TGIF! Your perfect weekend is here, and it’s a work of art. Start in Times Square with the opening of “Leonardo da Vinci’s Workshop,” a re-creation of the Renaissance man’s studio, complete with a walking 3-D model of a mechanical lion and a robot knight. Continue to probe the world of nightmarish animals at “Subliminal Communication,” an exhibition of Surrealist works by Gilbert Oh and Joe Vaux—check out a piece called Deep Sea Diva, featuring a she-octopus chopping up whales with her tentacles.

Animals of a third kind can be found at the book launch of Sandhogs (it turns out they’re humans who’ve been digging a new city water tunnel 800 feet below the streets of Manhattan since the ’70s). And if all of this wackiness is a bit too much to handle this early in the weekend, head to the Town Hall to catch Ray Davies, who will revisit the Kinks’ back catalog with the aid of the Dessoff Chamber Choir, making for a quintessentially British perfect Friday.

Dance
AUNTS Roadshow
Soak up the collective spirit of AUNTS with these simultaneous dance performances.

Book
“Getting Work: Labor Issues in the 21st Century”
The literary review Bookforum hosts what promises to be a lively roundtable about the contemporary workplace.

Clubs
Deep See: Patrice Scott
A Motor City master of evocative house plays an intimate set at Bar 13.

Comedy
Craig Robinson
The Office star employs every ounce of his abundant smoothness to make you laugh.

Event
“Jewish Comedians: On Woody Allen”
Columbia Professor Jeremy Dauber heads to the 92nd Street Y to discuss Allen’s impressive but overlooked early career as a comedian (7:30pm, $27).

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Music
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
The ten-piece folk outfit gets loose at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.

Lecture
“Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin”
On what would have been his 200th birthday, this lecture examines Darwin’s life and legacy.

Eat Out
Whiskey Dinner
Ward off the cold at this wintry dinner, where French Culinary Institute students will serve six courses paired with single-malt whiskey.

Dance
Anna Halprin, Anne Collod & Guests
The French choreographer Anne Collod reinterprets a seminal dance by Anna Halprin.

Comedy
The Nights of Our Lives
The UCBT’s humorous reading series, hosted by the fantastically funny David Martin, features stand-ups and improvisers waxing humorous about true-life tales.

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Drink Up
Connect Four
Round three of this monthlong championship promises to get pretty heated; winners move on to next week’s finale, with a chance to win $250.

Books
National Book Awards Reading
All 20 nominees of this year’s NBA—who include Rae Armantrout, Jayne Anne Phillips and Colum McCann—will read their work.

Eat Out
Pie Tasting and Talk
’Tis the season of pies—bulk up your knowledge, as well as your waistline, at this lecture and tasting.

Comedy
More than You Expected: A Night at Highline
Todd Barry, Jonathan Ames and others raise funds for two literary outlets.

Music
Das Racist
The duo behind “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” takes the stage.

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Sam Waterston

Event
“Law & Order: Twenty Years and Counting”
Creator Dick Wolf chats with cast members (including Sam Waterston) about the police show that just keeps on chugging.

Books
A celebration of Vladimir Nabokov
A group of Nabokov admirers—including novelist Martin Amis—will read from the The Original of Laura, an unfinished novel that the author left on his deathbed and is just now being published.

Music
Red Hook Ramblers
Last week they played the TONY office; tonight, they bring their vintage jazz sound to Sycamore.

Lecture
“Proust Wars”
Literary historian and Columbia professor Elisabeth Ladenson chats about Marcel Proust.

Theater
Broadway Close Up: Bound for Broadway
The latest edition of this valuable annual advance look at musical-theater works-in-progress includes songs from Party Come Here, The Scottish Musical, and Sleeping Beauty Wakes.

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Your perfect Sunday is a good day to be a dead Dada rock-star artist (apart from the dead part), as you get your very own exhibition at the Jewish Museum: “Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention.” It’s a good day to be you as well, because there is the Brooklyn Chocolate Experiment to enjoy. Just to be clear, it is not an experiment to see how much chocolate one person can eat.

Fancy something savory? There’s roasted chicken to savor at Freebird Books party, celebrating the start of Independent Booksellers Week. Or if you want to chew over some performance art, Scott Keightley and Tom O’Neill produce Picasso’s Desire Caught by the Tail as part of Performa 09.

