A friend of mine in his 60s once told me the story of accidentally running into Elizabeth Taylor with her entourage in an alley in New York. He was a successful model and Princeton architect -- no stranger among beautiful people. But the sight of Elizabeth, even in the mid-'70s (when the wattage of her once perfect beauty was already slightly dimmed), was, the way he described it, something like being shot with a gun in the chest by Beauty itself. It wasn't just her fearful symmetry, or her big-bang eyes, but the power of her being, the animation of her character. For him it was life-altering -- in a lifetime of looking at art, that split-second encounter in a New York alley was still the encounter with beauty that left him most dumbstruck, some 30 years later. What he felt for Elizabeth Taylor instantly was something akin to the seismic power of pure love.

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It has been a red-letter week for the grand-mal celebrity meltdown.

Charlie Sheen has proven himself to be the poet laureate of all once and future megalomaniac sex-addicted crackheads, and John Galliano's once brilliant design mind unraveled like a cheap acrylic Christmas sweater in a Marais bar, where he dressed down French patrons in a torrent of Nazi jackbooted verbal abuse, prompting excommunication from the worlds of both Natalie Portman and the house of Dior.

Several weeks ago, before any of this went down, I saw John Galliano's recent designs in Manhattan's newly re-opened Dior store. I believe I saw foreshadowings of his meltdown in those designs. I trashed the new Dior collection. I have been a longtime Galliano fan, but I felt his new designs were cynical, weak and irresponsibly barbarous.

Because I have spent several years translating fashion statements into English, I could literally read from the clothes that John Galliano was in a deeply miserable place -- the clothes themselves seemed to be screaming in agony.

Fashion is a language of references.

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I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, "Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume -- as a vice president? That's a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it."

Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP (and according to an ABC/Washington Post poll she has created a boost in McCain's standing among white women to a 53 over Obama's 41). But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions -- their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she's so hot to cut is that of all American women.

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Code Pink welcomes anybody "willing to be outrageous for peace." But despite its emphasis on "joy and humor," its ruckus-raising techniques often cause me and my liberal community, who tend to agree with its politics, to regard them with distaste and embarrassment. Why did these shrieking middle-aged women in pink novelty hats believe this manner of protest was going to be effective in Congress, let alone in an almost completely co-opted media climate that seems hellbent on ignoring them?

In Lafayette Park, across the street the White House was there, mute and elegant in the shade behind its black iron gate on its dark, immaculate lawn. But it was already 3 p.m. and Code Pink was not here, nor were there tents. There were a few hardcore peaceniks straggling about; several people in wheelchairs with hand-scrawled signs; a guy wandering around wearing an OPEC sheik costume.

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It must have been grim at that academy meeting, just a few weeks ago. No writers, just a bunch of liminal Hollywood power brokers in $6,000 Brioni suits sitting glumly around a large obsidian table in one of the Carrara-marble, earthquake-proof bunker-vaults deep in the ground under CAA, too depressed even to eat their grilled seafood salads.

"Editors," someone finally said, the idea light bulb suddenly reflecting off his hairless scalp.

"Huh?"

"Fuck the writers. They'll all eventually eat each other like the Donner party. We have editors. This Oscars? We break new territory."

Eyes peer up hopefully through $3,000 Japanese glasses frames made of hammered titanium and hand-carved wood.

"This year? All new: all old. We just montage the living shit out of it. Wall-to-wall montages of Oscar footage recycled from the last 80 years."

"Great."

"Thank God."

"Let's go home."

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Five finalists (or so we assume; in previous seasons the show has faked out viewers by including designers who are not in contention for the prize) sent their designs down the runway: Kathleen "Sweet P" Vaughn, Chris March, Jillian Lewis, Rami Kashou and Christian Siriano. They were made to walk out alone with a microphone on the big empty catwalk before their collections, and say a little earnest something. This had to be difficult early in the morning, in a tentful of half-caffeinated New Yorkers on the last leg of a grueling Fashion Week. It was way too early in the morning for anyone to successfully conceal their true feelings.

