• Depeche Mode hops on the "Bands that Are More Relevant in a Comeback Setting Than They Ever Originally Were" train with a concert tonight at Madison Square Garden. BYO Personal Blackface Jesus. [Upcoming]
• Fresh from their stint at the Bait Shop, The Subways perform at Stuff mag's "It Issue" party at North Six in Brooklyn. The festivities stretch from 8-1, which might be the longest stretch of time you've ever spent with anything associated with Stuff.
• Confounding Expectations 2: Art Photography Now, the humbly titled collection of 80 top photographers' "unconventional portraiture," features bejeweled fashion models, sterile supermarket panoramas, and other equally random and thus artistic images. Ponder the meaning of it all tonight at the New School. [flavorpill]

• Same people, new but equally affected name: Islands, or the ex-Unicorns, rock out tonight at the Knitting Factory. Preciousness TK. [flavorpill]
• Because wild parties, drugs, and loose women shouldn't just be for rock stars, the funny guys from Invite Them Up spit out a recording and now plan to party accordingly. Tonight's record release at the Bowery Ballroom features Eugene Mirman, Jon Benjamin & Jon Glaser, Michael Showalter, Demetri Martin, Leo Allen, and Bobby Tisdale, among others. [Upcoming]
• Loose women of a different variety will be in abundance at Happy Valley tonight, as Miss Amanda Lepore, tranny extraordinaire, celebrates her birthday with David LaChappelle and Richie Rich. Alas, we doubt there'll be a literal happy valley in the room. [Paper]

• We got it wrong last time, but Nellie McKay, word wizard and prodigious wonder, actually IS performing tonight at Makor. For serious this time. [flavorpill]
• Oprah's latest monster, James Frey, milks it to the very last damn drop by reading at the Union Square Barnes & Noble tonight at 7. In another world, where people win Pulitzers and know who Virginia Woolf is, Edward Albee discusses his literary influences at The Center, courtesy of the Gray Lady. [NYT]
• Earnest Sewn sells its jeans at an almost affordable price, now through December 9. Make yourself into a beast of trend-denim every night until 7 PM. [Paper]

Friday:
• In the blue-state version of Desperate Housewives, Felicity Huffman plays a transsexual who discovers the existence of her street-hustler son. Catch her female-turned-male-turned-female stint in Transamerica, opening today. [TONY]
• Flavorpill takes over the Guggenheim tonight for its First Fridays series, featuring a live set by Funkst rung, a Munich-based techno duo. If they came all the way from Germany, surely you can make it all the way uptown. [flavorpill]
Saturday:
• DJ Heather's performance at Sullivan Room tonight differs from a bunch of other DJs performing at places tonight in that the proceeds benefit NextAid, in conjunction with World AIDS Day. Do the right thing, 'cause you probably didn't do so yesterday. [flavorpill]
• Garrison Keilor and Co. take over the Town Hall Theater for this month's broadcast of a Prairie Home Companion, which means you have four chances to watch sound effects be made. See (hear?) the triangle in all its glory tonight at 5:45. [Upcoming]
Sunday:
• Martha Stewart speaks at the 92nd St Y tonight as a part of BusinessWeek's Captains of Industry series. We assume the industry in question is dragging down television networks with horrific spin-offs. [Upcoming]

• "Karma has worked overtime for this spacey, neo-psych trio," says flavorpill of The Secret Machines, who headline at the Mercy Corps benefit for vicitms of the Gulf Coast disaster. Well, it sure as hell hasn't for the people down South, so put your hipstering to good use and haul ass to Webster Hall. [flavorpill]
• Over at the Museum of Sex, Tristan Taormino, Jon Hart and Rachel Kramer Bussel take part in reading and panel entitled "Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong." Learn about holes four, five, and six tonight at 8. [Paper]
• Still high on whatever it was that made her design for H&M, Stella McCartney sells her own high-cost designs for cheap(er) today from 11-7. [WUNYC]

