The Eight-Day Week: June 3 — 10

Wednesday, June 3

Cranky Panky: New Yorkers, still recovering from the orgiastic thrill of last weekend’s surprise First Couple “date night” (why yes, our local-seasonal-biodynamic cuisine is delicious, Mr. President! Now how did you ever manage to sneak that big honking polluting vehicle of yours into Times Square …), now will be treated to a puppet show about Walt Whitman’s gayness. “I’m actually sitting here gluing my puppet theater back together,” said puppeteer Brian Selznick when we called him up to discuss his show, which “is based on these 12 secret poems that Walt Whitman wrote about his love affair with another man that I guess he eventually decided were too racy to publish as is—and he published some pretty racy stuff—so he cut up the poems, rearranged them, and hid them in Leaves of Grass.” Hey, it beats reading the Missed Connections section of Craigslist. “They remained undetected for just about a hundred years, and then a scholar discovered them and put them back together.” Mr. Selznick’s show features “what in puppet terms is called a cranky. It’s how they made it look like cars were moving on the stage a long time ago … so I made a very small cranky of two men having sex for a very long time.” In other words, honey, this ain’t the Muppets! Further uptown, where the high-society set names its sons Bingo and Topper yet still expects them to grow into heterosexuals, the Central Park Conservancy hosts its Taste of Summer gala, featuring food from Danny Meyer restaurants the Modern, Eleven Madison Park and (slurp) the Shake Shack. The committee includes Thomas Kempner (son of the late, great Nan); socialites Dawne Marie Grannum, Gillian Miniter and Susan Shin; InStyle publisher Connie Anne Phillips, and super-rich hedge fund couple Margaret Munzer Loeb and Daniel Loeb, the latter of whom apparently surprised no one when he flew a couple of comely bloggers back from Davos earlier this year on his Gulfstream jet. …

[A Night With Walt Whitman, HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Avenue, 7 p.m., 212-352-3101; Taste of Summer with the Central Park Conservancy, Naumburg Bandshell at 72nd Street, 7 p.m., 212-310-6691]

Thursday, June 4

DESE, DEMME, DOSE: Marie Claire magazine hosts a party for the RedLight Children Campaign, which fights sexual exploitation of children, at gaudy circa 2006 eatery Japonais. Actresses Lucy Liu and Susan Sarandon are expected to pose for a good cause, joined by socialite Fe Fendi, designer Liz Lange, pretentiously named blond actress Monet Mazur and Ron Livingston, the guy who played one of Carrie Bradshaw’s more memorable exes, Jack Berger, on the television version of Sex and the City, which let’s not forget started as a column in this newspaper, ahem! … Later, director Mike Nichols and Time managing editor Rick Stengel host the premiere of I Bring What I Love: Youssou Ndour, a new documentary by much-hyped young filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi about a Senegalese pop star, at the Paris Theatre. Invited guests include indefatigable party couple Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, filmmaker Jonathan Demme, photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Harvey Keitel, whom we honestly haven’t thought about since he bared his middle-aged tush in The Piano. …

[RedLight Children Campaign cocktail event at Japonais, 111 East 18th Street, 7 p.m., www.redlightchildren.org; I Bring What I Love: Youssou Ndou premiere, Paris Theatre, invite only]

Friday, June 5

Bloomberg in Brooklyn: Mayoral daughter Emma, that is—not the horsy one, the socially conscious one … Anyway, she sits on the board of the Prospect Park Alliance, kind of the Central Park Conservancy of Kings County—it even has a president named Tupper! Gettin’ there! Tonight the PPA throws La Fete Au Parc at a boathouse (splish splash), to raise cash for the playgrounds where the politically correct spawn of Park Slope take their morning constitutionals while their parents scribble away at faux-earnest confessional first-person essays about their boring marriages. Fiona Apple alert at Defcon 4 (her boyfriend Jonathan Ames’ new HBO series is filming around the borough and just cannot be escaped) .

[La Fete Au Parc, Boathouse at Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 7 p.m., 718-965-6992]

Saturday, June 6

Say, billionaires: Anyone care to hook us up with a heli ride to the ho-ho-Hamptons? We’ll wear lipstick! Today’s 17th Annual Decorators-Designers-Dealers Sale, Auctions and Gala (deep breath) benefits the Southampton Fresh Air Home—a camp for physically challenged children, not a new prefab eco-dwelling on the water!—and is expected to attract well-married socialites like Charlotte Assaf, wife of restaurateur Vittorio; Sarah Senbahar, wife of real estate developer Izak; and Samantha Boardman Rosen, wife of developer Aby and also a Harvard grad, fashion plate and practicing shrink. That’ll be five cents, please!

