IT'S THE EVE of Times Square's 100th anniversary, but the ...

EVE of Times Square's 100th anniversary, but the place didn't get there without plenty of humiliation. Specifically, I'm remembering how the formerly proud grindhouses were once reduced to having bad haiku featured on their marquees. The Dinkins administration, of course, couldn't imagine there being a commercial use for those spaces on 42nd St. Instead, taxpayers had to fund dopey poems with lines such as? Well, they weren't very memorable, were they?

Neither were those fake slasher film titles that a set designer put on those same marquees while recreating Times Square's classic squalor for the filming of The Last Action Hero-but I'll never forget the feeling when I staggered out of Sally's Hideaway and thought I'd finally drunk myself into a time warp.

I'm not looking to mourn that old Times Square, though. In fact, I wish things would get cleaned up a little more around 48th and 8th. We had our fun batting away diseased hookers and glowing crack pipes, but it's certainly better to have Times Square as a tourist mecca. That's why it's fitting that my big Times Square celebration is the Volvo for Life Awards at the Times Square Studios-best known to Manhattan lowlifes as the 44th St. intersection where we complain about tourists watching some lighting guy set up a shot for ABC News.

The Volvo for Life Awards are a true soccer mom's sockhop, as the reliably sturdy car company hands out awards (in the shape of a safety pin, naturally) to those who've contributed to the world in some grand charitable way. I find this particularly interesting, since Volvo has decided that the people most fitting to judge that activity are reliably leftist-including Paul Newman, Maya Lin, Bill Bradley and the team of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.

I'm mainly attending to see what line-up those kinds of cretins would honor with Volvo's money. I'm put in a fairly positive mood when I see that the glass walls have been removed from the ground floor studio. This means that Jim Belushi and the Sacred Hearts will be playing for more than the top 100 Volvo salespeople who've been brought to the event. It's a concert for everybody in Times Square.

This wouldn't interest most of us, but it's the kind of thing a tourist would enjoy stumbling across before discovering that most of Manhattan is endless miles of bodegas and dry cleaners. They even get the added attraction of Dan Aykroyd on a couple of numbers. That's something to tell the folks back home about.

This actually turns out to be a pretty amazing appearance by jaded Manhattan standards. Aykroyd and Belushi succeed in sounding sincere when they take time to salute the American troops in Iraq. I've seen Al Franken try that a few times, but the topic always gets back around to how well that reflects upon him.

Anyway, I've already headed upstairs to the second floor and open bar by then. It's too weird to be socializing in a big room while a large crowd stares at you from the sidewalk. I don't know how those lighting guys get any work done.

As always, there's plenty of entertainment in the media area. It's especially fun to watch some gal with a public access show stressing out when a bunch of kids gets to interview Hank Aaron before she does. The young folks in question are the always ethical Kidsday staff from Newsday, who turn down free food before eventually getting seduced by the tiny green Coke bottles at the open bar. They're also polite when a publicist hands them a sheet that, she explains, tells the kids "what they can't do."

That's a little rude, since it's only a schedule of appearances. I guess publicists always dream of being able to say that to journalists. Still, it wasn't those kids who tried to run a lighting cable across a crowded room.

Surprisingly, the nominees turn out to be more than a bunch of human shields who guarded Saddam's oil tanks. Volvo would still supposedly be surprised to learn that Republicans find it commendable to try and educate prisoners, or to keep kids in the Bronx off drugs. We've already inherited the mess in Rwanda that one Volvo honoree is attempting to salvage.

The only true liberal slant is the grandstanding. These people have all gotten cash prizes and a Volvo lease, but they're still competing for the Grand Award. You'd think that it would be sufficiently saintly for 91-year-old Rosamond Carr to provide a safe home for Rwandan orphans. Instead, she's asked to haul herself off to an island and compete like it's a round of Mortal Kombat. Carr sends her niece instead, but it still seems kind of extreme.

At least the judges mostly avoid tacky politics in their various turns saluting each nominee. The tribute to Carr even includes a quote noting that those Rwandan orphans "have no ammunition to destroy their opponents." This is followed by Eunice Kennedy Shriver having the gall to ask, in reference to Carr's fine work, "Can't we Americans do the same?"

Sure, Eunice. Just tell that family of yours to quit interfering with our right to be able to keep some ammunition around to destroy our opponents. We can't all afford to live on guarded estates. And while a Volvo couldn't have saved Mary Jo Kopechne, maybe a Mauser could've convinced Ted to hand over the keys.

The grand prize winner turns out to be the lady from the Bronx. It's nice to see Kennedys honoring a faith-based charity-albeit one fronted by a woman who declares, "We really need more like me." The prize is generous, too, since the winner will be getting a new Volvo every three years. The company could have saved a lot of money by rigging the win to that 91-year-old. On the other hand, I'd hate to know how much it costs to park a new Volvo in the Bronx.

Then the ceremony wraps up and the bar stays open for an admirable stretch. That's partially due to Vic Doolan's fine performance as the CEO of Volvo's North American Operations. He's overseen an increase in sales that's almost made the company competitive with the ABBA catalogue. Doolan's a bizarrely striking man-part captain of industry, part Bond villain. Cool under pressure, too, as I ask him why the Life Awards panel is so proudly leftist.

"Oh," he smiles, "centralist, maybe. There's no real political aspect to it."

"But there are at least six leftist activists on a board of eight judges."

"Right," he nods, smile intact, "that's right."

Now, that's the kind of guy shareholders want working for them. I finally head out as Toots and the Maytals are taking the stage for those lucky salesmen and passersby. The crowd has thinned, so I notice the car outside made of Lego blocks. Maybe it's a replica of a Volvo, but it might belong to the Toys "R" Us across the street. The important thing is that it's only sitting there because of a strong capitalist presence in Times Square. The car's far too interesting to be public art, and we can all be grateful for that.