September | October | November

October

1 Discover a world beyond Raffi: Ralph Covert, a former member of the Bad Examples, brings tater-tot rock to Symphony Space to kick off the weekly “Just Kidding!” series.

2 Watch Mia Farrow conk out, playing a comatose, eerily Schiavo-like mother in Fran’s Bed at Playwrights Horizons. (See page 66 for details.) Or choose between the dual—and dueling—Across the Narrows concerts on Staten and Coney Islands: Oasis, Jet, and the Doves headline the former, with Beck, Belle & Sebastian, and the Polyphonic Spree at the latter.

3 Laugh till it hurts. Then keep laughing: The New York City Underground Comedy Festival fills 75 venues with over 200 shows.

4 Crack open a fresh copy of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, released today; it’s her memoir of the emotional spiral she endured after her husband’s death and her daughter’s grave illness.

The Squid and the Whale opens.   (Photo: Courtesy of Symphony Space)

5 The New York Botanical Garden brings Japanese-style foliage to the Bronx with “Momijigari: The Japanese Autumn Garden,” open now through November 17. And The Squid and the Whale, the Park Slopiest movie of the year, opens tonight.

6 Je me souviens! Put the stillborn lockout season behind you as pro hockey returns to the Garden, when the Rangers face off against Montreal.

7 Quit stalling and get to the Met, pronto: Renée Fleming won’t sing the title role in Manon again until April.

8 Take a break from the New York hustle to watch someone else get frenetic, as Turkish dancers the Whirling Dervishes perform at Town Hall.

9 John Lennon’s 65th birthday. Skip Broadway’s weak tribute in favor of some new music he probably would’ve liked better: Fiona Apple’s long-delayed CD, Extraordinary Machine.

10 The Metropolitan is open on Columbus Day, so visit the brand-new “Prague, The Crown of Bohemia” show (see page 96). After dinner, hit the 92nd Street Y for a sneak preview of the Israeli hit film Ushpizin, about a Hasidic couple who believe that God is testing them when they’re visited by escaped convicts.

11 The BAM Next Wave Festival mounts a sure-to-be-sumptuous ballet version of the 1991 film Raise the Red Lantern, also directed by the filmmaker, Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers).

12 Kick back to Alicia Keys’s newly released MTV Unplugged. Can you think of a pop singer better suited to the acoustic treatment?

13 The new musical See What I Wanna See debuts at Joe’s Pub, with a crackerjack cast (Wicked’s Idina Menzel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s Marc Kudisch) and a thrilling hook (a Central Park murder, a priest, a thief, and a miracle).

14 U2 plays its fifth and final show at the Garden before decamping for Philadelphia; if you haven’t bought tickets by now, best try for the two return gigs on November 21 and 22.

15 Chase down Megumi Akiyoshi’s self-contained art gallery prowling the streets of Brooklyn, part of the weekend-long DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival.

16 Address your nightmares—or inspire some new ones—at MoMA’s “SAFE: Design Takes on Risk,” devoted to 300 products that “address the spectrum of human fears and worries.” Yikes.

17 The Swedish jazz vocalists the Real Group bring their catchy act to Symphony Space, performing for an audience of unreformed a cappella singers and wayward Abba fans. Warning: You will be humming to yourself for a week.

18 The Batman boxed set, The Bruce Lee Ultimate DVD Collection, and Al Pacino’s DVD anthology all arrive in video stores, enthusiastically muscling the chick flicks off the shelves.

19 The glorious Roman mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli storms Carnegie Hall to continue her crusade to revive early opera with a recital of Handel, Scarlatti, and Caldara.

20 Jeté to ABT, which takes a break from its classical repertoire to present the world premiere of a new work by Peter Quanz, set to Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 5.

21 A hundred years’ worth of splashy graphics—some modestly priced, some stratospheric—come together at the International Vintage Poster Fair, all weekend at the Metropolitan Pavilion.

22 Last night Tolstoy changed my life: Renowned actors, authors, and critics like John Lithgow and Margo Jefferson read and discuss various life-altering tomes at “The Book That Changed My Life Marathon,” hosted by the New York Public Library and Symphony Space.

23 The great griot singer Youssou N’Dour accompanies a dream team of Senegalese crooners in “Night Sky in Sine Saloum,” at Zankel Hall. And Latinologues, a collection of short monologues in the John Leguizamo vein—directed by Cheech Marin!—opens on Broadway.

24 Linger at the Museum of the City of New York over “New York Changing,” Douglas Levere’s careful rephotographings of Berenice Abbott’s iconic thirties images of a New York in flux.

25 The musical version of The Color Purple, with songs but no Oprah, goes into previews on Broadway.

26 Itzhak Perlman performs at Avery Fisher Hall tonight, playing Mozart, Schubert, and Tchaikovsky—but you won’t need to go, since you smartly played hooky and went to the morning rehearsal for just $15.

27 Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick further stake their claim as this generation’s Abbott and Costello, as Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple opens at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

28 Indulge your inner child with Ping Chong’s Chinese puppetry at the New Victory Theater, or head to Astoria for the Gumby exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image. Then, in the evening, indulge your inner gore-hound with MMI’s screening of the bloody Korean revenge flick Oldboy.

29 It’s Family Day at the Whitney, which means you and your brood can enjoy, at no cost, the interactive tours and live jazz, a kid-friendly main exhibit—“Oscar Bluemner: A Passion for Color”—and, perhaps, the chance for your children to finally explain conceptual art to you.

30 The very last day this year to chat up a potential mate atop the Met: “Sol LeWitt on the Roof: Splotches, Whirls, and Twirls” closes.

31Skip the drunken mess that is the Halloween Parade, and cringe and cackle your way through a preview of Stephen Sondheim’s genuinely ghoulish Sweeney Todd.