Friday:
• The art show to end all art shows, the behemoth Armory, takes over Piers 90 and 92 this weekend. Put on your bullshit goggles and bring a little culture to your life. [Upcoming]
• B-Side Art Fairs: riding on the Armory's back, ~Scope does the indie thing with a tilda, while PULSE makes the most of capslock and curatorial firepower. [flavorpill]
Saturday:
• The perfect anecdote to an art hangover? Fluffy, imported pop. Hot Chip, all the way from the UK, rocks out at the Bowery Ballroom. [flavorpill]
• Game6 features blasts from the past Michael Keaton and Robert Downey, Jr. in a drama centering on the infamous 1986 Mets-Red Sox World Series. It's warm out, so we condone baseball nostalgia. [TONY]
Sunday:
• Circle hits the US despite its "murky avant obscurity" here. Yeah, the Knitting Factory will do that to you. [flavorpill]

• Kelley Polar takes you back to Studio 54 tonight with Morgan Geist and Dan Selzer. Nothing says "disco" like the Knitting Factory and a little viola music, right? [flavorpill]
• Say Hi To Your Mom plays at Rothko. We will. She loves it when we come around for dinner. [Upcoming]
• Architect Michael Graves gives a reading tonight at Parsons's Tish Auditorium. Bring your Legos for the follow-up playtime. [WUNY]

• Measure for Pleasure, the newest farce by David Grimm, opens tonight at the Public Theater. Go and show off how you didn't fail your freshman Shakespeare lecture — everyone will be sooo impressed. [flavorpill]
• Sarah Vowell reads from her dead-presidents book Assasination Vacation tonight at the Borders on Columbus Circle. Be sure to tell her what you think of her Op-Ed columns. [Paper]
• The Bowery Poetry Club, a contradiction in terms, presents an evening with musical trio the Blur Division. Because it's not like they were going to appeal to anyone down there with actual poetry. [Upcoming]

• BAM kicks off its Some Kind of Horror Show festival with Four Flies on Grey Velvet. Tonight's opening also features an after-party sponsored by the Onion, which promises to be a whole other kind of horror show, full of midwesterners and cocktails. [flavorpill]
• The Amateur Happy Hour Scrabble Club for Bad Spellers meets at the 11th Street Bar. Alcohol totally improves your skills, trust us. [Upcoming]
• Serena Maneesh is 6'11". She also plays music. If that won't get you to the Bowery Ballroom, why, nothing will. [Paper]

Friday:
• The afterparty for Belle & Sebastian is almost the same thing as the concert, except that the Belles will be spinning other people's music rather than their own. Get your twee-fan on at the Royal Oak, starting at 10:30.
• Have a side of despair along with your usual pornography tonight as the Film Forum celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Blue Velvet. [flavorpill]
Saturday:
• The Knitting Factory hosts a line-up of bands who bang on things. No, seriously: Bring your own pot or pan to jam with Whitehouse, Wolf Eyes, and Pig Destroyer. [flavorpill]
• The Times called the Whitney Biennial "short on pretty, long on collaboration." The Grey Lady's got the informed-distaste-makes-you-cool thing down pretty good, but head on over to the Whitney and see what you can come up with yourself. [Whitney]
Sunday:
It's Oscar time — finally, Hollywood collectively blows its wad, and you get to wipe up the mess.
• For the truly insane, coverage begins at noon on E!, with red-carpet awkwardness commencing at 5:30. Head over to the TV Guide channel at the same time if you want to watch Joan Rivers rip apart everyone's couture.
• Come 8 PM, it's the big show, with poor Jon Stewart demonstrating that nothing can ever be truly funny if its on network television.
• Bonus for the freaks: If you want to watch and play online, our starfucking brother at Defamer will be liveblogging the whole ass and pony show. We just hope he doesn't spill Mad Dog on his keyboard.

If the current zeitgeist can be summed up in a single movie Brokeback Mountain then it could arguably be further distilled into a single, highly recognizable bar of music. The first seven notes of composer Gustavo Santaolalla's melancholy main theme, "The Wings," made us cry (the final scene!) and laugh (it set off every beloved parody). The only thing it seemed incapable of doing, however, was make us shake our booty. Never underestimate, however, the magical disco powers of The Gays:

• Void Magazine hosts Our Happiest Hour Yet, a reading with free drinks to merit the name. Some writers might read some stuff, too. [Void]
• The NYC Regional of the US Air Guitar Championships rocks the Knitting Factory tonight. Think of it like the Olympics with hair bands and uppers. [KF]
• Hop on the meta-train for some art about art: La Legende d'Er documents the multimedia performance given by composer/architect Iannis Xenakis at the opening of the centre Georges-Pomipidou in Paris. You might want to bring a flask for this one. [flavorpill]

• It took a long time to recover from "Movin' Out," but it's finally time to try a little more dance. Tonight, the Dance Theatre Workship features Ivy Baldwin's Gone Missing and Kate Weare's Wet Road. [flavorpill]
• Philip Glass brings Laurie Anderson, Antony, Sufjan Stevens, Damien Rice, and Allen Toussaint along to Carnegie Hall for the Tibet House Freedom Concert. No, it's still not free. [Paper]
• Egg-tapping robots aside, you can almost take the dorkbot-nyc kids seriously until they tell you to "bring snacks to share!" You can take the geek out of the lonely lunch table, but you can't take the lonely lunch table out of the geek. [Upcoming]

• Le Camion, the final showing in the Alliance Francaise's month-long Marguerite Duras festival, stars the director and Gerard Depardieu of My Father The Hero fame. You can be sure that the discussion that follows, led by John Waters, will be glorious. [flavorpill]
• Ryan McGinness, master of Adult Finger Painting (in the "grown-up" rather than "Farrah Fawcett" sense), lectures tonight at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. [Paper]
• Nicolai Dunger pours his heart out to the crowds at the Mercury Lounge. The indie kids may not be as crendentialed as a shrink, but the adulation more than makes up for it. [Upcoming]

A mysterious organization known only as the Global Language Monitor has released its annual list of the year's most influential "Hollywood words and phrases." Using advanced and sophisticated tracking techniques available to anyone with access to Google, the group has decreed "Brokeback" that highly evocative cluster of geographical peaks and valleys on the map of the human heart that has quickly turned into yet another synonym for "faggy" as Hollywood's word of the year:

• Fresh from some Rolling Stone fellatio, Aziz Ansari headlines at Mo Pitkin's Here's The Thing. [flavorpill]
• Sloppy seconds: Exchange vintage clothes — along with the usual STDs — tonight at Thrift On at Botanica Bar. [Paper]
• Unknown White Male documents the experience of Doug Bruce, a New York resident who woke up on the subway one morning with no recollection of who he was or where he'd been. You say "amnesia," we say "hangover." [TONY]

Friday:
• Manhattan's biggest nerds rejoice: the very first Comic-Con hits the Javits center starting today. And so a million girls flock west, hoping to find their own Seth Cohen. [NYCCC]
• Man Man catches the Amtrak in for a show at Northsix. It's no Boyz II Men, but Philly apparently has some other decent music to offer. [flavopill]
Saturday:
• If Sasha Cohen and the rest of the Olympians have you feeling a little disappointed and jingoed-out, channel your Commie side with a mini-film festival by Red Shift. Highlights include the section on the Chillfactor (Ode to the Spines of the Money-Lender). [Paper]
• Roxy Pain play their spazzy best tonight at Cake Shop. Go and dance like your having the best seizure of your life. [flavorpill]
Sunday:
• MoMA's P.S.1 opens their spring season, featuring a major exhibition by Wolfgang Tillmans, with festivities from noon to 6. All the fun of MoMA at a quarter of the price. [PS1]

Comedian and star of My Wife and Kids Damon Wayans would like to branch out into the apparel business, but first he just needs to get over the small hurdle of trademarking his proposed company name:

• Performer-about-town and Gawker To-Do staple Jonathan Ames gives a reading at the Barnes & Noble on 21st and 6th. Catch a glimpse of his testicle (or is it his liver?) tonight at 7. [Jonathan Ames]
• Jonathan No. 2, this time of the Safran Foer variety, gives a reading at the BAMcafe. To help you distinguish, fewer testicles and more cellists will be involved in this dinner affair. OK, there's only one cellist — but we still maintain the fewer testicles claim. [Upcoming]
• Metlife, opening tonight at the Morgan Lehman Gallery, has nothing to do with insurance. The show features 12 metropolitan artists working under "the loose theme of studio culture." Translation: easels, narcissism, and a whole lot of substance abuse. [flavorpill]

• "Brooklyn-based doom quintet" Bloody Panda perform at Tonic. Gothamist to stage protest shortly thereafter. [flavorpill]
• Lit celebrates four years as being the go-to destination for all things hip, disaffected, and herpetic. Tonight's party should be no exception — like Blue States Lose Live. If you don't know where Lit is, you probably don't want to go anyhow.
• The voyeuristic folks at Overheard in NY give a reading tonight at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble. We can only hope that their live version involves some sort of dramatic reenactment. [ONY]

Starbucks continues its steady, overly caffeinated drip into the Hollywood game, with news that the coffee and public loitering facilities chain is moving some of their employees to the LA area in hopes of generating more opportunities for promotable entertainment tie-ins:

We'd like to welcome all visitors to the fine city of Los Angeles, a town so consumed by its history as the entertainment capital of the world that it recreates a classic B-movie disaster scenario each day of the week for the benefit of our tourists. If you enjoyed yesterday's dramatic blob attack downtown, make sure you spend tomorrow on the Walk of Fame, where you'll have a stunning view as a number of Hollywood's landmarks are vaporized by Martian spaceships that curiously resemble huge, spinning paper plates.

The web-enabled stalkerazzi at TMZ.com staked out Hollywood Boulevard, and after untold man-hours spent monitoring the comings and going of clubgoers, have finally blown the lid off one of the nightlife industry's dirtiest and best-kept secrets: Underage celebrities frequent establishments where alcohol is served. In addition to a (shocking!) photo of 18-year-old Jesse McCartney clutching a Corona (likely alcohol content: 4.5 percent), the site has (jaw-dropping!) video of some of your favorite teen stars brazenly patronizing bars:

• Gayronic is the theme of tonight's Art Jam at Galapagos, featuring Mike Albo, the Lesbian Overtones, and a "lacerating wit" that can only be found outside the closet. Also, Straightronic doesn't really have the same ring. [flavorpill]
• Original Renter Anthony Rapp squeezes as much money as possible out of said theatrical stint with his new book, Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical RENT. He gives a reading tonight at Barnes & Noble on 6th. [Paper]
• Ritalin Readings! Funny people! Short readings! Shiny things! [Upcoming]

Every once in a while, the gossip rags fire a blind item warning shot just vague enough to make half of the industry think they're being watched. From today's Rush & Molloy column: