August 10 - August 17th

Wednesday 10th Perhaps it’s August that’s the cruelest month, breeding contempt out of asphalt and mixing sweat with low-grade irritation—because our fellow New Yorkers seem a bit squiggy these days, and we find ourselves in a rage when encountering anyone the least bit chipper (double that for up-talkers). Tonight, The New York Times’ Bob Morris takes his “savage little cabaret” to the Cutting Room for a series of Wednesday shows in the barren August landscape. “This is sort of my attempt at putting social commentary to music,” said Mr. Morris, who will be accompanied on piano by HarperCollins editor Jonathan Burnham. “I have a song called ‘Failure: The New Success,’” he said. “Can I get pretentious with you for a second? The point of drama is catharsis, and we all need a good purge over the Hamptons.” We wondered what advice he might have for those who insist on getting on the Jitney. “Never make a left turn onto the Montauk Highway. And watch out for angry mothers with Pilates mats driving S.U.V.’s.” O.K.! You know how a lot of guys think they know a lot about music (you can always find them outside of Max Fish, smoking and talking about Modest Mouse)? Here’s a man who actually knows that of which he speaks: Rolling Stone scribe Anthony DeCurtis comes to the Barnes & Noble on Eighth Street (conveniently located across from Gray’s Papaya; we’ll take two wieners with the works, Mrs. Roosevelt, and pronto!), to read and sign his new book, In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work. He’s interviewed Johnny Cash, Bono, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and Woody Allen, among others. “I had a great talk with Martin Scorsese about being Italian and growing up in the city,” said Mr. DeCurtis, who grew up in the swinging West Village. Speaking of swinging, ever see a book and wish it had come out a decade ago? Sandra L. Brown signs copies of How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved. “Everyone asks, ‘Where were you 20 years ago?’” laughed Ms. Brown, whose book outlines the eight types of dangerous men out there: the Permanent Clinger, the Parental Seeker, the Emotionally Unavailable, the Mentally Ill, the Addicted, the Hidden Life and the Emotional Predator. (Where’s the box you check for “All of the Above”?) “Most of these are pathological disorders,” she said. “The longer women date pathological men, the more they’re trained to normalize abnormal behavior. If you watch Jerry Springer every day, you start to believe that’s normal. Our culture makes it look normal and cool to date bad boys. Look at Whitney Houston.” We’d rather not! [ The Bob Morris Show, the Cutting Room, 19 West 24th Street, 9:30 p.m., www.thecuttingroom.com; Anthony DeCurtis, Barnes & Noble, 396 Avenue of the Americas, 7 p.m., 212-674-8780; Dr. Sandra Brown, How to Spot a Dangerous an, Aug. 10, Barnes & Noble, 289 Broadway, 7:30 p.m.]

Thursday 11th We [Heart] synergy! If you happen to be hanging out in midtown this evening (and hell, why wouldn’t you?), Tarte Cosmetics, that sassy makeup brand with disgustingly cute names for things (Kitten Heel blush! Birth of Venus eyeliner!), teams up with— wait for it— Tart author Jodi Gehrman for a little makeover party/book-signing combo at the pretty AVA penthouse lounge. Ms. Gehrman’s beach-book read will be free, but the “Tart cocktails” will cost you six bucks. Next! If you happen to be up by the Carnegie Abbey Club near Newport, R.I., our favorite former President, William Jefferson Clinton, will be giving a speech. Bring hot wings and a floozy (this time, one who won’t blab!) for Bill.

[Tarte Cosmetics and Tart signing, AVA Lounge, 210 West 55th Street, 6 to 9 p.m., www.sheckys.com/summerchill/vol5.htm; Bill Clinton, Carnegie Abbey Club, Portsmouth, R.I., 8 p.m., by invitation only.]

Friday 12th Urban cowboy: Good Morning America’s Diane and Charlie pretend to look thrilled at the performance of country star Keith Urban. Mr. Urban is rumored to be having some sort of flirtation with the luminous Nicole Kidman (and he’s apparently friends with Renée Zellweger’s country cutie, Kenny Chesney—isn’t Hollywood cute?). Elsewhere, the Fringe Festival rolls back into our swampy town through Aug. 28. “Today is really about getting into the spirit of the festival,” said producing artistic director Elena K. Holy, who added that she was unable to pick a favorite from the 800-plus submissions that the festival’s organizers received. “ Everyone who is in the festival this year, we sort of fell in love with.” Today the festival opens with FringeFAIR at Washington Square Park, where Mnemosyne, the “mother of all Greek Muses,” will take the form of a giant puppet and dance over the crowd as all the children in attendance wet themselves. And finally, tonight Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo opens to the universal question: Why?

[Keith Urban, Good Morning America concert, Bryant Park, Upper Terrace, 7 a.m., www.bryantpark.org; FringeFAIR, Washington Square Park, Teen Plaza (by the fountain), noon to 4 p.m., www.fringenyc.org; Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, for theaters and showtimes, www.moviefone.com.]