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Since then I have been on a total-immersion fashion crash course, flung headfirst into racks of swish, slash, trash and occasional genius, and walking out of my house with an increasingly bizarre confidence in the combination of short pants and sockless ankle boots. But there is more to couture, apparently, than just never throwing anything away and making sure everything is black.

This was my first stab at penetrating the glib, fripperous, cutthroat world of New York Fashion Week. I was as blind as a newborn pinky mouse.

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It was a historic moment, signifying a vast sea change: the death of the Hummer and the rebirth of Flower Power. Two billion fans, 130 countries, seven continents and Jon Bon Jovi can't be wrong.

Watching the Gore-backed, star-packed Live Earth festival -- which included televised, Web-streamed concerts in New York, London, Johannesburg, Rio De Janeiro, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney and Hamburg -- there was an overwhelming sense that one was seeing the better angels of the human spirit rise lotuslike through the mud and unfold into a better, sober, new counterculture based on a peace, love, understanding and eco-consciousness. Like the '60s, only without so much meth.

Al Gore's barn-burning second act is an effort to raise consciousness about global warming but it is also an affirmation that there are more of us than there are of them -- a demonstration that there is a better Western consciousness at work than the one that has inspired such hair-raising international enmity over the last few years. The strong contention held by Live Earth that thinking about the collective good is simply a better way to do business was at least a nice idea, and at best, a potentially empowering paradigm shift.

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"I hate reading! Someone tell me what's on this menu!" -- Paris Hilton

We'll always hate Paris.

If Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana were "candles in the wind," and Anna Nicole Smith was a bonfire in a hailstorm, Paris Hilton, for all her frailness and vulnerability, is a huge, flaming meteor that can penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, bypass all weather completely and destroy millions of lives wherever she happens to feel like plummeting.

Paris has been one of our most arresting national disasters. She's too rich, skinny, blond, nude, slutty, drunk, spoiled and famous. She ignores the law and openly flouts our social mores, as if they don't apply to her.

Proximity to Ms. Hilton is a proven health hazard: She blows all the clothing, morals, inhibitions and self-control of her victims sideways, leaving them emaciated, dehydrated, broke, disoriented and immune to even the most powerful panty-biotics.

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This Oscar night was marked by its unusual candor and humility. For once, the red carpet was actually vacuumed, as opposed to simply being a vacuum.

The stars -- epitomized by the bountiful and irresistibly deserving Jennifer Hudson -- seemed intent on demonstrating that they were all just good, decent, regular folk who happened to have the good sense and thrift to reupholster an old, sturdy and traditional approach to their careers: professionalism. These stars seemed out to rehabilitate Hollywood, after its grisly collapse from a monthlong tabloid overdose, and remind us that fame, when it is functional, is something that arises from actual talent.

Stars are supposed to be abnormally gifted, yet so normal seeming that they are somehow supernormal. It seemed that even the biggest and most perennial stars were working their "normalness" like the family minivan.

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The yellow press is in shock, as if it can't believe that the "tabloid life" of the woman Radar referred to as "gossip's golden goose" is actually over. Its members can't seem to wrap themselves around the idea that she isn't theirs to abuse anymore, or that somewhere under the nipple tape and lip gloss, a human being is dead enough, now, to deserve a few seconds of more than just token respect.

TV pundits, deep into the night, were still sniggering over Smith's personal defects.

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-- New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on his radio show, to a ferret advocate, after imposing New York's 2001 ferret ban

There is at least one nice thing one can say about former New York mayor and current Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani -- besides, of course, his penchant for dressing in drag, his love for opera, and the fact that he used to share an apartment with a gay man.

On 9/11, all Americans were frightened children, and in a moment of mythic personal heroism, Mayor Giuliani filled the gaping leadership void. The president looked like a petrified chimp; Cheney was spirited to an underground bunker. Only Giuliani could pull himself together sufficiently to get on TV in the midst of the wreckage and show America that a grown-up was still breathing. On that terrible day our reptile brains looked at Rudy Giuliani and said, "We're OK now. Daddy's home."

