Hello Kiddies!

I like little girls, particularly when they're basking in the glow of parental connections that get them inside the Hello Kitty 30th Anniversary Kick-Off Party at Rockefeller Center. It's an exceptionally pleasant way to spend an evening. I've never really thought of shrimp or lobster as pink foods, but they're meeting the color scheme. You can safely assume that most of the Japanese guys are millionaires, and nearly everybody looks perfectly normal. Tourists are watching from the balcony overlooking what's usually the skating rink, and it's nice to not be ashamed to be on display.

Then a grown-up has to go and ruin everything. There have been several adults making perfectly intelligent comments from the stage. Betsey Johnson, however, is so scary that not even Badtz Maru would have her for a pet. She comes sweeping onto the stage as one of the designers who made a custom piece displayed at tonight's party. Johnson is sputtering and rambling and constantly clinging to the giant Hello Kitty parading about on stage. This culminates with her giving Hello Kitty a big hug while saying "?and I love what you're doing with, uh, this UNICEF kind of thing!"

A sweet grandmother from the mighty Sanrio company has just gone on for about 10 minutes about the company's participation in the UNICEF Go Girls! project. My personal assumption is that Go Girls! is another United Nations cover operation for murderous tyrants, but I could pass a pop quiz on the project's best intentions. In stark contrast, Johnson has just provided the single most insincere moment that I've ever witnessed in my long history of self-congratulatory corporate events.

And to further define the moment, Johnson-having assured us that she's having an incredibly great time-heads straight off the stage and bolts for the nearest exit. She's probably wishing that she'd been given a plaque just so she could stop by the ladies' room and forget it in a stall.

At least the whole thing is properly giddy. The children are probably relieved that she's gone. Certain grown-ups, too, since Johnson frees up the stage for the U.S. debut of Reprise recording artist Mis-Teeq, whose collective cleavage I'd been admiring earlier from a strategically chosen spot by the photographers' pit.

I would've preferred getting to see someone like Kumiko Yamashita, but Hello Kitty is bigger than my pathetic J-pop obsessions. Besides, I get to indulge my own U.S.A.-pop obsessions when Micky Dolenz celebrates the reissue of his autobiography I'm a Believer at Aleo. Actually, it's more of a weird hybrid of book party and public appearance. People are coming in for their dinner reservations, and are baffled to see a table set up selling copies of the book for a reasonable $10. "Is he here?" asks a lady who sounds more offended than thrilled.

It's still good to have I'm a Believer back in print, since it's a uniquely goodhearted look at assorted bad feelings and insane excess. This updated version adds a decent discography, but certain Dolenz fans won't be happy until we get the 600-page epic that reminisces about Linda Lovelace for President and provides more tales of hippies brandishing weaponry-back in those innocent days when Harry Nilsson would rather be saved by a handgun than ban one.

"The book's about what's important to me," explains Dolenz, "not what's important to my fans or the public. So there's no more tales of gunplay in the Hollywood Hills. There's a lot of stuff I've done that just doesn't interest me. I mainly just tried to tell my story, but it's all a bit like Rashômon."

And do not mock the Kurosawa reference. Dolenz is himself a director-which might explain why I'm a Believer also skips over the making of 1972's Night of the Strangler, even though the film is actually an ambitious and weird tale of race relations. You'd think the guy never even saw it.

"Oh," replies Dolenz, "I've seen it. I've seen that it was shot in 12 days for maybe $100,000, if that much. You can't execute anything with much finesse for that kind of money. Nice try, no cigar."

The updated book also lacks photos of the amazing Bride of Dolenz, a former fan who got to collect her Monkee in a much more pleasant way than, say, Mark David Chapman would've. Teen dreams can come true-and those who can't remember are doomed to repeat their teen angst. This is the town for it, too, as I'm reminded as Fez at Time Cafe hosts a support group in the guise of "A Tribute to Judy Blume."

More accurately, it's a tribute to the creepy divorced dads of the 70s who produced bitter hipspinsters who continue to take comfort in their fictional friends from Blume books. Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood from the opening suggestion that Beverly Cleary is some kind of curio. Everyone knows the young ladies of Klickitat Street inspired the best of punkettes, lesbians and riot grrrls. Besides, Rosemary Wells made Blume obsolete with Fog Comes on Little Pig Feet.

None of the women reading tonight would bother to disagree. Blume's just a launching point for their own self-obsessed ways. The night soon becomes like any other evening stuck at a table full of Spin writers who turn social events into new episodes of I Love the '70s or I Love the '80s-or, in this case, I Love Talking About Myself While Relying on Cheap Laughs by Invoking the Most Tired Pop Culture References of the 70s and 80s.

The true legacy of Blume remains nicely bookended by readings from Kristen Kemp and Amy Kaye. These two writers of modern teen novels churn out some truly bad fiction. Blume may be an influence, but only by way of the painfully stilted and self-aware musings of teens on various shows from the WB.

That's my own initial obvious thought. The more these writers ramble on, though, the more familiar they sound as prattling older women. Their fiction is about living out their own fantasies of the cool girls they wish they were. This is further reflected in their own love for the cool women they imagine themselves to have become. Ergo, they sound like all these aging Manhattan gals who are really proud to have cultivated the thought processes of a clever ninth-grader.

The sole redeemer is Lynn Harris-she of Breakup Girl-who defies Blume mythology by telling a story about how much she admires her father. Not so coincidentally, she also seems to be the only gal on stage who's ranked as marriage material.

The only person with an honest life lesson to share is the token male. Rob Parvonian comes out with an acoustic guitar and performs a song about how, in real life, the geek never actually gets the girl. I'm not too impressed with that insight until Rob closes his song with a verse about the greatest teen comedy ever made. This provides a compelling point about how love-addled morons who buy into some dizzy dame's drama will get exactly what they deserve.

Budding femme sociopaths might still be growing up on Judy Blume. Young guys had better invest in repeated screenings of The Last American Virgin. Parvonian doesn't mention the film by name, but that's okay. He doesn't need to cram in a pop-culture reference. He used to be a geek, but he's outgrown that kind of thing. o