Saturday 13th Stand in the spume of the Lincoln Center fountain and enjoy the music of the Marcia Ball Blues Band (reverse those names for a chuckle!) and New Orleans’ Dr. John (is that like Dr. Teeth from The Muppet Show?). Meanwhile, one of the more buzzed-about Fringe shows premieres today: The Miss Education of Jenna Bush, described as a satire on the First Daughter’s career choice of teaching, which stars Melissa Rauch, one of those “funny” talking heads on VH1. And for all those Williamsburg hipsters who somehow also seem to have family houses in the Hamptons, the clothing maker Von Dutch throws a party at Cain at Cabana in Southampton. Expect gauzy tops and ankle bracelets, and we’ll warn you again to move quickly if you hear the tell-tale screech of S.U.V. tires.

[Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, 70 Lincoln Plaza, 7:30 p.m., www.lincolncenter.org; The Miss Education of Jenna Bush, the Village Theater, 7:30 p.m., www.fringenyc.org; Von Dutch party at Cain at Cabana, 281 County Road 39, Southampton, 631-287-9888.]

Sunday 14th Sunday in New York in August …. There’s window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, but we find it hard to look at those calfskin boots and cashmere sweaters while sweating like a showgirl. Or, if you like violence, for some reason the nice folks at Makor have organized a paintball match (in Queens?!), apparently not realizing it’s a sport for scary rednecks who eat squirrels and rage-filled investment bankers. Or tonight you can watch the penultimate episode of Six Feet Under, which is too bad considering we’ve just recently become weirdly obsessive about it. However, it does make us wonder what HBO is going to do for our Sunday nights in the future (we’re not feeling so good about that new nudie Rome series—PBS and Derek Jacobi already did it all, and beautifully, back in the 1970’s with I, Claudius).

[Paintball, 11 a.m., www.92sty.com; Six Feet Under, 9 p.m., HBO.]

Monday 15th If your Hamptons weekend squeaked into Monday, here’s a swell event that involves betrayal, but without anyone named Hilton, Lohan, Richie or Hearst! Mary Shelley: Scenes from a Life—A Chamber Opera in Concert will be at the Montauk Library tonight, with music and singing about the poet Percy Shelley, his wife Mary (who would go on to write Frankenstein), Lord Byron and his mistress Claire ( Mary’s sister), and that summer they spent in a villa on Lake Geneva. Racy! (And you can bet they didn’t wax their privates back then, Mrs. Roosevelt!) Back here in moody Manhattan-land, if you want to go to the movies, you can plunk down and acquire a nice sweaty sheen in Bryant Park for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Or you can choose air-conditioning with the 1947 film Living in a Big Way, starring the one and only Gene Kelly, at MoMA. He stars as a G.I. who returns from the war only to discover that his war bride is an heiress ( hisss … ) eager to divorce him. We’re guessing the inevitable remake will star Justin Timberlake, with Jessica Simpson in Marie McDonald’s shoes.

[ Mary Shelley: Scenes from a Life, the Montauk Library Meeting Room, 871 Montauk Highway, 7 p.m., 631-668-3377; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Bryant Park, sundown, www.bryantpark.org; Living in a Big Way, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 6 p.m., www.moma.org.]

Tuesday 16th Leavin’, on an F train: We’re guessing the guy who likes to sing “ You Are My Sunshine” isn’t involved in this, but hey, you never know what you’re going to get at Songs from the Underground: NYC Subway, a launch party to celebrate a compilation of “N.Y.C. subway performers who regularly rock the world of commuters” ( uhhhhhh). Turns out there are only four artists on the CD, which is sort of weird considering how often one steps over someone playing the Godfather theme on violin, but it does include Krystle Warren, the “vocal harmonies” of Kaiku (we don’t know either), Theo Eastwind (apparently sounds like the late Nick Drake) and Spokinn Movement (uh-oh). We’re guessing that folks at the party will join in the always-fun game of “Guess which train is the safest from a terrorist attack?” (We’re going with J-M-Z!) Meanwhile, one of the more fringy Fringe shows trips the light fantastic tonight; Cynthia Silver’s Bridezillas Strikes Back! Most everyone has seen that Bridezilla television show, right?—the one that follows brides around and illuminates for the world the strange chemical imbalance that causes them to act bananas once they get a rock on their finger. Ms. Silver was in the original series and claims to have been snookered by producers (who wisely didn’t inform the bride-to-be of the true title of the show— naughty!).

[ Songs from the Underground: NYC Subway, Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, 9:30 p.m., 212-539-8500; Bridezilla Strikes Back!, Flea Theater, 41 White Street, 9 p.m., www.fringenyc.org.]

Wednesday 17th Wacky Willysburg! The nonprofit group Ladyfest*East, which supports women in the arts (wait, we thought that’s what Scores did … ), is holding a “Chop Shop” at the Beehive Salon. The salon will be offering a “refreshing rock star ’do” (uh-oh) for 20 bucks, and the salon will donate the fee to the group. All of this is to support a “multidisciplinary women’s arts festival” which is being scheduled for October. Expect lots of those wild do-me feminists from the 90’s, who these days are looking rather “done.”

[Chop Shop for Ladyfest*East, Union Pool, 484 Union Avenue, www.ladyfesteast.org.]