September:
1
Since you’re probably not at the final performance of Into the Woods at the Delacorte, sate yourself until its possible Broadway transfer with pork at “Pig Island” (on Governors Island).
2
You probably can’t get into the final night of Tony-winning, gentrification-agita play Clybourne Park, either. So how about Swedish pop duo Roxette? At the Beacon.
3
Mortality, the almost-too-well-named book by Christopher Hitchens, is out this week.
4
Dem convention starts today. Turn down the TV and zone out to Animal Collective’s Centipede Hz or Cat Power’s Sun.
5
BAM’s new black-box space, the Fishman (which, confusingly, is in the Fisher building!), opens tonight. And what better to see in a black box than a dance-art collaboration called Eclipse?
6
Sometimes, drunk shopping is the only thing that can bring us all together. It’s the fourth annual Fashion’s Night Out! Meanwhile, intensively dressed people from all over the world begin hanging around Lincoln Center hoping to be noticed by street-style photo-bloggers as Fashion Week begins.
7
Bradley Cooper does not, thank God, play Fareed Zakaria in The Words, a drama about literary plagiarism. And Melanie Lynskey does not, thank God, play Katie Couric in the cougar flick Hello I Must Be Going.
8
Sensitive-eyed sexpot Jake Gyllenhaal makes his U.S. stage debut in If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet. Sensitive-tressed designer Alexander Wang has his show at Pier 94.
9
Endings and beginnings: the final day of the U.S. Open; New York Film Festival tickets go on sale.
10
The Voice is back tonight! DVR Cee Lo Green and his Dr. Evil kitty while you’re at the 92nd Street Y listening to Alicia Keys’s real-life voice.
11
Bob Dylan’s Tempest blows today.
12
That’s a wrap! Diane Von Furstenberg speaks at the 92Y.
13
Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein close out Fashion Week. Paul Rudd and Ed Asner star in Grace, about a chain of gospel-themed motels in Florida. (Maybe they should have just bought a Chick-fil-A franchise?)
14
For those not over high school: Channing Tatum, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, and Chris Pratt go to a reunion in Ten Years. For those not over being an undergrad: Josh Radnor and Elizabeth Olsen in Liberal Arts. For those not over what Xenu did to the thetans (or Tom Cruise did to Katie Holmes?), see The Master. For those not over Madoff: Richard Gere in Arbitrage. For those not over Philip Glass: Einstein on the Beach at BAM.
15
Fat cats beware! Those scruffy idealists at Occupy Wall Street return for three days of events by the Stock Exchange commemorating the protest’s first anniversary.
16
Welcome Rosh Hashanah and the return of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.
17
J. J. Abrams imagines a world in which every piece of technology blinks out in a show called Revolution—which should make you glad your TV still works.
18
Throwback-music day! Ben Folds Five’s reunion record, The Sound of the Life of the Mind, is out, as is deadpan diva Aimee Mann’s Charmer. Performance-art crooner Kalup Linzy warms up the crowd for the Met’s “Regarding Warhol” exhibit with his Warhol Cabaret in the museum’s Petrie Court Café.
19
Will it be chilly enough to break out your flannel? Urban woodsman–folkie Bon Iver plays Radio City.
20
Not a chancy endeavor: seeing the John Cage Composer Portrait, at Miller Theatre tonight.
21
Still full of teen angst? Ezra Miller and Emma Watson in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
22
Passive-aggressive suburban ennui boils over onstage in Detroit, a Pulitzer finalist starring David Schwimmer and Amy Ryan.
23
Everybody else who lives on the F train but you has written a novel. Celebrate this fact at the Brooklyn Book Festival.
24
Dramatic diva Anna Netrebko plays for laughs in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore, the centerpiece of tonight’s Metropolitan Opera gala.
25
Belgian-Australian oddball pop sensation Gotye plays Radio City tonight, his heart still broken. Unrelated: Yom Kippur!
26
Gather the cats ’round the tube for the premiere of NBC’s vetcom, Animal Practice, and discuss interspecies moral reciprocity.
27
Bring your imaginary son to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which starts previews today.
28
Jay-Z claims the throne in the county of Kings with his coronation concert at Barclays Center. Ang Lee’s 3-D Life of Pi (with a tiger on a lifeboat!) opens the New York Film Festival.
29
Can you wear pasties on the subway? Drag king Murray Hill hosts the “Saturday Spectacular” of the New York Burlesque Festival at B.B. King.
30
Or strip down in the privacy of your own home and settle in for a night of TV: The Good Wife, Dexter, and Homeland return, and the other satanically possessed real-estate show (besides Million Dollar Listing) 666 Park Avenue premieres.
October:
1
The Museum of Jewish Heritage opens its “Hava Nagila” exhibit. You can sing it after the Yankees play the Red Sox tonight, too.
2
A few weeks after Dad, Jakob Dylan’s got a new Wallflowers record out.
3
It’s a good night for political theater: the first presidential debate, plus the Civilians’s Paris Commune at BAM.
4
For as little as $24, you can hear both Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith read from their new novels at the 92Y, and then pretend to have read them.
5
Anna Kendrick deploys her Tony-nominated voice in the a cappella battle comedy Pitch Perfect. If your irony isn’t strong enough to contain that sugary uncoolness, see James Iha at Mercury Lounge.
6
Far from the BQE, Justin Peck’s Year of the Rabbit, set to a Sufjan Stevens score, is at the NYC Ballet.
7
Bet your bottom dollar that if you have any tweens in your life you’ll go see the revival of Annie, now in previews.
8
Gossip Girl, the gritty real-life study of the pressures on the city’s upper-class offspring to succeed at school and make the world a better place, returns for its sixth and final season. Also, money manager Mario Gabelli is the grand marshal of the Columbus Day Parade!
9
We’re pretty sure this is what Ann Romney listens to in order to keep up with the kids: the newest from retro singers Fitz and the Tantrums drops today.
10
It’s All About Eve with a twang! Connie Britton takes on upstart country tart Hayden Panettiere on ABC’s Nashville.
11
The NYC Wine & Food Festival begins with Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah’s ex-chef Art Smith, and Questlove celebrating fried chicken at Yotel. If you only know Whoopi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, hit Comic-Con instead. Also tonight: Biden tries to put Ryan in chains at the veep debate.
12
In Ben Affleck’s Argo, a half-assed sci-fi film is a ploy to get some Americans out of revolutionary Iran.
13
People who need many, many other people will head to Barclays tonight to hear Barbra Streisand serenade where she came from.
14
NYC Ballet season ender: Balanchine-Stravinsky collaborations Agon and Apollo (not Argo!) onstage.
15
All those Instagram filters got you down? The Met has a show about photography manipulated the old-fashioned way, before computers.
16
Fiona Apple takes a bite out of Terminal 5. Plus: prez debate II!
17
Somehow, they didn’t make the lineup for the opening ceremony at the Olympics, but the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain plucks a Limey tune tonight at Carnegie Hall.
18
Alexei Ratmansky takes on Shostakovich’s propulsive music in a new ballet, part of the Russian—no, we mean American—Ballet Theatre’s City Center season.
19
No Roberta Flack in sight, but plenty of manly men: Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, and Ray Liotta in Killing Them Softly. And Community returns, softly, not yet killed, but in the worst time slot ever.
20
A-B-O. Always Be Opening. Glengarry Glen Ross, this time with Al Pacino with the El Dorado’s keys.
21
Picasso in black-and-white at the Guggenheim. (Will there be subtitles?)
22
It’s the first night of Louis C.K.’s stand-up stint at City Center. There will likely be fewer masturbation jokes during tonight’s final prez debate.
23
Dance visionary Pina Bausch’s Like Moss on a Stone at BAM, and you don’t need 3-D glasses.
24
Andy Borowitz hosts a panel about the election at 92Y.
25
Gabriel Kahane, known for setting Craigslist ads to music, plays Zankel Hall.
26
The Wachowskis’ epic Cloud Atlas opens; for something a little lighter but still likely weepy, see John Hawkes as a polio victim trying to lose his virginity with Helen Hunt in The Sessions.
27
James Dean’s undead hologram is not the star of the Public Theater musical Giant.
28
Bring your old, bohemian crank friend who pays $300 a month to live in that tenement to the New Museum’s show dedicated to art made on the Bowery in the seventies and eighties.
29
Yes, she’ll probably sing “Defying Gravity.” Idina Menzel takes over Carnegie Hall tonight.
30
Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal à la Théâtre Joyce; pas de jazz hands.
31
Why isn’t there an opera version of The Matrix, anyway? Its costume designer has outfitted the singers in the Met’s The Tempest. Bob Dylan is uninvolved.
November:
1
Brooklyn takes on Manhattan with the Nets vs. Knicks at Barclays.
2
Sean Penn rocks a Robert Smith getup and hunts a Nazi war criminal while David Byrne provides the soundtrack: This Must Be the Place.
3
En garde, avant-garde! International Contemporary Ensemble gets arty at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.
4
Whether the NYC Marathon inspires you or makes you feel like a defiant slug in the face of all this “fitness” groupthink, don’t try driving anywhere today.
5
Death Cab for Cutie (and ex of cutie Zooey Deschanel) front man Ben Gibbard tries to make it safely to Town Hall tonight.
6
Marc Jacobs skirts the issue at the 92Y. The rest of us wait to see who wins the election.
7
Fiddle legend Midori makes a rare solo appearance tonight at Carnegie Hall.
8
Artist Bill Morrison takes over the BAM Fishman with his “Shooting Gallery” installation. It’s interactive, with lasers, not syringes.
9
Four score and something years ago, or it seems that long, anyway, we first heard of Spielberg’s Lincoln, and it’s finally out today. Also landing: Skyfall, the latest James Bond.
10
Aziz Ansari at Carnegie Hall, and Bill Maher at the Beacon Theatre as part of the New York Comedy Festival.
11
The dancers of Morphoses take on Pontus Lidberg’s Within (Labyrinth Within)—backed up by his dreamy film—at the Joyce.
12
Ever-morphing Madonna fills Madison Square Garden with her ageless fans.
13
Its former title was better (Daddy Fat Sax: Soul Funk Crusader), but we still want to hear Big Boi’s new record, Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors.
14
Opening night for Cheyenne Jackson and Henry Winkler in The Performers, which will settle the long-debated question of whether a comedy about the Adult Film Awards can make it on Broadway.
15
Imposing former maestro Kurt Masur returns to lead the Philharmonic in Brahms tonight.
16
Keira Knightley stars in Anna Karenina, while Kristen Stewart & Co. finally put a stake in the Twilight franchise.
17
Prove you’re not ADD-addled by settling in for Roman Tragedies at BAM. At five-plus hours, it’s this season’s Gatz.
18
Meta-haggle with artist Martha Rosler at MoMA’s Meta-Monumental Garage Sale before a survey of postwar Tokyo art.
19
Colombian harpist Edmar Castañeda plays an instrument called the arpa llanera tonight at Americas Society.
20
If you couldn’t get tickets to Annie for your niece, try the Radio City Christmas Spectacular or the musical of A Christmas Story.
21
Emo hero Conor Oberst fills Carnegie Hall with earnestness.
22
After dinner and a nap, go see Robert De Niro (thankfully in a non-Focker role) in David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook. Let’s hope it’s not a turkey.
23
Black Friday! Really, you must shop.
24
“Siberian hunky” baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky smolders with tenor Marcelo Álvarez in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera at the Met.
25
True story: It’s the last chance to see Douglas Hodge in Cyrano de Bergerac.
26
New York Rangers vs. Vancouver Canucks in a postelection nationalized-health-care beat-down at MSG.
27
The Garden’s Canada infestation continues: Neil Young trots around on his crazy horse. Eh!
28
Can’t anybody please stop the Canadianness? Justin Bieber, tiny pop Mountie, rides in to MSG tonight.
29
For $240, you can join Cigar Aficionado for its Big Smoke, which will fill Pier 92 with smoke. It’s also a cancer (!) benefit.
30
But don’t try to light up a Cohiba at the all-star Cuban-music tribute tonight at BAM.