(Photo: John Russo/Courtesy of NBC (The Playboy Club); Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images (Lauryn Hill); Paul Kolnik/Courtesy of New York City Ballet (Ocean’s KingdomBob D’Amico/Courtesy of ABC (Pan Am); Scott Green/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics (Restless); Richard Foreman/Courtesy of FilmDistrict (Drive); Patrick McMullan (Drake, Jay-Z and Kanye West); Courtesy of Columbia Pictures (Ides of March); Jason Kempin/Getty Images (Ice-T))

SEPTEMBER

1. Que cherchez-vous, la belle? Catch the Met’s Carmen on a giant screen at Lincoln Center.

2. Probably the world’s oldest and richest skate rat, Tony Hawk shows off at the Vert Jam at Pier 54.

3. Yo, Governors Island raps: Nineties hip-hop dream team Nas, Black Star, Raekwon, GZA/Genius, Mobb Deep, and—if you wait long enough and she’s feeling up to performing—Lauryn Hill take it to the harbor.

4. Summer’s still going strong out in Long Beach, with Interpol jamming at the Quiksilver Pro surf festival and the Electric Zoo technofest on Randall’s Island.

5. Labor Day! Celebrate by eating your weight in jerked foods at the West Indian American Carnival Day Parade near the Brooklyn Museum.

6. Then return to the dire dance-music-free reality of things by listening to Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum at 92Y.

7. Then again, you could seek sanctuary in soothing seventeenth-century chamber music at the Immanuel Lutheran Church on the Upper East Side today.

8. Drink, shop, and try not to think about how unfabulous talk of a double-dip recession is at the third annual Fashion’s Night Out, which opens Fashion Week.

9. Dick Cavett, 74, and Mel Brooks, 2,050, chat in an hourlong special on HBO.

10. Counterprogram Fashion Week at Pig Island II, where twenty NYC chefs prep pork.

11. The 9/11 memorial at ground zero opens to the family members of victims. It’s also the Jets’ season kickoff, against the Cowboys.

12. Choose your own diva: Bernadette Peters in Sondheim’s Follies, or Marc Jacobs presenting his Spring 2012 collection.

13. A great day in celebrity fiction: Ice-T’s Kings of Vice; Tyra Banks’s Modelland.

14. Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, No. 1 on sale, with the debut of the blatino Miles Morales as the titular web-slinger. Glenn Beck has presumably not gotten over this yet.

15. Marty Markowitz wants you to read! Brooklyn Book Festival opens, through September 18.

16. Friday-night-flick bright-young-thing-off: See Mia Wasikowska in Restless or Carey Mulligan in Drive.

17. Attention, outer-borough locavores: Did you know you can enter the “best livestock” competition at the Queens County Fair today? The fair also has hayrides, a corn maze, and a pie-eating contest.

18. Take a free art class at the just-reopened National Academy Museum, on Fifth Avenue and 89th Street.

19. If you thought Mad Men wasn’t retro-sexist enough, try NBC’s The Playboy Club, premiering tonight.

20. Contemplate David Byrne’s sculpture-audio blow-up globe installation under the High Line at West 25th Street.

21. Beirut plays klezmer-chic indie rock at Terminal 5.

22. Walruses and tutus: Paul McCartney’s first dance score, Ocean’s Kingdom, premieres at the NYC Ballet.

23. Red State, Kevin Smith’s tea-party sexploitation fantasy movie, opens.

24. Yanks take on the Red Sox in the House that Steinbrenner Built.

25. If you thought The Playboy Club was too retro-sexist, Pan Am premieres on ABC.

26. Break out your Grendel’s mother suit and hear poet Seamus Heaney at 92Y.

27. Kate Beaton celebrates her satirical comic, Hark! A Vagrant, at Housing Works Books.

28. Season two of Luther is back on BBC America.

29. Hungry? Not drunk? NYC Wine and Food Festival starts.

30. Roman Polanski’s Carnage opens the New York Film Festival.