January

TOLKIEN'S ELEVENTY-FIRST, THE FULL MONTY ON THE ROAD, AND A GLOBAL BAKE-OFF

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

1

Today's Tournament of Roses Parade (floral excitement) and Rose Bowl (male grunting) briefly unite male and female viewers; will tfie recent relaunch of Sports Afield, with its first-ever female editor at the helm, do the same?

2

N.Y.C.'s Film Forum shows Rivers and Tides, a documentary about Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy's hyper-elaborate installation pieces made in—and from—nature.

3

J. R. R. Tolkien's 111 th birthday. Chatrooms implode from heavy usage.

4

TheFood Network, nine . E.S.T.:14 top chefs vie to represent the U.S. in the next Culinary Olympics by creating dishes from baskets of mysterious ingredients. Whisking in both senses of the word.

5

The Richard Avedon show at the Metropolitan ends; Proof closes on Broadway after 918 performances. Mood of finality permeates city; mustaches on waiters at fancy restaurants start to droop slightly.

6

On Thursday, James Levine conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra (he'll

become its music director next year), playing Brahms, Sessions, and Harbison.

A7

The New York City Ballet starts its winter season; the \ national tour of The Full Monty hits Pittsburj for six days. Midnight, somewhere south of 57th Street: angry dancer slaps frisky company manager wi semi-soiled dance belt

9

The Palm Springs International Film Festival starts; Art Miami 2003 opens at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

10

Sam Mendes directs Emily Watson and Simon Russell Beale in alternating productions of Uncle Vanya and Twelfth

Snowbirds launch Night, at the

into irritable Brooklyn Academy

bemusement, of Music,

coughing.

11

The Seattle Opera opens Donizetti's opera buffa Don Pasquale, and the Los Angeles Opera debuts Luciano Berio's version of Monteverdi's L'lncoronazione di Poppea.

*16

15

17

18

Silicon Valley's TheaterWorks presents Lanford Wilson's new play. Book of Days, and N.Y.C.'s Classic Stage Company opens Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, with David Strathairn and Tim Blake Nelson.

Island Life Ain't All Coconuts and Napping: Turner Prize winner Antony Gormley unveils his installation of 100 steel figures at the Perth International Arts Festival, and Patti LaBelle rocks the Barbados Jazz Festival.

Out this month—Scanty Today's theme is "The Particulars: The Scandalous Arduous and Daring Life and Astonishing Secret Journey": Thomas of James Barry, Queen Jefferson's home in Victoria's Most Eminent Monticello, Virginia, Military Doctor. The commemorates the

eccentric surgeon was a Lewis and Clark cross-dresser who bicentennial, and

performed one 4 Colorado's Keystone

of the first jHkfc f ski resort hosts the

successful _ ^40 * Mountain Dew

^ Vertical Challenge.

cesareans.

12

Katie Couric hosts the PBS series Freedom: A History of US, based on Joy Hakim's book of the same tide. Meanwhile, the Rolling Stones explore another kind of freedom at Boston's Fleet Center.

13

A Moravian girl is impregnated by the man her stepmother forbids her to marry, and then the stepmother drowns the baby: everybody, sing! Leos Janacek's opera Jenufa premieres at N.Y.C.'s Metropolitan

Houghton Mifflin : publishes Greg Critser" highly, uh, engrossing Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World. Reading this book will take 10 pounds right off you.

19

Washington, D.C.'s Notional Gallery exhibits some 200 works of one of the few great painters whose first and last names rhyme (Edouard Vuillard).

21

The Masters on Parade in N.Y.C.:

The Metropolitan will exhibit some 120 Leonardo da Vinci drawings tomorrow, and the Martha Graham Dance Company opens at the Joyce. Y

22

Poetry critic Helen Vendler reads and pays homage to Yeats at Santa Fe's Lannan Foundation. Southwest erupts in pageant of Willie homage.

University of Chicago's Smart Museum exhibits 56 lacquer boxes from as far back as the Muromachi period (1392-1568); we older humans might take a cue from lacquer's power to preserve.

24

In stores on Tuesday: new editions of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (with preface by Peter Ackroyd) and Machiavelli's The Prince (with introduction by Anthony Grafton).

25*

The Food Network: In the World Baking Cup, held every ,? '1* three years, /f ty bakers from '

11 countries compete for the title. Yeast has a moment.

Guttural sounds, bratwurst.

26

Super Bowl XXXVII. Literary

27

hipsters

Whitehead (John Henry Days) and George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline) read at Houston's Alley Theater.

Juilliard: PBS special follows five students at the renowned performing-arts school. Our hope; turbanwearing doyenne uses metal-tipped cane to swat at dancers' ankles.

30

Day No. 2 of the Frederick Wiseman film The Last Letter, about a Jewish doctor in a Ukrainian town invaded by the Germans. The occupation and its horrors.

BY HENRY ALFORD