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This raises questions: How do we tell them apart? And, for that matter, how do we know that any of them aren't Ashlee Simpson?

All three "singers" are "blonde." At least two have had nose jobs, and at least two have had breast enhancements. Two are more famous for having sex than they are for singing. One is more famous than the other two for urinating in taxicabs because she dislikes public restrooms. And none of them are Ashlee Simpson -- but, squinting with both eyes and ears until only the clap track, white head and boobies are apparent ... can it really be said that any of them are actually not Ashlee Simpson?

Lastly, why does this locustlike proliferation of blondes seem to somehow be ... a Republican plot?

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Trying to get my mansions green
After I've Grey Gardens seen

I think this line speaks to something universal in the film, which tapped into a strangely exhilarating fear that we all share. What befell the residents of Grey Gardens could happen to almost anyone: What would happen, the movie tacitly asks, if we let go of the rope, went with the flow and let entropy have its way with us?

The film will cause a shudder in anyone who has felt insufficiently vigilant in regard to fending off decay.

Some flirt with entropy more than others, but the Maysles' documentary certainly scared many viewers straight, inspiring them to tighten up and keep their "mansions green," both physically and mentally. I know I ran home sober, did the dishes, paid the bills and exorcised all the cobwebs I'd been choosing not to see in the corners. "Grey Gardens" showed that it might be terrifyingly easy to get caught in that undertow: Start with eccentricity, fall on a streak of hard luck, add a certain wishful, bohemian overpermissiveness, top it all off with a manor-born inability to work for money -- and voilà! Even members of the ruling class can be reduced to living like raccoons.

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How ... HOW did Jon Stewart suck so hard?

I think somebody MADE him suck. I think there was some serious Hollywood penitentiary shower-shanghai going down. Somebody stuck Jon Stewart in the tent with Oscar and made him commit unnatural acts of sucking. I don't want to name names, but I think it was probably J.C. Penney himself.

Walk it off, Jon. Sasha Cohen showed us that you can fall on your ass and still lose with dignity. It's just not America's year.

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Balbirer's piece was created to accommodate the theme of the evening: To celebrate the release of Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan's "Underminer" paperback, all the performers relayed an experience of having been "undermined" by, in Albo's words, a "best friend who casually destroys your life."

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We are, to put it mildly, an ecumenical group. My mother, a jazz pianist who calls herself "The Duchess," was raised by Christian Scientists but now subscribes to a self-invented theology she calls "Ishta Devata," an unformed, New Age, quasi-Buddhist mysticism involving psychic visions from an inner network she calls "Channel 12." My father was raised by members of the Anthroposophical Society and is believed to be telekinetic. My aunt on my mother's side is a hardcore Scientologist, who until recently was exiled from Christmas for her tendency to hard-sell the guests on the divinity of L. Ron Hubbard. My sister, whose husband is Moroccan, recently converted to Islam. My mother complains bitterly that she's no longer allowed to call my sister during the five times a day she is praying toward Mecca, which, considering how often Mom likes to phone, has inspired me to the revelation that Allah is most kind. I am a Santeria initiate, which means I endure jokes every year about sacrificing chickens. If I happen to be at the buffet table, I usually smile, grab the electric carving knife and walk toward the cat. But most of our extended family is Jewish, apart from my best friend Mark and his boyfriend, the Episcopal priest.

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July 11, the Day the Press Corps Attacked, was just the kickoff. I spent the next two weeks in the James S. Brady Briefing Room at the White House, witnessing the molten Rove-a-thon. By the end I felt like I'd spent a couple of weeks on one of those indoor thrill rides where seats are bolted to a moving floor while a film is shown, creating a vague sensation of G-force when nothing actually goes anywhere. Still, the mini-revolt offered hope that despite its previously persistent vegetative state, the press might not be entirely dead yet. For the first time since 9/11, the reporters got nakedly hostile and went for the throat. Pandora's box opened -- just a hairline crack, but enough bats flew out to suggest that it might not close all the way again.

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