Dustin Diamond, who brought the character of marginalized adolescent Screech on Saved By The Bell so dazzlingly alive, was a guest on Howard Stern's show today. There to help save his Wisconsin home from foreclosure, Stern used the opportunity to get to the bottom of an "urban legend" that Screech is packing a python, which Diamond confirmed: Ten inches, flaccid. But not even a mutantly oversized endowment and a place in the pantheon of great TV geekdom leave you immune from the dreaded scarlet letter of bad credit. From GetDshirts.com, Diamond's badly-in-need-of-copyediting website:

• As part of the Museum Mile festival, the nine museums on 5th Avenue between 82nd and 105th Streets open their doors for free today. Here's your chance to skirt the $15 recommended donation at the Met with a clean conscience. [flavorpill]
• Michael Showalter, of Stella and The Baxter fame, performs at Rififi at 10pm tonight. Granted, The Baxter didn't inspire so much as a chuckle, but these things are allegedly funnier in person. [Paper]
• Radiohead play Madison Square Garden tonight; Sonic Youth play CBGBs. You play "Grand Theft Auto San Andreas" at home because you were either too lazy to get a ticket ahead of time or too poor to deal with scalpers. [Upcoming]

• The Marijuana Policy Project throws itself an awards party at Capitale tonight hosted by resident lefties Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, Weeds star Mary-Louise Parker, and, uh, Montel Williams. Tickets are a staggering $300, which seems like an awfully high price for something that's not even guaranteed to get you stoned. But being near Montel is worth at least $250. [MPP]
• Mintyfresh, a stand-up comic showcase, hits Mo Pitkins. We can't guarantee it'll make you laugh, but maybe it'll distract you from those Radiohead tickets you didn't get. [Upcoming]
• Having had his fill with dead Somalis and Columbian drug lords, Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden turns his attention to the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis in his latest book, Guests of the Ayatollah, which he discusses today at the Barnes and Noble at Union Square. Not one for levity, that Bowden. [flavorpill]

Friday:
• The day of days is finally here: Lindsay and Meryl hit the big screen in A Prairie Home Companion. Judge the firecrotch in all her artistic glory. [flavorpill]
• Take a silent auction, subtract the Franzia and cheese cubes, and add a keg. Should be fun until people start breaking the art over their heads. [Gothamist]
• Former Page Sixer Ian Spiegelman reads from his novel, Welcome to Yesterday. Go and ask him about Doug Dechert. Trust us. [NYM]

• What's better than Pearl Jam? Pearl Jam music, with a full choir, and an open bar. Hear "Alive" in four-part harmony for a good cause. [Brooklyn Lyceum]
• David Goodwillie reads from his memoir Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time, which follows the escapades of a party-loving writer. Nothing too familiar to you people, we're sure. [McNally Robinson]
• IKEA without the meatballs: Jorge Pardo uses everyday furniture to make highbrow art. See what a folding chair can do tonight at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery. [flavorpill]

In what had to be a difficult call for the AP's senior entertainment editor, the above headline beat out the equally compelling "Carla Gugino Craving Something Salty" for featured story status.

• Druh Trav comes all the way from the Czech Republic for some "Eastern Bloc Bluegrass." We'd no idea they have banjoes over there, but more power to 'em. [flavorpill]
• A free screening of an air guitar documentary? God is smiling upon you. Smile back tonight at Rockefeller Center. [Upcoming]
• McSweeney's takes Bryant Park by storm for their Sleep and Ice Tour. It's not so much a rock show as a book reading, but you take what you can get. [McSweeney's]

• Interactive slideshow Trashiscapes features images decorated with "expressive lines of cocaine." You're already there, aren't you? [flavorpill]
• At the inaugural Beg Yr Pardon party at the Delancey, $5 gets you 5 bands, free brownies, and all-you-can-eat BBQ. Can't say we've heard of the bands, but brownies and BBQ? Those we can heartily endorse. [BegYrPardon]
• Tonight. Union Square Barnes & Noble. 7 PM. You. Anderson. 360 degrees of lust.

Recent dads Donald Trump and Adam Sandler stand proudly at the forefront of a movement promoting a return to traditional domestic roles, in which the father is relied upon to provide for his family by starring in stale reality show franchises and/or one-joke movies based entirely around magic-imbued electronic devices, their wives expected to pose elegantly for visiting In Style photographers, and, somewhere down a long hallway in a nursery room outfitted with the latest in fashionable cribware, an around-the-clock staff tending to their soiled little ones, dusting their fresh bottoms in the finest powdered gold.

