Wednesday, April 15

Allow a few billion dollars’ plunge  in collective net worth thwart a perfectly good social season?! Not the plucky dames of Park Avenue! (Who have already settled for low-cost plumpings instead of the pricey scalpel this year, in order to keep Suki and Kingsley at Horace Mann.) And so the spring socialite derby begins as usual (ready, set, pose!) at the New Yorkers for Children’s spring dinner dance, “A Fool’s Fête” (it was called that even before the bankers’ crisis!), co-chaired by tongue-twisting publicists Susan Shin, Shirin von Wulffen and Vanessa Weiner von Bismarck, alongside youngest Noel daughter, Marisa Brown, evidently going by just her married name these days. … Me-OW, here kitty kitty! …  Across town at Bloomies—the shmatte shop, not the mayor’s big-ass house—the store’s CEO Michael Gould hosts an afternoon soiree benefiting the New York University Child Study Center, co-chaired by Jennifer Creel, Katerina Alevizaki-Dracopolous (gesundheit!) and Christine Mack, who told us: “I am involved in so many charities, and this is the one that’s closest to my heart. … My son goes to Dalton, he’s in fourth grade, he’s 10. I’m sure you heard, a 17-year-old jumped out of the window recently; my son was standing right where this kid jumped. The Child Study Center was there, there were all these meetings to give us support.…” Finally, for those still waiting to hear from their accountant on whether they’ve managed to dodge taxes again this year, the Helmsley Hotel extends happy hour until midnight, hawking gin & tonics for a nostalgic $4.50, which means the coppers better gas up the paddy wagon.

[New Yorkers for Children 6th annual Spring Dinner Dance: A Fool’s Fête, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 7:30 p.m., 212-678-0231; Bloomingdale’s Lunch to benefit the N.Y.U. Child Study Center, 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, fourth floor, 12 p.m., invite only; Helmsley Hotel “Extended Happy Hour,” 212 East 42nd Street, 212-405-4300, 5 p.m. to midnight.]

 

Thursday, April 16

We don’t know what’s better, the fact that the young people are listening to a band called Throbbing Gristle or that they’re doing it at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, erstwhile house of worship. We took to the Web to learn that Throbbing Gristle (the Gristles?) explore “death, mutilation, fascism and degradation amid a thunderous cacophony of mechanical noise.” And who doesn’t want to get dolled up to go listen to that! Up the road, respectable Brooklynites—i.e., novelists and/or documentary filmmakers and/or media pundits with two hemp-and-soy-clothed children at Berkeley-Carroll who have channeled their sexual frustration into renovating their townhouse—attend BAM’s Spring Gala, which is kind of the borough’s equivalent of the New Yorkers for Children blowout. This year’s celebrates dance legend Merce Cunningham’s 90th birthday. Back in Manhattan, Wall Streeter, publisher and renaissance man (not to mention Observer founder!) Arthur Carter opens an exhibit of his sculpture and drawings at Grey Art Gallery at New York University.

[Throbbing Gristle at Brooklyn Masonic Temple, 317 Clermont Avenue, 7 p.m., 718-638-1256; BAM Spring Gala, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 7 p.m., 718-636-4100; Arthur Carter: Sculpture and Drawings, Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East, 212-998-6780]

 

Friday, April 17

Just because you can’t afford the mortgage on your multimillion-dollar apartment anymore doesn’t mean you can’t get great decorating ideas for the living room! The 37th annual Kips Bay Decorator Show House flings open its doors on East 71st Street, in a mansion owned by real estate baron and art collector Aby Rosen (on the market for $75 million, a bargain!). And for a dose of intrigue with your antique sette, this particular abode used to be the infamous Salander-O’Reilly art gallery—i.e., headquarters of the recently disgraced Madoff of art, Larry Salander! Decorators attempting to return it to respectability include Bunny Williams, beloved of Park Avenue prewar co-op owners everywhere; Charlotte Moss; and Gloria Vanderbilt, who, a press release hastens to inform, will be “re-creating her childhood bedroom from her Aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s Greenwich Village studio.” Sweet fancy Moses! Bunny, meanwhile, revealed: “I did the living room. … It’s painted a turquoise blue. I used a lot of furniture from my new furniture collection.” And for the rug, some plucky DIY resourcefulness: “I stenciled a border and painted stars on it.” The price tag for all this? “I really would have to sit down and add it up.”