Consider yourself lucky; if you were an animal you may find your cadaver stuffed and displayed for pleasure at the Fourth Annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest. A dead squirrel dressed as the Pope is not having a perfect Sunday.

Reach into the back of your cupboards and you will find the start to your perfect Saturday, otherwise known as canned food. This is all you need to gain admittance to “Canstruction,” which donates the building blocks of the art on display to City Harvest once the show is finished. Another great idea that helps people (it taught us to count to 12) is Sesame Street, which gets a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Public Library to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

We’d like to hear Peaches do a remix of a Sesame Street song; perhaps she will tonight at her show at Terminal 5. Or, request that Craig Finn and Tad Kubler of the Hold Steady sing “If Moon Was Cookie” at Radio Happy Hour.

If you’ve got a costume, you just have to rock tonight: Your options are the baroque bash “The Return of Rococo” and the voguing competition Moda La Envidia Xtravaganza Ball.

Strike a pose on your perfect Saturday.

That flash of light on your perfect Friday is your creative spark, it’s trying to metaphorically set alight Kidrobot’s newest line of customizable Munnys (above) at the Munnyworld Custom Toy Show. Start with that and mature rapidly as the day wears on, hitting your teenage years with Buffy the Vampire Slayer at Dark Shadows at Twilight: A Paley Center Vampire Weekend, and reaching sexual maturity in the evening at Tattooed and Fish Eye Fetish Sneak Preview Art Show. Finally, face death (not yours) at the improv interpretation of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr’s fatal duel in Code Duello. Live fast on your perfect Friday.

Clubs
Dance.Here.Now.: Carl Cox
The big man of techno plays the little club of the Meatpacking District.

Drink Up
Flute Fest
New Year’s comes early at this annual bash, featuring unlimited tastes from more than 20 champagne producers.

Event
The 11th Annual Mr. Lower East Side Pageant
Amazingly, this event is a decade old—come see if any dudes have a Miss South Carolina moment.

Music
Numero’s Eccentric Soul Revue
The great Chicago reissue label hits the road for its first-ever tour. Tonight’s show features special guest Missy Dee, an MC who takes it back to hip-hop’s roots.

Discussion
“Some Still Like It Hot”
Actor Tony Curtis talks about the making of Billy Wilder’s comedy classic Some Like It Hot, now celebrating its 50th anniversary.

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Warren G contemplates regulating.

Music
Warren G
The Long Beach native teams up with Kidz in the Hall and U-N-I to celebrate his birthday at Bowery Ballroom.

Eat Out
An Evening with Michael Psilakis
A book party, cooking demo and feast all rolled into one—it’s a dream come true, so long as you like lamb.

Discussion
A Conversation with Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman
The director-actor combo that brought us Rushmore discusses the forthcoming Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Contest
The World’s Biggest Connect Four Championship: Round Two
The quest for board-game bragging rights continues with more Connect Four showdowns.

Dance
Tere O’Connor Dance
Choreographer Tere O’Connor returns to DWT with his new quintet Wrought Iron Fog.

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Photograph: Danny Clinch

Music
Wolfmother
Psychedelic, hard-rock throwbacks Wolfmother lay down their new album Cosmic Egg at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.

Books
Orhan Pamuk
The Nobel Prize winner presents his brand-new novel.

Clubs
The Little Yellow Dance Machine
Pacha resident Exacta spins dark-and-dirty house at this new weekly party at the Sullivan Room.

Eat out
Food52 piglet party
Not sure which recipe book to buy? Recipe site food52 has invited culinary celebs like Nora Ephron to test 16 of the year’s top cookbooks.

Theater
I Got Sick Then I Got Better
Journalist Jenny Allen tells a cancer story that is remarkably free of sap, digging out comic nuggets from the medical mire.

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It’s the beginning of your perfect Sunday, and the end of the world as we know it, at least according to Googled author Ken Auletta who speaks today at the 92nd Street Y.

As our universe crumbles around us, at least we can laugh with the help of Louis C.K., or boogie down at the launch party for Dance Parade.

If the end of days puts you in a contemplative mood, then consider the passage of time at “Now and Then: Life on the Bowery.”

Whatever works for you on your perfect Sunday.

