(Photo: AP Photos)

Sarah Jessica Parker
Our Girl Sunday

It's hard to remember Sarah Jessica Parker before she had C-A-R-R-I-E spelled out in gold letters across her clavicle, but then, it's becoming increasingly hard to remember women on television before they were giving hand jobs, having threesomes, and discussing their fuck buddies over yoga in New York's favorite show, Sex and the City. Parker is not a bit single herself after two years of marriage to actor Matthew Broderick, but she's utterly convincing (she's been an actress for twenty years, after all) as a bohemian bombshell in millennial New York. "There is a great chasm between the life I lead on television and the one I live at home," says Parker. "I can't describe the security that comes with a good marriage -- I'm very lucky -- but I don't in any way pity Carrie. Her life is exciting and romantic, and there are so many possibilities for her that I don't have anymore." We too delight in that life: her fabulous outfits, her snappy chatter with Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte. Most of all, we're happy to learn that just because we drink a lot of Cosmos and sometimes put out on the first date, it doesn't mean we're bad people. For this lesson, many single New Yorkers are grateful.
Ariel Levy

John Currin
Make It Nude

When he started showing his paintings at Andrea Rosen Gallery in 1992, John Currin seemed to be contemporary art's answer to R. Crumb -- his images of large-breasted stripper types, along with a parody of a female collector and a laughing crippled granny, were taken as misogynistic rants. But the 37-year-old painter seems to have lost his appetite for shock -- he's grown up, become more of a painter. The change in Currin's work is the big shock now: His latest women are innocently nymphlike, recalling Botticelli's Venus or Cranach's nudes (one, modeled after his wife, the artist Rachel Feinstein, and covered with tiny butterflies, is positively sweet). But in addition to his sly old-master references -- and using the female nude as the vehicle for them makes perfect sense -- Currin's handling of paint has become more technically impressive, making his weirdly beautiful narratives an occasion to muse on painting itself.
Edith Newhall

Jeff Gaspin
Music Man

As VH1's head of programming and thus the main guy behind Behind the Music, Jeff Gaspin is (directly or indirectly) responsible for finally giving America what it really, really wants. "We serviced a need for all those people who grew up on MTV but grew out of it," explains Gaspin. "You don't want to listen to MC Hammer's music anymore, but hearing his story -- that solves your problem! You're getting information to talk about, you're being entertained, you're relaxing, but you're not doing something you're not interested in, which is listening to the music." Gaspin has proven to have a knack for tapping into America's guiltiest pleasures. In 1991, he created NBC's controversial I Witness Videos, the forerunner of countless Fox specials with names like World's Scariest Snakebites! In fact, after he left NBC in 1993, Gaspin produced a couple of them himself: When Good Times Go Bad and Close Calls: Cheating Death. "Well," he muses, "some things you can be proud of, and others . . ." This time around, Gaspin should be bursting with pride; among other things, BTM has spawned countless imitators on other networks, jump-started record sales for crusty old rockers like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Poison, and given Gaspin some programming ideas as well. In the works for the coming year on VH1 are For the Record (about musical events and issues instead of artists), VH1 Rock Collectors (the bastard child of eBay and the PBS hit Antiques Roadshow), and VH1 Confidential -- an episode of which will be devoted to solving the disappearance of Iron Butterfly's bassist. It's fine by us, as long as we don't have to listen to the music.
Tim Hodler

Martha Stewart
Mistress of Her Domain

In addition to having her places in Connecticut and the Hamptons, and her magazine, and her Leonardo-like domestic virtuosity, Martha Stewart has two of the fin de siècle's ultimate status symbols: an earthshaking IPO and a ninth-floor office with a parking area out front. The industrial elevator of the Starrett-Lehigh Building -- where she's moving her Internet operations and photo studio -- can easily accommodate her shiny new pickup, giving Martha the option of a literally door-to-door drive from her home base in Westport, Connecticut. Now that she's colonized West Chelsea, cheek-by-jowl with start-ups and meatpackers, Martha, of course, is back to contemplating aesthetics, like the exact tonal quality of the light shining on her half-block-long walls: "I love the double-height ceilings with the skylights and the wonderful light that we get in there. I'm trying to remember the name of the painter . . . Vermeer. It's Vermeer light." This year, Martha has found two new frontiers to domesticate. The wild West Side should be a pushover. As for the Internet, there's little doubt she'll make e-commerce smoother, swifter, and infinitely easier on the eye. After all, who else but Martha could turn cyberspace into a place in which we'd actually like to live?
Alexandra Lange