Mark Your Calendar. All of It.

Vermeer's The Milkmaid at the Met.Photo: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Vermeer's The Milkmaid, Ca. 1658)

September

1 Expect an exodus of same-sex partners to flee New York for Vermont, where the gay-marriage law goes into effect today (even as Albany fiddles) …

2 … And you can celebrate your nuptials with the Pet Shop Boys at Hammerstein Ballroom.

3 The Giants host a (preseason) Super Bowl rematch with the Patriots, who will be led into town by surgically repaired, de facto New Yorker Tom Brady.

4 Say farewell to summer—and hello to Labor Day—with the last installment of Friday-night fireworks at Coney Island, under a full moon.

5 If you’re still in the city this weekend, make a day of it and take the tram to Roosevelt Island. Pack a picnic, then catch the Roy Orbisonian Ethan Lipton Orchestra in the free Roosevelt Live summer concert series.

6 Run to catch your last chance to see the odd and entirely enchanting Henry Darger exhibit at the American Folk Art Musuem.

7 Watch the Labor Day sunset from the roof of the Met, as the museum opens its doors to this season’s “Met Holiday Mondays.”

8 Congress returns from its summer recess, just in time to seamlessly pass that Health Care reform bill that’s enjoyed so much unanimous bi-partisan support. In other news on the simmering brouhaha front, the unending Astor trial resumes today after a brief hiatus.

9 See the much-awaited 9, produced by Tim Burton—not to be confused with District 9 and the much-awaited film version of the musical Nine. Or party at the grand opening of the Brooklyn Knitting Factory. Also, if you are a child, go back to school.

10 For the first time in 70 years, Vermeer’s Milkmaid is on view at the Met starting today. Don’t go. (Too crowded.) Instead, see the Sol LeWitt, James Turrell, and Maya Lin shows opening at Pace Wildenstein.

11 NYC Craft Beer Week begins. Bottoms up!

12 How can you resist Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Iago, literature’s greatest villain? Answer: You cannot. Get thee to the Public Theatre to see Othello.

13 The Giants regular season kicks off. All right, Eli: make good on that new $97.5-million contract extension. Meanwhile, at the U.S. Open men’s final: Is a Roddick-Federer rematch too much to ask?

Photo: Vince Bucci/Getty Images

14 The Jay Leno Show premieres. Admit it: You’re curious. Also, a new-and-improved Whitney Houston shows up on Oprah. Admit it: You’re really curious.

15 State-wide, voters cast their ballots in the primary elections. Worldwide, long-suffering Dan Brown fans descend on bookstores for his new thriller, The Lost Symbol.

Photo: Pete Tangen/Courtesy of Bravo

16 Bravo, which lost its reality show Project Runway to Lifetime, attempts to recapture its mojo with Launch My Line, hosted by DSquared2 twins Dan and Dean Caten. Which one is Heidi?

17 Voice your opinion as public hearings begin in NYC over the MTA’s 50-cent surcharge on taxi fares.

18 Jews celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Everyone else goes to the movies. Guys scratch heads over nearly impossible choice: Matt Damon in Steven Soderberg’s The Informant! or Megan Fox in not much at all in Jennifer’s Body?

19 Okay, it should be safe to see Vermeer’s Milkmaid by now. What—you thought we forgot?

20 Jets season opener. The tug-of-war between Eli Manning’s aw-shucks wholesomeness and Mark Sanchez’s Namath-swagger officially grips city.

21 This is the last day of summer. Mourn. Then take advantage of the free bike rentals at South Street Seaport, through the end of this month.

22 Save the date! Today is the deadline for filing Chapter-11 claims against Lehman Brothers in bankruptcy court.

23 Amnesty for tax evaders with money in Swiss bank accounts officially ends today. Also, President Obama arrives in New York to address the U.N. Maybe he’ll catch the premiere of Michael Moore’s latest, Capitalism: A Love Story

24 The G20 summit kicks off in Pittsburgh. New Yorkers reassure themselves of their continued financial supremacy by realizing they missed the deadline to file Chapter-11 claims against Lehman Brothers.

FamePhoto: Saeed Adyani/Courtesy of MGM Studios

25 When they said they wanted to live forever, they weren’t kidding: A remake of 1980’s iconic arts-school film, Fame, hits movie theaters. Who plays Leroy?

26 Sports fans head to Yankee Stadium to boo the Red Sox; gays and grandmas to the Village Vanguard for a rare Barbra Streisand performance.

27 Anyone looking for fun, head to Harlem to enjoy the Third Annual African Day Parade.

28 Jews observe Yom Kippur. Also, the MTA shuts down the express B train to lower Brooklyn for the next two years—for repairs. Your trip to Brighton Beach just got 40 minutes longer.

29 Banner pop and cheese day! Choose from: Ghostface Killah’s Wizard of Oz–inspired CD, The Wizard of Poetry, Mariah Carey’s CD Memoirs of An Imperfect Angel, or Dustin Diamond’s Saved By The Bell tell-all, released by a Montreal publisher after Gotham Books dropped it. (Too hot!)

30 According to the National Employment Law Project, over half-a-million Americans will exhaust their unemployment benefits today—just as Ben Silverman, ex of NBC, starts his new job, working for Barry Diller.

Anish Kapoor at the Guggenheim.Photo: Mathias Schormann/Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (Kapoor's "Memory," 2008)

October

1 Warning: The Apple touch-screen netbook is rumored to appear this month, so line up now. Also, the 2010 fiscal year begins today, which might deserve a Bloody Mary at the St. Regis, celebrating the drink’s 75th birthday.

2 Film Forum fêtes the 50th anniversary of Some Like It Hot, with Tony Curtis rumored to attend. (Toting an Apple netbook?)

3 Zak Pelaccio’s Williamsburg BBQ pit Fatty ’Cue should finally open this month, offering wood-smoked meats along with ten-year reserve Kentucky bourbon to wash it down.

Jude Law and Carrie FisherPhoto: Johan Persson (Law); Kevin Berne (Fisher)

4 Carrie Fisher’s autobiographical one-woman play, Wishful Drinking, opens at Studio 54. Speaking of booze, the Mets home season ends today. Down it to drown it, fans.

5 Today is Sonia Sotomayor’s first day as a Supreme Court Justice. Tomorrow, she’ll hear U.S. v. Stevens, in which the Court must decide if films depicting animal cruelty are protected under the First Amendment. Today: Figure out how to work the photocopier.

6 You can watch Jude Law contemplate death as Hamlet in a new Broadway production, even as his ex-paramour Samantha Burke is due to give birth to their child. Toast the Jude-ling at a three-star restaurant, as outlined in the Michelin Guide New York 2010, out today.

7 Anna Deavere Smith’s uncannily timed one-woman play Let Me Down Easy, about medicine and health care, opens.

8 Last Thursday should mark Sam Sifton’s debut as the Times’s food critic, so by this week you’ll know how much NY Press he has left in him.

9 Day two of MoMA’s ten-day Spike Jonze retrospective, which means it’s the perfect time to kick off work early and catch Adaptation in the afternoon—then pop into the museum afterward for free.

10 Fans of Una Pizza Napoletana’s notorious $21 personal-size pies get one more chance to savor the shuttered eatery’s doughy, wood-fired slices, as Anthony Mangieri hosts an $85-a-head pizza party in the former space.

11 Find a mellower mosh pit as the D.C. indie-folk band Le Loup, who’ve drawn positive comparisons to Sufjan Stevens and Arcade Fire, join Portland, Oregon’s Nurses at the Mercury Lounge.

12 Check out the FDNY’s year-round Fire Zone in Rockefeller Center, which serves primarily to educate kids—though attractions like the Simulated Fire Scene will fascinate grown-ups, too.

13 Bloomberg and Thompson go head-to-head in the first mayoral debate. And we admit that “Global Kitchen: The Magic of Pickling” at the American Museum of Natural History isn’t for everyone. But those who are into it will really be into it.

14 One-of-a-kind outsider artist/cult musician/lovable weirdo Daniel Johnston plays the Highline Ballroom.

Photo: Jessica Miglio/Courtesy of NBC

15 The U.S. government once hoped to have 120 million doses of swine-flu vaccine on hand by today—but now only 45 million are expected. All the more reason to quarantine yourself at home and watch the season premiere of 30 Rock.

16 Where the Hipsters Will Be: Where the Wild Things Are, the film adaptation of the beloved kids’ book.

17 Foodie alert: Gourmet’s Adventures With Ruth, a new Condé Nast–produced show hosted by editor/author Ruth Reichl, premieres on PBS.

18 Tune up your bike for the Tour de Bronx, New York’s largest free cycling event. It’s just like the Tour de France—minus Lance Armstrong trying to run you down.

19 Closet dramaturges take note: The Performing Arts library at Lincoln Center hosts an afternoon panel in which Harold Prince, John Kander, and others spill their secrets.

20 Today marks the release of fourteen previously unpublished Kurt Vonnegut short stories, part of a new collection, Look at the Birdie. In a perfect world, this would be the sort of thing people would line up for at midnight.

21 Tom DeLay—yes, that Tom DeLay—moves from the House floor to the dance floor (boom-cha!) on Dancing With the Stars. If you’ve had your fill of tap-dancing politicians, Anish Kapoor’s Memory is up at the Guggenheim.

22 Are you ready for Windows 7? Wired claims that the new OS looks “sexier.” One can only hope.

23 At the Union Square Barnes & Noble, R. Crumb signs his latest, The Book of Genesis. (Just imagine what that Eve must look like.) Uptown at 86th Street, Jonathan Lethem reads from Chronic City.

24 An estimated 10,000 mixed-martial-arts enthusiasts will descend on the Javits Center for the MMA World Expo. The more emo-inclined should head to the last night of the CMJ Music and Film fest.

25 Coney Island’s iconic Wonder Wheel is open on weekends and holidays only through the end of this month. Unless you’re planning to take a whirl in a Halloween costume, this is the last weekend to go.

26 David Chang’s Momofuku Cookbook—including Christina Tosi’s famous Milk Bar recipes—comes out tomorrow. So today’s assignment: Stock up on cornflakes and milk.

27 The Bloomberg-Thompson debates, take two.

Michael JacksonPhoto: Dave Hogan/Getty Images

28 The World Series starts. We’ll pick the Yankees in six. And This Is It, Michael Jackson’s final moves on film, is released for two weeks only.

29 According to union leaders and Democratic officials, Governor Paterson has until the end of the month to shape up, or “face the consequences.” Just in case he needs a vacation (or a getaway), he might consider …30 … Jamaica! (JetBlue flies direct to Kingston as of today.) Also: “Who Shot Rock & Roll,” an exhibit of classic rock photography, opens at the Brooklyn Museum.

31 Head to Red Hook for a pork huarache at the Red Hook Ball Fieldsyour last chance before the vendors’ season ends. Also on this day: Some people dress up in funny outfits and put on horror shows. Speaking of the Knicks, they play their first home game.

Tim Burton (left) and Bauhaus, both at MoMA.Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art (Tim Burton's "Blue Girl With Wine," C. 1997); Tim Nighswander/© 2009 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (Josef Albers's "Scherbe Ins Gitterbild (Glass Fragments in Grid Picture)," c. 1921)

November

1 Stay in bed. Clocks “fall back” an hour today. Also, stop texting while driving, which was always stupid but starting today is illegal.

2 Everything related to Jonathan Safran-Foer’s eating habits will be illuminated: His investigative-scientific-philosophical memoir, Eating Animals, is released.

3 Go out and elect a mayor.

4 The Supreme Court hears Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, which questions the legality of suing prosecutors who’ve knowingly withheld evidence and sent innocent people to prison—a case that should set a tone for the newly reconstituted court. On a lighter note, the sixth annual New York Comedy Festival, hosted by Ricky Gervais, begins today.

5 The vexing but never boring British provocateur Tracey Emin opens a show at Lehmann Maupin.

6 How much Donnie Darko goodwill does director Richard Kelly have? His thriller The Box was supposed to open a year ago. Now it should open today—hopefully more Darko and less Southland Tales, his disastrous 2007 follow-up.

7 OMG! Are you going to the Miley Cyrus concert tonight in New York City? No—because she’s performing in Newark. A petition’s being organized as we speak (for real) to get her to NYC.

8 From your house to Bauhaus at their house: MoMA’s epic “Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity” opens tonight.

Bernadette PetersPhoto: Patrick McMullan

9 Bernadette Peters croons at an AIDS benefit at the Minskoff Theatre. And it’s high season for the high court, as the justices rule on whether sentencing minors to life without parole for non-homicidal crimes constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

10 The Museum of the City of New York mounts a much-needed, first-ever retrospective for Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, designer of JFK’s monumental TWA terminal.

11 Go out and salute a veteran.

12 Don’t laugh: A retrospective of films directed by Jerry Lewis starts today at Anthology Film Archives. Sadly, they’re not showing the Holocaust clown movie.

Fantastic Mr. FoxPhoto: Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

13 Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, becomes the season’s third children’s-book-based movie.

14 Composer Hafez Nazeri becomes the first Iranian to headline at Carnegie Hall. Metallica becomes the umpteenth metal band to rock out at MSG.

15 Houdini! Henry Ford! Archduke Ferdinand! Ragtime, the musical, jumps from Washington, D.C., to Broadway.

16 Punk-country crooner Neko Case plays the Beacon theater. In L.A., Brooklyn-based Grand Rabbi Naftali Tzi Weisz, convicted of an $8.5 million tax-evasion scam, faces a sentence of up to five years in jail.

17 David Mamet’s newest play, Race, begins previews at the Ethel Barrymore. Expect the author of Oleanna to deliver something incendiary.

18 Philip Glass’s celestial-themed opera, Kepler—an ode to the astronomer who discovered the laws of planetary motion—has its U.S. premiere at BAM.

19 Yes! on Equality must collect 694,354 signatures by this date to ensure that a Proposition 8 repeal is on the California ballot in June 2010.

20 That sound you hear is a million tweens squealing as Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart reprise their roles in the Twilight sequel, New Moon, in theaters now.

21 For a more bloodcurdling take on vampires, pop by Tribeca Cinemas for day four of the New York City Horror Film Festival, which runs through November 22.

22 MoMA salutes Tim Burton with a massive multimedia retrospective going all the way back to childhood sketches and student art projects.

23 Plane-spotting! Air France becomes the first European airline to fly the colossal double-decker Airbus A380, the largest commercial plane on earth, which will arrive from Paris at JFK at 3:45 p.m.

24 The Pixies play the second of three concerts—it’s Doolittle, all the way through—at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

Photo: Denise Truscello/WireImage

25 You’ve seen 9, you’ve seen District 9: Now round out the novenary trio with Rob Marshall’s Nine, a Fellini-inspired musical drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis and a gaggle of A-list chiquitas, including Penélope Cruz and Nicole Kidman.

26 Thanksgiving. Get your tryptophan-football-suspended-alternate-side-parking fix.

27 Lest we forget: This is the one-year anniversary of the fatal Black Friday stampede at a Walmart in Valley Stream, Long Island.

28 Pack some haggis and spectate as the New York Rugby Club holds the New York 7s tournament on Randall’s Island, the largest seven-a-side rugby tournament in the U.S.

29 Hello, art procrastinators: Vermeer’s Milkmaid heads home tomorrow.

30 The last day to qualify for first-time-home-buyer tax credit. Also, the deadline for the FDA to approve Bisphenol A, which lurks in plastic bottles and kids’ toys. End the month enjoying Pope Benedict XVI’s new classical album, featuring recited prayers to the Virgin. Amen.

Mark Your Calendar. All of It.