of witnessing our smug married coworkers being downgraded from those $300 bamboo-and-caviar arrangements from Takashimaya they got last year! (Meanwhile, how many times do we have to tell our unwashed skinny musician that flaccid deli flowers do not count? Speaking of flaccid, fella …) Those trying to avert thoughts of this fast-approaching capitalist clusterhump may want to think about the solar system! Specifically Pluto, the cute planet, which, a few years ago when we weren’t paying attention, was apparently downgraded from planet to icy body! “I was kind of in the middle of the controversy over the demotion of Pluto in 2001, when The New York Times broke a page-one story about our exhibits here at the planetarium,” said Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist badass at the American Museum of Natural History, who wrote a book about the brouhaha and called it The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet, which he will discuss tonight at the Hayden Planetarium. “I started getting hate mail,” after the Times article was published, he said. “Over the years I’d collected all this correspondence and I thought, ‘Well, I’ve gotta do something about it. …” And what became of the former planet’s defenders? “Ultimately, a vote was taken by the international astronomical community, should Pluto be retained as a planet or not, and it was voted to become a dwarf planet,” said Mr. Tyson. “You can ask, Why did Americans react so forcefully, so emotionally, with such verve over this decision? Because in Europe they really didn’t care. And the best I can figure, just blame it on the dog.” Or the French.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson addresses Pluto, American Museum of Natural History, Hayden Planetarium Space Theater, Central Park West at 79th Street, 7 p.m., www.amnh.org]

mbryan@observer.com

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