•Lady Sovereign, the 5'1" rap sensation, takes her Napoleon complex out on the masses at the Knitting Factory tonight. Get there early; we doubt you can see her from the back of the room. [flavorpill]
• The Boys of Baraka, a documentary showing through Dec. 13 at Film Forum, follows twenty boys from inner-city Baltimore to an experimental boarding school in Kenya. Social commentary aside, the practical jokes possible when teenagers meet rhinoceri makes this film quite promising. As a bonus, tonight's screening features a Q&A with filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. [Paper]
• The Brian Setzer Orchestra, Carrie Underwood, and Regis Philbin all in one place? Yes, it's true. So if the hoi polloi aren't your style, allow us to warn you away from Rockefeller Center tonight: the tree gets lit at 7, and unless you do, too, it won't be pretty. [Upcoming]

• Tonight's Jonathan Ames Show at Mo Pitkin's — the last of the 2005 — will feature Reverend Jen, the girl who wears elf ears, Drag King Murray Hill, a mentalist named Eric Walton, Miss Saturn (a girl who uses hula-hoops while stripping), and Mangina and his love Valmonte Sprout. A joke would be superfluous; just go see the show. [JA]
• Music without words is the name of the game tonight, as electronic artists Shark Attack, DJ Clever, Giles Dickerson, and Puzzled perform at Stay, while Pier Bucci and Damian Lazarus take over Cielo. Can't decide? The show at Stay may or may not be free. If that helps. [flavorpill x2]
• Billy Joel plans to spend the majority of his time at the 92nd Street Y tonight talking. All the talking in the world still couldn't explain why he keeps slamming into the poor trees of the Hamptons, but maybe he'll try. [Paper]

• If you can score yourself a sold-out ticket, head on over to the Mercury Lounge to check out British trio The Cribs, who join the pantheon of three-minute-indie-power-rock-the-bands. [flavorpill]
• Little to no self-respect required at Madison Square Garden tonight as Bon Jovi, New Jersey's second most illustrious 80s rocker, hits the stage for the first of two concerts. Lo, the power of Rogaine and delusion. [MSG]
• "True Tales of the Bronx Zoo" promises to deliver, well, that, tonight during a panel of Zoo employees moderated by the Daily Show's Samantha Bee. We're hoping for an elephant gangbang anecdote, but really, any sort of grade-C beastiality reference will suffice. [Paper]

Friday:
• The Museum of the Moving Image screens Bertolucci's The Conformist tonight through Sunday. If facism and twisted sex aren't quite your style, Rent and the Ice Harvest are also playing this holiday weekend. [flavorpill & TONY]
• Beyond the Mirror marks the first American-Afghani theater collaboration in history, incorporating first-hand accounts, film, dance, and music into a reflection on turmoil and hope in Afghanistan. They had to come all the way here just to dance — very Footloose. [Upcoming]
Saturday:
• "Paper Engineer" Robert Sabuda demonstrates his celebrated pop-up books this afternoon. We aren't familiar with pop-ups beyond the adult genre, but apparently Mr. Sabuda does wonderful work with winter images and dinosaurs. Channel your inner geek at Books of Wonder from 12 to 2. [Upcoming]
• Flavorpill classifies tonight's Kevin Blechdom and Planningtorock w/ My Robot Friend concert under the genre of "Freakshow," and quite frankly, we can't top that. [flavorpill]
Sunday:
• Finally returned from the wilds of middle America and desperate to get your hipster on? DJ Olive's "forward-thinking exploration of turntablism called 'vinyl scores,'" should do the trick. Rediscover culture with two sets tonight at The Stone. [flavorpill]

• Mulitplex 2, opening today at the new Smack Mellon space in DUMBO, is "an intellectually rigorous investigation of video art and the complex dynamics behind the consumption of popular media such as television, cinema, and radio." Someone actually attempting to validate the amount of time we spend cracking Lindsay Lohan jokes? Sign us up. [flavorpill]
• Nothing says Thanksgiving like a schizo staging a bank robbery with a cracked-out puppet. Agree? Check out A Most Particularly Peculiar Bank Heist tonight at the Pioneer Theatre. [MsDivine]
• Famous-by-engagement DJ AM performs tonight at Avalon. Yeah, Nicole Richie might be there, but we're really hoping for a ghostwriter spotting. We assume he/she will be the one alone in the corner slogging back vodka and lamenting the fact that knowing every word in the dictionary still doesn't make you socially apt. Not that we can relate or anything. [Paper]

• NY Press hosts a launch for the new website MyOpenBar.com with — you guessed it — an open bar. Hit up the Delancey for free booze from 9-11 and 2-3. [MyOpenBar]
• Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie fame takes time out of his busy O.C.-approved schedule to appear with Styrofoam and members of American Analog set tonight at the Knitting Factory. [flavorpill]
• Because torturing unassuming straight men wasn't enough, Queer Eye's Carson Kressley has written a book for children. Hear him read from You're Different and That's Super tonight at Borders at Columbus Circle. [Paper]

• She won't be on the cover of Time (we think) for another few weeks, but the face of Mother Nature, Bea Arthur herself, does a one-night-only reprisal of her 2002 Broadway show tonight to benefit the Ali Forney Center, which provides housing for LGBT youth. We didn't think Mother Nature cared much for the minorities these days, but then again, gay kids are the reason Golden Girls is still in syndication. [AFC]
• Folk singer Erin McKeown, who takes the stage tonight at Joe's Pub, promises with her latest album that "we will become like birds." Fine, as long as we don't become the ones with that flu. [flavorpill]
• Two designers face-off tonight in the LVHRD Second Annual Master-Disaster Fashion Duel Creative, transforming crap to couture right before your very eyes in an hour's time. Alternatively, you can skip the creative process and hit up the Carolina Herrera sample sale for something you might actually wear. [Paper]

Friday:
• The Barbie Project, showing tonight and tomorrow at the Ohio Theatre, presents grown-up reflections on the "Barbie experience" through monologue, song, poetry, dance, and audience participation. A Barbie doll is provided; bring your own Dream House and negative body image. [flavorpill]
• Neil Jordan combines the obvious themes of "transgenderism and the IRA" in Breakfast on Pluto, a film chronicling the coming-of-age of an Irish tranny played by Cillian Murprhy. If you prefer bad Southern accents to Irish ones, Joaquin Pheonix and Reese Witherspoon star as prettier versions of Johnny and June Carter Cash in biopic Walk The Line, opening today. [Paper & TONY]
Saturday:
• Chicks on Speed is in fact the band, rather than the audience, expected at the Knitting Factory tonight with Kevin Blechdom. (Though we wouldn't be surprised by a few spectators with the same sobriquet.) [flavorpill]
• Shift of genre: Bravo Silva is throwing a CD release party at the Syrup Room in Williamsburg. The L train is a-runnin', there'll be a few other bands, and there are lots of other nice logistical and entertainment perks, but here's what you really need to know: FREE BEER from 9-10 and 2-3. [Syrup Room]
Sunday:
• American Analog Set finishes its whirlwind Big City tour (they came all the way from Texas, y'all) with a second show at the Mercury Theater tonight. Put on your "Fuck you, we couldn't get tickets to Animal Collective" best and show them what this town is all about. [ML]

• Slate cultural editor Meghan O'Rourke, Times writers Ginia Bellafante and Daniel Mendelsohn, and a number of other equally-credentialed writers convene tonight at the Galleria illy for "An Evening of Catullus," readings from the works of the celebrated Roman poet. We remember enough high-school Latin to translate: "works of the celebrated Roman poet" means "graphic buttsex in a dead language." (6-8 pm tonight, 382 West Broadway between Spring and Broome Streets).
• Acclaimed African musicians Konono N 1 create Bazombo-inspired trance music using "thumb pianos called likemb , microphones made from old car parts, and pots and pans." Bring your own spatula to S.O.B.'s on Varick Street and see whether you can join in on the fun. [flavorpill]
• Housing Works kicks off its Fashion 4 Action Sample Sale today at its Chelsea thrift shop, featuring over 120 designers. A word to the wise: take that spatula along. 80% off retail always means a rumble. [Upcoming]

• Check out the lost-but-found manuscript of Beethoven's Grosse Fugue, on display at Sotheby's before it's sold in London. Because the only thing that makes you seem more intellectual than caring about a really old piece of paper is caring about a really old piece of paper that's about to bring home a shitload of money across the pond. [Paper]
• More pretension: McSweeney's, the New Yorker for cool kids, teams up with NPR at the Symphony Space tonight, recruiting funny people to read a smattering of short-stories by Miranda Mellis, Pia Z. Ehrhardt and Brian Evenson. If the "I heard on NPR..." construction wasn't getting you laid, you can be sure that the McSweeney's/NPR one-two punch will. [flavorpill]
• The Politicker, Gotham Gazette, and the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy host a roundtable discussion on the role of the media in the 2005 New York City elections, complete with an interpretive dance performance from Brian Ellner.

We at Defamer realize that it's often quite difficult for successful TV writers to find suitably exotic arm candy while spending their best years locked up in a sitcom writers' room, that virtual hermetically sealed sausage chamber jam-packed with white dudes making dead baby jokes while waiting for the Nerf ball to finally come their way. We spotlight this anonymous message in a Craigslist bottle in hopes that we can help one lonely guy find someone sufficiently "presentable" to drag along to industry events, hopefully saving him some money on the extortionist prices levied by top-shelf escort services:

• Coming to you all the way from Portland, Oregon, dance company BodyVox takes over the Joyce Theater to present Civilization Unplugged, an 80-minute technologically-inspired performance that includes "an interactive dance driven by cell phone calls from the audience." Finally, a chance to show off that My Humps ringtone. [flavorpill]
• Dress like your mom for cheap: striped shirts, boat shoes, and navy-everything will be flying off the racks (we re sure) at the Nautica Sample Sale. [Paper]
• The New School gets comprehensive with a reading by the 2005 National Book Award finalists — including the kiddie authors — and a panel entitled Porn Goes Mainstream, all in one night. We ll let you decide whether to pay $10 to hear Joan Didion talk about her really, really bad weekend or to listen to maybe-kind-of-famous people talk about porn for free. It s pretty damn clear where we ll be. [New School x2]

• We're not quite sure how Cat Power and Blind Boys of Alabama ended up on the same bill for tonight's kickoff of the Music Downtown concert series, but all the free tickets have already been given away. Still, Chan Marshall obsessives take heart: you can queue up on the standby line at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center before the show starts. [flavorpill]
• The good folks at the Mnemosyne Foundation put on a lecture titled Defragging The Da Vinci Code: Will the Real Leonardo Please Raise Your Hand? at Rockefeller University tonight. Informative? Probably. Timely? About two years ago. [Upcoming]
• Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon and Guggenheim fellow Kevin Young read at the 92nd Street Y tonight. Alas, they'll need more than literary accolades to woo us from the Rogan sample sale on Franklin Street. [Upcoming & Paper]

Friday:
• The Brazilian Girls and Beans headline Brooklyn Shuffle tonight at Southpaw, a two-night showcase for artists who capture the open-mindedness and funky diversity that Brooklyn has grown to embrace. Oh, the euphemisms people come up with for hipster trash. [flavorpill]
• Jesus is Magic, the new film from potty-mouthed ing nue Sarah Silverman, opens today. Bemused Jewish boys everywhere scratch their heads at how unfunny fatman Jimmy Kimmel beat them to the punch. [AOL]
Saturday:
• Enjoy unlimited sampling of over 300 of the finest craft beers in the world at Chelsea Piers Brewtopia: World Beer Festival. Make sure you don t overdo it on the college nostalgia, Van Wilder: Security will be on hand to make certain that you drink responsibly. [Brewtopia]
• Tonight s Art Brut show at Tribeca Grand Hotel is different from the previous Art Brut shows at various other New York City locales in one important way: it s free if you RSVP. [flavorpill]
Sunday:
• The 3rd Annual New York Arab-American Comedy Festival kicks off tonight, conveniently packing hordes of ethnic-looking people into small venues around the city. And the Department of Homeland Security s job just got a hell of a lot easier. [Arab Comedy]

• Tonight's Art Brut show at Mercury Lounge is sold out, but head on over to the Dark Room for the official "Tarts of Pleasure" afterparty. No less than venerable nightlife rag the New York Times has noted that the party is "chock full of high-energy odes to pretension" — Grey Lady slang for conspicuously coked-up girls in leggings! [Upcoming, WUNY]
• The Steven Kasher Gallery plays host to House of Campari's Passionate Image: The Body in Art and Advertising, which examines how art and advertising have become increasingly intertwined in recent years. Allow us our highbrow explanation: Classy boobies sell. [Paper]
• Tonight at Northsix in Brooklyn, celebrate the release of Homecoming 2004, a documentary on streetfighting poultry hybrids Chengwin and Chuck. We're as clueless as you. [flavorpill]