AROUND TOWN
My enlightenment was the kidnapping of first daughter Zoe Bartlett. It's like this: Zoe's kidnapped at a nightclub after her college graduation. Fly female Secret Service agents get all done up, but keep their distance to respect Zoe's privacy-which is key. Little do they know that Zoe's French royalty boyfriend has put what he thinks to be ecstasy in her drink, and that, my friends is when they hit you with the 10-minute Massive Attack song from Snatch-the one playing when Brad Pitt's screaming in his underwear in front of his mother's burning trailer. As the music builds, miscommunication runs rampant.
The ecstasy is actually a date-rape drug that the French kid's Moroccan dealer switched on him. Why? Terrorist ties, man, why else? Zoe can't push her "I've fallen and I can't get up" panic button, and once she disappears, supervising agent Taye Diggs (Taye Diggs!) rushes on the scene and finds a back door where one of his fly agents lies double-tapped in the head. "The backpack is missing!" he radios in. The president's judgment becomes understandably clouded, and so he invokes the 25th amendment, fades out the ambient English beats and takes us to cameo heaven. There is no vice president because Animal House's Otter has resigned from the position amidst scandalous allegations, and as such, power is handed over to a Republican rival, Speaker of the House John Goodman.
This is what The West Wing can do. If you want try it out when your friends aren't around, check out the episode guest-starring Karl Malden in the Museum of Television and Radio's "Prime-Time Politics" series, which switches up its playlist after Sunday but continues through March.
Museum of Television and Radio, 25 W. 52nd St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-621-6600; 12:30, $10.
-Dan Migdal
Pilgrimage time has arrived, jazz lovers. The mother lode is about to briefly gape, so get ye to Lincoln Center's Rose Hall, where Guernsey's Auction House previews the biggest single auction of jazz memorabilia ever. Three Peggy Lee gowns, Monk's tailored jacket with "Crepuscule for Nellie" misspelled in gold thread in one cuff, an Ornette notebook with "Focus on Sanity" drafted on a page near the end. Horns from Benny Goodman, Gerry Mulligan and John Coltrane culminate with Charlie Parker's main 50s sax, a King Super 20 alto with, yep, mother of pearl keys (Kansas City's American Jazz Museum nabbed a similar horn in 1995 for $140,000, so this is one hot property).
With 400 lots on display Friday and Saturday for the price of the catalogue, Guernsey isn't offering many estimates. The jazz trove remains a growth field, so bets are off for Sunday's big gamble, and meanwhile, you won't find so much available jazz history in one place anytime soon. Alice Coltrane puts her husband's original sketches of "A Love Supreme" on the block to raise funds for the John Coltrane Foundation, which has been awarding music scholarships for almost two decades; JC's fifth-grade scrapbook is also on view, as are book reports Monk did in high school, a 27-page letter Satchmo wrote to his manager and art by Miles Davis, Franz Kline and Bruni Sablan (the Smithsonian owns one of Sablan's Duke Ellingtons).
The Allen Room at Lincoln Center's Frederic P. Rose Hall, B'way (60th St.), 212-794-2280; previews Fri. & Sat. 10-9, auction sessions Sun. 1 & 6, $36 auction catalogue admits 1.
-Alan Lockwood
The editors and contributors to Cuban Counterpoints: The Legacy of Fernando Ortiz (Lexington Books) hold a panel and book launch for an essay volume that moves to bridge the stateside void for "the major cultural thinker of 20th century Cuba," as author and Cuba-phile Ned Sublette termed Ortiz in an email. The visionary humanist, anthropologist and lawyer's "major works are not available in English, which is a scandal," continued Sublette, whose own Cuba and Its Music (Chicago Review Press) covers considerable cultural ground with an exuberance worthy of the master. "It's hard to claim cultural literacy with respect to Cuba if you haven't read Ortiz."
The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 5th Ave. (34th St.), 212-817-2096; 5, free.
-Alan Lockwood
Right, and cinnamon is just a spice. Those wacky Students for a Sensible Drug Policy at Columbia were probably hoping for some media attention when they invited Ricardo Cortes to discuss his explosive new read-aloud marijuana picture book, It's Just a Plant. Cortes has been slammed from the usual suspects who fear the book will soon be promoting the drug lifestyle in pre-schools and kindergartens near you, but the criticism has only sent the first printing flying off the shelves. Tonight Cortes reads from the book and takes questions about pot, drawing and the controversy that sent him giggling all the way to the bank. Be ready to make your way through a D.A.R.E. picket line.
Jerome Greene Hall, Room 104, Columbia University Law School, 116th St. (Amsterdam Ave.), 718-783-3556; 8, free.
-Alexander Zaitchik
If you've never been to the O'Debra Twins' weekly "Show and Tell" open mic at Bowery Poetry Club, tonight's your chance to catch up, and possibly o.d., on New York's "art stars." Twenty-five acts will perform from the new Art Star Sounds CD, including Nachi of prison-metal obscurity. Jason Trachtenberg will also perform, as will legendary Bowery poetess Celena Glenn and trash-folk hero Brooke Pridemore. There's an unconfirmed rumor that a rapper who wears a funny hat named Soce the Elemental Wizard will show up.
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (betw. E. 1st & Bleecker Sts.), 212-614-0505; 8, $8.
-Alexander Zaitchik
Don't get your hopes up. Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist is not a new UPN sitcom, though if it were, the possibilities would be endless. It is the story of a man whose infatuation with the universe began as a child on his Bronx apartment-building rooftop, and continues with his recognition as one of America's leading astrophysicists today. Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson, Fredrick P. Rose director of the Hayden Planetarium and "Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive" (according to People in 2000) will share his insights about science and society tonight, along with some tales from his memoirs, The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist. Of particular interest, perhaps, to skeptical New Yorkers who've never seen these so-called "stars."
American Museum of Natural History, Central Park W. (79th St.), 212-769-5100; 7, $15.
-Dan Migdal