31 THINGS TO DO IN December

FANFAIR

1 AIR-KISS your way into Francois Latapie's new Upper East Side restaurant La Cicala.

2 SHOP. West Elm, the furniture company of catalogue fame, will open its first store, in N.Y.C.'s DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) neighborhood.

3 THINK GLOBAL, ACT SOCIAL at UNICEF's Goodwill Gala at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Your host: Whoopi Goldberg. Your honorary event chair: Halle Berry. Your dress and manner: sparkly.

4 PUT ON YOUR RABBIT EARS. Playboy celebrates its 50th anniversary with a party at N.Y.C.'s Milk Studios.

5 CONTINUE YOUR ARMCHAIR TRAVELS OF JAPANlanguishing since Lost in Translation—'with The Last Samurai (Tom Cruise is a salesman) or Tokyo Story (Toni Collette is a geologist).

6 OVERDOSE ON ART at the second annual "Art Basel Miami Beach," held at the Miami Beach Convention Center. More than 500 galleries will show work.

7 LOOK TO OUR NATION'S CAPITAL, where Carol Burnett, Mike Nichols, and Itzhak Perlman receive medals at the Kennedy Center honors.

8 VISIT the Windsor Ed Ruscha Gallery. exhibition (It's pronounced at Dania, Rooshay.)

9 THINK VIENNESE. N.Y.C.'s Christie's will auction off decorative Viennese art from the early part of the 20th century.

10 MAKE IT A Town HIRSCHFELD at N.Y.C.'s Hirschfeld NIGHT. Go Theatre, see the or revival buy Hirschfeld: of The Speakeasies of 1932 (Glenn Young Books), in stores now.

11 HONOR A DEPARTED MASTER by attending the Fahey/Klein Gallery's Herb Rifts memorial exhibition in L.A.

12 SAY JA TO ART. Surrealist social realist Neo Rauch has his hrst hi U.S. solo show, at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

13 VISIT the Matthew Ritchie exhibition at Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum. An interactive game will let users roll dice to map the universe.

14 luxury CHECK hotel, IN. N.Y.C.'s Hotel Gansevoort. Meatpacking District gets its hrst full-service

15 LEARN JAPANESE and try making conversation with any of the 25 chefs in the kitchen of N.Y.C.'s new Megu restaurant.

16 VIEW an exhibition exhibition of Steven Sebring's photographs, phs, sponsored sponsi by Reed Krakoff of Coach, Coach, at at N.Y.C.'s N.Y.C.'s Paul P Kasmin Gallery.

17 THINK FAMILY. Viggo Mortensen is the King's heir in the new Lord of the Rings movie, and Harry Benson's wife and daughter show his photographs at N.Y.C.'s Christie's.

18 ACKNOWLEDGE the speciousness of the phrase "beauty fades" now that Brad Pitt is 40.

19 SEE AN "ART FILM." Julia Roberts teaches art at Wellesley in the 1950s in the him Mona Lisa Smile; Helen Mirren poses nude for a calendar to raise money in Calendar Girls.

20 LIGHT THE MENORAH in honor of the year s most-difficult-to-spell holiday.

21 GO to a performance of Handel's Messiah near you. In it, human redemption is treated as an epic poem. And And that t means more for you.

22 BUY a tiny vial of Creme de la Mer just for yourself. You deserve it. You can't afford it, but you deserve it.

23 GET G DOM AND DOMMER. Richard Meier has designed a limited-edition, lir six-bottle Lucite case of Dom Perignon.

24 WRAP IT in old blueprints, wrap it in gold foil or movie posters, wrap it in comics from foreign newspapers. Hell, wrap it in a photo of Christo or Diane Von Furstenberg. Just wrap it already!

25 SHUCK. What took weeks to get wrapped now takes seconds to unwrap.

26 STRAP IN. The Pima Air and Space Museum in Arizona lets you strap into the cockpit of the SR-71 Blackbird. Yes, the Concorde may be gone, but you can still get supersonic.

27 PRACTICE SAYING "O-DEAL ZHEEL BEAR," so that when Style: you ask Hair the (Editions salesperson 7L), for you Odile sound Gilbert's self-possessed new and book, certain. Her

28 SHOP at Bagutta Life, 72 Greene Street in Manhattan. The highconcept fashion boutique recently expanded to include furniture, children's clothing, and fragrances.

29 SWITCH AND BAIT. Return a gift you did not want. Buy something more expensive, on sale.

30 SNOWBOARD. Why not? You might make a very fetching Shredding Betty or Shredding Barney.

GET SOZZLED. (See December 23.)