• Basic Instinct but without the va-jay-jay: Adam Rapp directs cagelove, a psychosexual play, at the Rattlestick Theater. [flavorpill]
• Garrison Keillor of A Prairie Home Companion fame gives a reading tonight at Barnes & Noble. Ask him what it was like to work with Lindsay; he's never gotten that one before. [Paper]
• Joan Jett hits the Bowery Ballroom because, well, she loves rock'n'roll. She also has some other songs, apparently, so head down and see what that's about. [Prefix]

Friday:
• Playing tonight and tomorrow, Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death is a musical about black ghetto life. Now there's a sentence you never thought you'd read. [flavorpill]
• Jon Voight continues his ill-planned quest to gain access to his grandaughter Shiloh tonight at the Village East Theatre. Also, there's a movie. [Paper]

• EMERGENCY — some sort of multi-disciplinary good cause — launches tonight with a fabulously adolescent benefit. Which means go-karts and booze. Seriously, why are you not there already? Holasek Weir Projects, 547 W. 21 street @ 11th avenue, 7pm - 1am.
• Anime: the stuff of high school lepers and real world hipsters. Kihachiro Kawamoto leads them all, and anytime you get to watch cartoons and call it art gets our approval. [flavorpill]
• What could actually entice you to New Jersey? Pearl Jam, that's what. Or Joe Cocker. What's the difference? [Upcoming]

• P.S. 122 hosts Leftover Stories To Tell, a 5-day theater extravaganza created from the work of Spalding Gray. If you're one of the five or so people not actually in the show, grab a seat and join the fun. [PS 122]
•Michael Cunningham, of The Hours fame, is apparently too Pulitzer-ed and important to spend more than more one night with you people, so this is it. Hear him read from his new book Specimen Days tonight at 7. [Symphony Space]
• Since you haven't heard his mealy mouthed song enough, James Blunt is playing a free, all-ages show tonight at The Cutting Room. Yeah, that won't be crowded. 19 W. 24th St., doors open at 7.

• LVHRD (pronounced "Live Hard"), a "a group of semi-exclusive hipster/prankster/partythrowers" hosts MCFGHT: Karaoke Showdown, to be judged by drag queens and karaoke kings. Vowels, apparently, will not be admitted. [flavorpill]
• Comedian-about-town Jonathan Ames teams up with Moby for the aptly named Jonathan Ames and Moby Variety Show. Ames's usual cast of characters and lepers join in the fun at Ars Nova. [JonathamAmes.com]
• Makor screens a sneak preview of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion. Go for the Lindsay, stay for the Meryl. (Who are we kidding? Stay for the Lindsay.) [Paper]

Friday:
• St. Ann's Puppet Labratory brings not one, but two nights of puppetry and glory to NYC on this long weekend. Tonight's puppets grapple with surbubia; tomorrow, FoodTV. Next week, the world. [Stann's Warehouse]
• Soul Position hits the Bowery Ballroom with RJD2. Maybe, after two years, you can finally get that damn Ghostwriter song out of your head. [Prefix]

• First the beard, now a lefty documentary: watch Al Gore continue morphing into a green Michael Moore tonight at Town Hall. Laurie David and Catherine Keener, among others, join the panel tonight at 8. [Ticketmaster]
• Steve Coleman and the Five Elements play at the Jazz Gallery. Start off the long weekend all classy (since it won't stay that way). [flavorpill]
• A Place to Bury Strangers hit Northsix, where you can assuage the pain of omnipresent Idol crap far, far away from the world of Paula Abdul. [Prefix]

The latest advancement in computer generated effects—a convincing reversal of the human aging process—is on display (spoiler alert) in an early scene of X-Men: The Last Stand, in which Ian McKellen's Magneto and Patrick Stewart's Prof. Xavier are rendered 20 years younger for a flashback. As McKellen raved to reporters in Cannes about the technique ("It's as brilliantly done as airbrushing in a magazine. You cannot tell the difference,"), director Brett Ratner fretted about how the powerful technology could possibly change showbiz forever:

• Beyond the fact that Cool Culture opens museums and zoos to thousands of disadavantaged families, its benefit tonight is hosted by chic types. Do it for the children. And the scene. [Cool Culture]
• The Dave Hill Explosion hits UCB, featuring beloved SNL freak Fred Armisen, musician Walter Schreifels, and dear Malcom Gladwell. Don't miss the chance to see his hair live. [Dave Hill]
• What would a French film be without an existential crisis? Neither French nor hip. Luckily, La Moustache meets the requirement and adds some bonus facial hair, just to bring it home. [flavorpill]

• Snap Judgements focuses on new positions in contemporary African photography — and thank God it does, because those old positions? Those were just unreal. [flavorpill]
• What's left of Alice in Chains performs tonight at the Bowery Ballroom. Pay respects, tip a 40, bring a man in the box. [Upcoming]
• Not riding on the grunge nostalgia train? Singer-songwriter Josephine Foster performs tonight as a part of FOLK. [Prefix]

Yesterday's lengthy LAT profile of nice-guy producer Mark Gordon reminded us again of how low the bar for Hollywood sainthood is set; if you can somehow find success in the industry without assembling your underlings each afternoon for a round of brutal beatings with a burlap sack full of unsolicited screenplays and you don't turn up dead underneath a pile of high-priced call girls, get ready for your halo fitting: