If it’s Wednesday it must be Michael’s where the media elite meet and greet, see and are seen.  At the number one table: Jeff Greenfield, Joel Siegel, Jerry Della Femina, Dr. Gerry Imber, and Michael Kramer. These guys have been meeting for lunch every week for the past ... what? ... 20 years?  Very good, boys, very good.  Also in the packed room with the chat-decibels way u there: Grace Mirabella, Dave Zinkzenko of Men’s Health with Joe Armstrong, the mayah-of-dah-whole-damn-place; Ron Perelman, followed by Rick Lazio and Peter Brown at the same table; Joan Tisch with Susan Saint James, Lesley Stahl,  Pamela Keogh with Joe Montebello; Esther Newberg, Chris Meigher, Alice Mayhew, Teddy Forstmann with two statuesque blondes; Beverly Camhe with Gary Mansour of Mansour Travel, the chic and select Beverly Hills travel agency; Sirius’ Scott Greenstein; Owen Laster of William Morris; Dick Wolf, Jim Bell; Alyce Alston of DeBeers, Steven Stolman with Chip Quinn; David Hirshey with VH1’s Michael Hirschorn; Conde Nast’s Maurie Perl, and I, with PR guru Jon Marder and Jana Pasquel and Samantha Thompson.

DPC with Jana Pasquel and Samantha Thompson

Pasquel and Thompson are chairing a party for El Museo del Barrio’s Young International Circle tomorrow night at the Angel Orensanz Foundation at 172 Norfolk Street, from 8 pm to 2 am.  Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Ahh, you don’t know?  Jana Pasquel is of Mexican/Texan parentage although she considers herself Mexican and in fact was brought up in Mexico City and Acapulco (and now lives in New York).  The Day of the Dead celebrations are a Latin tradition and the tradition is Party.  Samantha Thompson whose father Jim Thompson is a former governor of Illinois and Jana Pasquel who is from one of the leading families of Mexico,  wanted to bring that tradition to New York. 

El Museo del Barrio is a rising institution in New York thanks to the growing influence of Latin culture in the city. Recently the museum hired Julian Zugazagoitia away from the Guggenheim and are moving to the front of the contemporary art world.  Friday night’s party will benefit that cause and lead the revelers into the night to the beat of the Latin rhythm.  About five or six hundred are expected.  You can still go (festive dress – which for the Latins means “sexy”) -- $2000 for a VIP Balcony table (for ten), $250 for the Young International Circle and $150 for general admission. Order tickets by calling Emily Blanchard at 212-660-7104 or visit www.ersvp.com/ir/yicbenefit.  Jana told me that when they book the hall, it was assumed that the party would run till midnight. Uh-uh; Latins go late with all that dancing, and so it was booked till two.

Last night over at the Marriott Marquis in the heart of the Main Stem, what used to be the Great White Way but is now in living Technicolor,  New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center held their annual gala, this year titled “Cabaret 2000” co-chaired by Charlotte Ford, Collette Kean, Heather and Steven Mnuchin, Lisa and Richard Perry and Bruce Ratner and Pamela Lipkin MD., Dr. Pat Allen, and Doug McIntyre were Journal co-chairs. And what they all made was an enormously successful night for the hospital, raising more than $2.4 million. And what they also did besides provide the great Peter Duchin and his orchestra for dining and dancing, was to hold their own “American Idol” show featuring three finalists, all employees of the hospital who sang (and the audience voted) and then presented this year’s winner of the real “American Idol,” Taylor Hicks (63 million votes – more than any president, which tells you a little something about us that maybe we’d rather not know). 

I’ll have more about this on Monday, but the co-chairs of this particular New York Pres, etc. gala turned a page in the annals of benefit gala planning. Putting on a custom version of America’s most popular (okay, one of them) television show, the space age version of Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour, or Athur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (what, you never heard  of ‘em??) was to bring the audience into the act. Benefit gala audiences in New York have come to know it almost as a routine (with exceptions, of course) where the guests arrive fashionably late and dinner starts fashionably late, and there’s dancing and maybe some entertainment and then guests start sneaking out just north of ten p.m.  Last night’s gala which was emceed by the always droll and witty Miss Joy Behar (honey, don’t mess with her), kept the guests undivided attention until Taylor Hicks and his band came on. And then all those doctors in the house, with their wives and girlfriends, their husbands, and beaux got up from their tables and were boogeying with the best of them (gynos and orthopedic specialists). A big hit. Lisa Perry came up with the idea. “She Works Hard For Her Money.”

And speaking of times, glad times, two Wednesdays ago Kim Garfunkel gave a whopper of a performance at the Makor Center Cafe on West 67th Street. This was Ms. Garfunkel’s fourth and clearly most successful show at the Makor CenterI don’t know if you remember but it was torrential rain time in New York that night but she packed and had the crowd roaring with delight at the end of every number --especially the lively '60's hit "I've Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates--You Got a Brand New Key" with all of it's innuendo, "Mean to Me" and "10 Cents a Dance"--both popularized by Ruth Etting in the 1920s, then Doris Day in the film bio of Ruth Etting in the 1950s. Classics never lose their luster.  Other songs in the Garfunkel repertoire included hits by Stephen Sondheim ("Take Me to the World"), Jule Styne ("Some People"), as well as tunes by her husband’s partner in song, Paul Simon, and Jacques Brel, Billy Joel among others.

Art Garfunkel was there, making himself very inconspicuous (or as inconspicuous as Art Garfunkel can be in a club) in the back of the room. The Garfunkels 15 year old, James who looks like a carrot-topped teen-age image of his pop-icon dad, joined in with his mom for one song (from the audience) and then did a solo on stage which had the audience screaming their applause.
 
In the clamoring crowd: Ashford and Simpson; Susan Hess; John David Allen, who for five years was the film editor for James Ivory and the late Ismail Merchant and who is about to direct his own first movie "Ofekenokee"; Davien Littlefield, Phillip Seymour Hoffman's producing partner; top casting agent Lynn ("Law & Order") Kressel; Martina and Fabian Basabe, famous for being famous ,and now starting up a foundation to support community efforts in health education and science research (Fabian’s been volunteering for Spirituality for Kids, which gives children in endangered neighborhoods an alternative to the lifestyle offered where they live); Pauline and Nicola Oudin from Paris; four of the top male models in the world Dallas Stovall, Dave Hughlett, Cheyn Hannegan, and Curtis Coe--all with IMG Male Model head Chris Forberg; actress Pamela Shaw; producer Judy ("Barnum") Gordon; and author Adam Davies, whose first novel "The Frog King" is being made into a movie by GreeneStreet Films, and whose second novel "Goodbye Lemon" was published several months as well as Kim's mother, Patty Hagen, and her brother.