[Kips Bay Decorator Show House, benefiting Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, 22 East 71st Street, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, 718-893-8600]

 

Saturday, April 18

Eco-conscious celebs (heck, it’s practically a job requirement these days!) appear at environmental consumption extravaganza Go Green Expo, held—hmmm, interesting—at the Hilton, among them yogic Mariel Hemingway, who will be signing copies of her book on healthy living, and smoldering creature-loving Brit fashion photographer Nigel Barker, of America’s Next Top Model fame, who will screen his new documentary on the Canadian seal hunt, A Sealed Fate. He told us the hunt “is happening right now as we speak, actually. … As soon as people hear about the seal hunt, they want to tune out, they can’t handle it. So we had to create a film that doesn’t actually have a lot of graphic content but tells you what’s happening. It’s more of a thriller than a murder story. … When you see an animal two weeks old beaten to unconsciousness but not death, and then they skin it …” LA-LA-LA, WE CAN’T HEAR YOU!

[Go Green Expo, the Hilton New York, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., www.gogreenexpo.com]Sunday, April 19

If your laid-off friends’ Twitters from shiny new existences in Rio or Tuscany or that elephant rescue in Thailand make you feel like a cog whose contribution is worthless, we advise you to skip the 92nd Street Y’s conversation between Jeffrey Sachs (Bono’s pal) and Muhammad Yunus, the man who, you know, invented microcredit. Maybe our closet-size kitchen and evil landlord are payback for deciding against the Peace Corps after all.

[Muhammad Yunus and Jeffrey Sachs at the 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, 4 p.m., www.92y.org]

 

Monday, April 20

Where have all the crotch-flashes gone? Celebrities have been so focused on reproducing themselves lately that they’ve forgotten to do the kooky stuff that’s fun to read about on the treadmill! Thank God we still have tasty British tabloid morsel Lily Allen, who hits Roseland Ballroom tonight. Meanwhile, over at Donna Karan’s Urban Zen Center, they’re saving the rainforests—specifically, Matt Dillon, James Gandolfini, Lauren Hutton and Ms. Karan herself, hosts of the African Rainforest Conservancy’s Artists for the African Rainforest Benefit, which honors so-called “carbon credit maverick” Dorjee Sun. Also expect comely East Villager Rachel Weisz and indefatigable Ronson clan mere Ann Dexter-Jones, whom we love even more after reading that she took out a restraining order against Lindsay Lohan, her daughter’s scorned lover, of whom she gleefully told the press: “She is a cutter!” Hey, today’s cutters are tomorrow’s plastic surgery clients!  Finally, theater types are no shrinking violets; they want their own gala! Jane Fonda, who has recently given up Lindsay Lohan movies and returned to Broadway, is honored at the National Corporate Theatre Fund’s Chairman’s Awards Gala, with an award presented by that leggy legend and 30 Rock  star, Elaine Stritch!

Finally, theater types are no shrinking violets; they want their own gala! Jane Fonda, who has recently given up Lindsay Lohan movies and returned to Broadway, is honored at the National Corporate Theatre Fund’s Chairman’s Awards Gala, with an award presented by Elaine Stritch—you know, the lady from 30 Rock!

[18th Annual Artists for the African Rainforest Benefit, Urban Zen Center, 711 Greenwich Street, 7 p.m., 212-431-5508; 2009 Chairman Awards Gala: Funding New American Theatre, Cipriani’s Pegasus, 30 Rockefeller Center, 6:30 p.m., 212-750-6895, 2009 Chairman Awards Gala: Funding New American Theatre, Cipriani’s Pegasus, 30 Rockefeller Center, 6:30 p.m., 212-750-6895]

 

Tuesday, April 21

If we had to be a socialite we’d definitely be a foodie socialite. … New York’s burgeoning class of gala-hopping gluttons, led by friend-of-Gwyneth Mario Batali, turn up for the Food Bank for New York City’s annual Can-Do Awards Dinner, honoring, oddly enough, Jon Bon Jovi. Hmm … livin on a prayer … and pigs’ feet? Whatever! Honorary chair is Spotted Pig investor Michael Stipe, and the emcee is Stanley Tucci, whom we’re guessing can appreciate a good Bolognese. …

[Food Bank for New York City’s Annual Can Do Awards Dinner, Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers, 23rd Street and the Hudson River, 6 p.m., 212-249-6188]

 

Wednesday, April 22

Speaking of food! Those who are allergic to it certainly deserve our concern and charitable dollars! (Or is it envy?) The ladies who lunch do so today at Cipriani, feting the surprisingly chic Food Allergy Initiative over tasty mozzarella di bufala. Expect towering Vogue events director Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, unfortunately named Roxanne Palin, Abbey Braverman and WABC anchor Lori Stokes. (Can someone help us develop a cheese allergy, please?)

[Food Allergy Initiative’s Spring Luncheon, Cipriani 42nd Street, 11:30 a.m., 212-207-1974]

mbryan@observer.com