Male Exploitation at the Box Office; Kevin Bacon Has a Band?; Vagrant America Brings Emo to NYC; eve to adam: Refuse to Spell Their Name Any Other Way; Mini-Blurbs

Put simply, there is a double standard in movies these days. Exposed breasts in a film virtually guarantee an R rating, while male butts garner a mere PG-13. (Female butts, even more sacred than breasts, are R-only, except from the side.)

Check out www.screenit.com, an independent website that catalogs movie content for parents. A site search on "bare breasts" brings up movies that are almost exclusively R (Tomcats, Quills) while a search for "bare butt" brings up plenty of recent PG-13 fare (Saving Silverman, The Animal).

Men don't have breasts?butts are our breasts. We understand their erotic power; we love that women talk about them when we aren't around; we hold them close as our only trump card that isn't a penis. (And that, too, will be in PG-13 in about 10 years, when full frontal nudity rules television.)

Simply put, any man should be assured upon entering a PG-13 film that he will not see any bare butts, or that if he does, he will see some breasts as well. That's just Fair Filmmaking.

...Now, one Hollywood actor exempt from Fair Filmmaking is Kevin Bacon. He flaps around so much that it wouldn't be surprising if he walked naked through Shrek pouring milk on himself. Kevin makes an appearance at the Bottom Line (15 W. 4th St. at Mercer St., 228-6300) Wednesday and Thursday with his band, the Bacon Brothers.

You are forgiven if you didn't know that Kevin Bacon had a band?he doesn't push it much. But the Bacon Brothers' laid-back, rootsy folk-pop (anchored by the skills of non-movie star Michael Bacon) is disarmingly effective, almost to the point where you forgive them for naming their 1997 debut Forosoco?folk, rock, soul and country, get it?

The Bottom Line crowd will be old fans of Kevin Bacon, NYU stragglers and, refreshingly, some people who just dig the band. There are two shows each night, at 7:30 and 10:30 pm, and tickets are $25.

...On the other end of the whine meter, Vagrant Records, the effective home of emo in this country, stages two big concerts at Irving Plaza (17 Irving Pl., betw. 15th & 16th Sts., 777-6800) over the weekend. Emo sounds like Green Day with more needy lyrics and shrill vocals?several bands will pound it out for hours on Friday and Saturday.

Here are the participating groups, each followed by an exemplary tragic lyric. Saves The Day: "When do I get to wake up to you?/Today I can't forget that I've got these open wounds." Hot Rod Circuit: "Another late night i'm driving home to you i miss you so much i know it's stupid." The Anniversary: "The muscle and bone/They encase my heart/Never touch my soul." Dashboard Confessional: "This is incredible. Starving, insatiable, yes, this is love for the first time." That really should be all you need. 8 p.m. and $15 are the crucial statistics for each night of the show.

...Enough rock for you? Well too bad, because eve to adam. play Don Hill's (511 Greenwich St. at Spring St., 219-2850) on Tuesday and they deserve your support for being local guys, for respecting Tool and for always spelling their name lowercase with a period at the end.

"The place that [singer Taki Sassaris] got the name of the band is the book of poetry, Paradise Lost by Milton," says guitarist Gaurav Bali. "There's a subsection of Paradise Lost called 'Eve to Adam.' The way that we write it is the way it is written in that book. It doesn't really pigeonhole the band or give away too much of what we do."

What they do is play songs like Live, with more feedback. And they have a female butt on their album cover, to combat all those exploitative PG-13 films. "Doesn't hurt to have a naked ass," Gaurav says. "Didn't Blink-182 put a porn star on their cover?"

eve to adam.'s first record, Auburn Slip, is out July 24, the same day as fellow local act Dust To Dust's debut. Two rock albums by New York bands released on the same day? Wow, it's like 1977 or something. eve to adam. come on at 9 p.m.

...Mini-Blurbs from a Saturday night below Houston: I took the train to Grand St. to spend time at Double Happiness (173 Mott St., betw. Broome & Grand Sts., 941-1282), where, contrary to popular lore, you cannot sit under the sidewalk and look up through those cracked glass bubbles at unsuspecting pedestrians. Without its main hook, the rest of the lounge?pricing, atmosphere, clientele?didn't stack up.

From there, I walked north and ran into some junkies cracking out in public (Elizabeth St., betw. Broome & Kenmare Sts., no phone). A cute white college girl was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, trying to lift the head of her stubbly boyfriend.

"C'mon Brian, get up Brian," she chided. I pushed Brian into an upright position with my foot as a third party, a clear-eyed girl with an umbrella, came on the scene.

"It's okay, I have an ambulance coming," she told me. "Yeah, they're both strung out," she said into her cellphone. Good luck, folks.

A block later I came to the Vig Bar (12 Spring St. at Elizabeth St., 625-0011), which was nondescript except for a group of deep dark black models with gorgeous hair and a suitably friendly Asian bartender. Up next was Peasant (194 Elizabeth St., betw. Prince & Spring Sts., 965-9511), which was in after-dinner lull mode. The only nifty thing it had to offer were olives at the bar, which should be available everywhere.

As I came close to Houston St., everything got so much more safe and F train-ish. Swim (146 Orchard St., betw. Rivington & Stanton Sts., 673-0799) was interesting for its stifling heat and flatter-than-thou bartender, who got looks of disbelief and intense longing from the men huddled at her end of the bar. About this time I started saying "Got a man?" to all the women who came my way. As I left Swim, I asked the bouncer how to get to my next destination.

"Bikene?" he responded.

"No, Angel. The lounge. Angel."

"Bikene? You want bikene?"

"No, what's?"

"Forget it. You aren't the guy. Angel is up the street."

What the hell is Bikene?