New York City's Heat Bombs; Amos 'N Andy Marathon; The Press Boys: Bill Monahan @ Astor Pl. Barnes & Noble, John Ross Bowie @ Freaks Local 413 & Mike Doughty @ Bowery Ballroom; Mini-Blurbs

Numero-uno Heat Bomb 2001 has got to be the Screening Room (54 Varick St. at Canal St., 334-2100)?the muggiest, nastiest place in Manhattan. Living-room-style seating in the theaters includes living-room-style sweat left by the person who sat down before you, and a living-room-style tug on your back as your seat tries to keep you from going to the bathroom. The only consolation is that you can sneak into the Screening Room pretty easily: just walk by the concession stand, go to the bar, pretend to look for someone, then enter the appropriate theater.

Brooklyn Lyceum (227 4th Ave. at President St., 718-857-4816) pulls down Heat Bomb honors for trying to cash in on the Park Slope boom too quickly. The new outerboro space, formerly Bath House #7, has got a 50-seat theater called Geloscopic and a cute cafe called WYNK [Well You Never Know], open at 6 a.m., but in its rush for yuppie clout, it neglected to install a large piece of metal machinery necessary for human habitation. Maybe next year.

Then, not to kick them when they're down or anything, but imminently extinct club Wetlands (161 Hudson St. at Laight St., 386-3600) has bad a/c, further hurt by the fact that its staff does not know how to close a door. The downstairs area gets particularly sweaty; luckily patrons keep beards in the summer so they're used to being scratchy and uncomfortable.

...Speaking of hot shit, Bill Clinton ought to drop whatever he's doing at 125th St. (staying up late getting Big Mac grease on his manuscript, I'd imagine) to attend the Harlem Week 2001 Black Film Festival at the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Bldg. (163 W. 125th St. at 7th Ave., 749-5298). Through this Saturday, all manner of movies concerning black history and culture come to the building, including rare footage of James Brown and banned episodes of Amos 'N Andy.

James Brown: The Early Years screens on Weds., Aug. 15, at 6:30 p.m. and gives you hard-to-find reels of the dusted Georgian onstage from 1957 to 1972. The movie is just 60 minutes long, which is good?this column does not support long movies?but it's oddly rated "G." Nothing James Brown did was G. As for Amos 'N Andy, the groundbreaking yet terribly racist 50s show that remains largely unseen, spokesman Gregory Javan Mills is happy to screen it. "Everything that has to do with Africans in America, we buy," he says. "We've shown Birth of a Nation here, because it's an informative film, even though it is used to this day to train Klu Klux Klan members."

Amos 'N Andy originally ran on CBS from 1951 to 1953, portraying a group of shiftless, scheming, funny Harlem blacks. It gave television its first all-black cast (in prime time, no less), but it royally pissed off the NAACP, which sought a federal injunction against it for among other things, presenting black doctors as "quacks" and lawyers as "crooks." CBS ignored the NAACP's initial complaints, but once Amos 'N Andy got too hot and advertisers pulled out in fear of being too closely associated with black people, the network yanked it. Now the show has been kept off the air for 35 years in perhaps the only ban agreed upon by network and cable tv.

"We have 'The Rare Coin,' the first Amos 'N Andy episode," says Mills. "That has a four-minute introduction by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who are the creators of the show."

Along with "The Rare Coin," the "Amos 'N Andy Marathon: Holy Mackerel!" will screen nine more of the best Amos 'N Andys from 1-6 p.m. on Saturday. Admission to the Black Film Festival is $5 per program and a complete schedule is available at www.harlem.cc.

...A triptych of former and current New York Press affiliates is having readings, concerts and plays this week, but you shouldn't support them because of their association with this paper. You should support them because no one else will and they need to eat.

First up is Bill Monahan, master of the Dennis Miller-type winding inside joke, reading from his novel Light House, just released in paperback, at the Astor Pl. Barnes & Noble (4 Astor Pl., betw. B'way & Lafayette St., 420-1322). Warner Bros. already has the rights to Light House, and they ought to?Monahan had the balls to name his characters "Tim Picasso," "Jesus Castro" and "George Shakespeare." The reading is Wed., Aug. 15, at 7:30 p.m.

Also, John Ross Bowie, whose writing at this paper was greatly overshadowed by his turn as "Waiter" in Road Trip (2000), debuts his one-man show Paid to Stand Around at Freaks Local 413 (413 W. 44th St., betw. 9th & 10th Aves., 946-1827) this weekend. Paid to Stand Around documents Bowie's time working as a copywriter for an international professional services firm, including his encounters with ninja mailroom employees. Bowie is a devotee and former student of the Upright Citizens Brigade, so if you dig them, check him out Sat. at 8; it's a $5 cover.

And finally, Mike Doughty, former Soul Coughing frontman, brings his self-managed, self-produced, self-driven self to Bowery Ballroom (6 Delancey St., betw. Bowery & Chrystie St., 533-2111) for a set of new tunes. Mike has been working on solo songs since Soul Coughing broke up in 2000; he also sang on BT's club hit "Never Gonna Come Back Down" ("Not so much the people in the audience as the people sitting in my mind"), so he probably doesn't need your money. But he'd like to see you! His show is on Tuesday night, in the opening slot for Grant Lee Phillips, at 10 p.m. for $15.

...Mini-Blurbs from a Tuesday night around Manhattan: A female-sponsored jaunt to The Full Monty at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre (230 W. 49th St., betw. B'way & 8th Aves., 239-6200) went well. The play is good 'n' short, but the audience isn't pretty?mostly older women in for the butts, which are displayed often and are exclusively male.

From there, got down to True (28 E. 23rd St., betw. B'way & Madison Ave., 254-6117) for their "Bombshell" night of burlesque and go-go dancing. It was like the wimpiest strip club ever, with East Village scruff guys simpering up to performers and putting money in their bra straps, with assistance. The dancers, however, were hot, and a few could sing, and after The Full Monty I needed to see what I saw. At some point in the evening a guy approached a female friend of mine with one of the better lines I've heard this summer:

"Hey!"

"Yeah?"

"Did you know your shirt is the same color as my drink?"