Double-check your Klonopin stash, brave stultifying airport traffic en route to suburb far, far away for rendezvous with stocked fridge and too-small college sorority sweatpants. Alternatively, bask in city’s eerie, deflated emptiness, when restaurant reservations are finally easy to come by and everything’s on sale. Or! For those with the energy, ageless rock legend Tina Turner appears at the Prudential Center in Newark—and today’s her 69th birthday! Somebody bring this nice lady a slice of cake! If you must stay home, then Netflix Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

[Tina Turner at the Prudential Center, Newark, 7:30 p.m., www.ticketmaster.com]

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Obama, meet Abe! Harold Holzer, co-chairman of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and author of Lincoln, President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-61, turns up at the New York Historical Society to discuss with Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter the relevance of Abe Lincoln’s president-elect period to Barack Obama’s. (Perhaps they can touch on where we can apply for a job?) “Aside from Adams-Jefferson—which was just personal—aside from that one, Buchanan-Lincoln, Hoover-Roosevelt and Bush-Obama are the most fraught transitions in history,” said Mr. Holzer when we called him up. But Mr. Obama is so far doing just fine: “He’s been reading some Lincoln; I don’t know if it’s mine,” said Mr.  read more »

Following Barneys’ unveiling—  WHOOSH!—of Simon Doonan’s brilliantly whimsical hippie-chic tableau, Saks and Bergdorf’s unveil their holiday windows, featuring a more traditional “Snowflake Spectacular” lit by Tory Burch (Saks) and fully clothed, non-titillating  “Calendar Girls” theme (Bergdorf’s). Later, what will avant-garde theater types carry on about now that the election’s over? Well, the election, of course! The latest theatrical interpretation of La Clinton, HILLARY: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending, opens at the Living Theater on the Lower East Side. “The premise is that fate is much more determining of characters than their own choices are,” said Susan Bernfield, the artistic director of New Georges, the theater company responsible.  read more »

Our five-day mashed potato binge is on the horizon—how to pass the time? How about by watching acclaimed indie films not yet picked up for distribution—that’s how cutting edge we are—at MoMA, part of a series called “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You!” Our personal favorite, Afterschool, advertises itself as “a haunting portrait of a student at an elite New England prep school who, preoccupied with surfing the Internet for pornographic and violent imagery, inadvertently videotapes the fatal drug overdose of the school’s popular ‘It’ girls.” Oh, boy.

[Afterschool, MoMA, 11 West 53rd Street, 5:30 p.m., www.moma.org]

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Saarsgard’s shlong? The last time you saw it was in the movie Kinsey, about that wild and randy mid-century sex researcher, played by Liam Neeson. Now you can have a gander at an exhibition called “Kinsey’s Women” at—where else!—the Wild Project Gallery, featuring photos of women in various stages of undress and orgasm. (We have a feeling this will just make us feel worse.)

[Kinsey’s Women, closing today, Wild Project Gallery, 195 East Third Street, 212-228-1195]

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Sharpton image: Celebrity photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and former Times movie critic Elvis Mitchell open “The Black List Project” at the Brooklyn Museum, featuring the visages of prominent African-Americans such as Toni Morrison, Chris Rock, Serena Williams, Colin Powell, P. Diddy, Al Sharpton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and a series of filmed interviews by Mr. Mitchell. Later, the aggressively hip new 92nd Street Y Tribeca screens Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, a 1981 celluloid gem featuring Laura Dern and a brutally hot Diane Lane as members of a punk-era girl band called the Fabulous Stains—complete with pink eye shadow and mullets. (Look for it on runways come Fashion Week!) Bring a mop.

[The Black List Project, Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, www.brooklynmuseum.org; Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, 92nd Street Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, midnight, www.92y.org ]

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>A royal flush? One wouldn’t think that now is the ideal time to stage an Inaugural Royal Gala at the Waldorf, but that’s exactly what those can-do youth drug preventionists at the Mentor Foundation are doing, inviting upwardly mobile Hollywood types to a mixer with some authentic, landed European royals (who are perhaps under the impression that our film industry still produces classy dames such as Grace Kelly?). The hosts are Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden, the Mentor Foundation’s founder, and Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of VH-1’s brilliantly trashy Celebrity Rehab; expected attendees include Terrence Howard, indefatigable Russell Simmons, Brittany Snow—some sort of actress, we think?—opera singer Renee Fleming and, of course, more titled folk: His Royal Highness Prince Turki bin Adbul Aziz Al Saud (That’s Prince Turki to you!), Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, and—weird—Dr.  read more »