[D-D-D Sale, 36 Barkers Island Road, Southampton, 5 p.m., www.sfah.org]

Sunday, June 7

the moose is loose: Failed va-va-va-veep candidate Sarah Palin visits Long Island today to accept an award, we’re not sure for precisely what, at the Independent Group Home Living Foundation’s 30th Anniversary Gala, and the hockey moms go wild. … Tonight is also the Tonys broadcast, live from Radio City, with appearances by Nicole Kidman (women love her, men don’t get it), Anne Hathaway (men love her, women think she’s annoying), Carrie Fisher, Jane Fonda, James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Kristin Chenoweth, Lucie Arnaz, Will Ferrell, Oliver Platt, John Stamos and Kevin Spacey. Doogie Howser hosts!

[Independent Group Home Living Foundation’s 30th Anniversary Gala, Flowerfield, St. James, Long Island, 5 p.m., 631-878-8900; Tony Awards, CBS, 8 p.m.]

Monday, June 8

Ring my LaBelle: The Apollo Theater’s 75th Anniversary Gala honors R&B greats Patti LaBelle and Quincy Jones, plus Bill Cosby and wife Camille. Your presenters: dreamboat Oscar winner Jamie Foxx and Mariah Carey, who no matter what the haters say can still hit a high note! Said Apollo historian and tour guide Billy Mitchell: “I am so proud. You know, I started coming to this theater as a little kid, running errands for the performers, that was in the ’60s. I have held practically every position in the theater. … Imagine a theater that originally wouldn’t let African-Americans in the door now celebrating a show that was created by an African-American.” (Amateur Night, a rousing proto–American Idol, was first hosted by Ralph Cooper in 1934.) Mr. Mitchell went on: “I saw a 9-year old Michael Jackson in 1969. … He was with his brothers, at the time the group was called the Jackson Brothers. Later on that year I’m at home listening to the radio and the announcer says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have this brand-new group on the Motown label, take a listen to this song.’ It was ‘A, B, C, easy as one-two-three.’ … I was here when Lauryn Hill did Amateur Night, when the rapper Fat Joe did Amateur Night … People come to the Apollo because the audience is brutally honest. They’ll tell you whether you have it or not. The reason that they boo is not because they’re rude or being mean; it’s just telling you that you do not have what it takes right now!” Further downtown, a benefit for the Hole in the Wall Camps, which were founded by the late actor Paul Newman for seriously ill youth, is hosted by his widow, Joanne Woodward, and honorary chairs Robert Redford and Julia Roberts; guests include Jerry Seinfeld, Harry Connick Jr., cellist Yo-Yo Ma and near-septuagenarian Art Garfunkel! The nonstop action continues at a celebrity-packed benefit for the American Institute for Stuttering, which last year honored former stutterer and newly minted Vice President Joe Biden but this year settles for vampy Emily Blunt of The Devil Wears Prada. Media personalities in attendance include Tina Brown’s very own daily beast, Sir Harold Evans; actor Sam Waterston; and Ba-ba-ba-baba Wawa!

[Apollo Theater’s 75th Anniversary Gala, 253 West 125th Street, 6:30 p.m., 800-618-3444; A Celebration of Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Camps, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, 7 p.m., 212-627-0678; American Institute for Stuttering benefit, Tribeca Rooftop, 2 Desbrosses Street, 6:30 p.m., www.stutteringtreatment.org]

Tuesday, June 9

Barash tacks: A talk at 92YTribeca, which we’ve nicknamed Skipper since it’s sort of the feisty younger version of its staid uptown sister, explores why we females persist in hating on our gorgeous and popular sister girlfriends. It’s titled “Tripping the Prom Queen” and hosted by gender expert Susan Shapiro Barash.

[Taboo Talks: Tripping the Prom Queen, 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson Street, noon, www.92ytribeca.org/daytime]

Wednesday, June 10

Lincoln lust? Up at the freshly minted fashion mecca that is Lincoln Center, a lusty Italian film series is under way, featuring fare like The Man Who Loves (L’uomo che ama), about a pharmacist in Turin who envies the love life of his gay younger brother. … Bring your favorite humping gay Muppet!

[The Man Who Loves, Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, 8 p.m., www.filmlinc.com]

mbryan@observer.com