Your perfect Saturday has the ring of truthiness to it, as does the statistic that 24 percent of Americans believe news spoofs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are replacing actual news programs as places to learn about current affairs. Colbert writers address this very point at “The Truthiness Behind the Lines.”

We hope you can handle the truth; sometimes it can be shocking, like the fact that Superman cocreator Joe Shuster illustrated a series of erotic artworks, and you can draw these superhero fetish poses at Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School.

If that blows your mind, just lose it at rock & roll events like Target First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum or Bruce Springsteen at MSG.

Sounds like your perfect Saturday all right, ain’t that the truth.

Sashaying in with inimitable style, it’s your perfect Friday. Of course, it’s stolen its look from the Museum at FIT’s exhibit “American Beauty: Aesthetics and Innovation in Fashion” and artist E.V. Day’s “exploding couture” at the New York City Opera.

Sharpen up your blades and head to The Pond at Bryant Park which opens for ice-skating today, or polish up your tankard for the start of the three-day Cask Ale Festival.

Night owls should check out TONY Approved comedy, Sasha at Blkmarket Membership or the experimental rock showcase The Chinese Underground Invasion.

Strike a pose! Your perfect Friday is watching.

Music
Fucked Up
The Canadian punks play a full album, with Andrew W.K. and the Vivian Girls.

Party
The Baroness’s Fetish Retinue Party
Be there for a special edition of the kinky monthly bash—it’s a birthday celebration for both the party (ten years running) and the Baroness herself (one does not ask a baroness her age).

Comedy
Mike Birbiglia: I’m in the Future Also
The approachable and entrancing storyteller brings us his latest.

Dance
Tacita Dean
The filmmaker presents 2008 footage of Merce Cunningham and his dance company performing in an abandoned Ford Motor Company factory in California.

Gay & Lesbian
Unitard
Twisted sarcasm is the specialty of this unapologetic comedy-sketch trio: David Ilku, Nora Burns and Mike Albo.

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Sex & Dating
Women as Design
There’s more to it than those Virgin Cola bottles that mirrored Pamela Anderson’s curves. British author and design critic Stephen Bayley discusses the influence of the female form on architecture.

Eat Out
Cuisine of Alsace
Learn to cook Alsatian staples, then wash them down with crisp rieslings and gewürztraminers.

Spas & Sport
“The Bathtub Alchemist: Creating Therapeutic Baths”
Ah, the joys of a deep bath. Find out how to make yours even more relaxing—and health-inducing—with the use of therapeutic bath soaks.

Books
Mitch Albom: Have a Little Faith
The Tuesdays with Morrie author discusses his latest, not so dissimilar tome (Albom interviews a dying man—in this case, a rabbi—and turns their conversations into a narrative).

Comedy
Stand-Up for Heroes
Stephen Colbert, Bruce Springsteen and Brian Williams bring humor to an important cause at this NYCF kickoff.

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Music
Girls
The San Francisco band subverts the sound of the ’60s with a brooding undercurrent at Maxwell’s.

Drinking
Day of the Dead
Honor the deceased by drinking tequila at Mayahuel with limitless appetizers and libations mixed by Philip Ward.

Comedy
WitStream Launch
Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, Pete Holmes and more celebrate this new comedic-tweet aggregator.

Music
Fuck Buttons
Maybe they’re rock, maybe they’re dance. Regardless, the duo from the U.K. know how to put on a live show.

Home design
“Speed Decorating: A Fabulous Home in a Week or Less”
Professional stager Jill Vegas, who has worked for companies like Sotheby’s and Halstead, explains how you can change the look of your home for the better in seven days or fewer.

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On your marks, get set, go forth to your perfect Sunday and the NYC Marathon. Of course, that’s not the only way to get chaffed nipples today. If you play your cards right, the Vandam Masquerade Ball will probably oblige.

Joking aside, there are more serious events today, like “Looking”, a consideration of perception and articulation by writers and filmmakers, and the performance art biennial Performa 09.

Frank Bruni uses his mouth to speak instead of eat at the 92nd Street Y and a local independent record label shows of its roster at Fang Records Night.

Make sure you keep pace with your perfect Sunday.

It’s only your perfect Saturday, but we like it. And it’s only Rock & Roll, but it still makes for a rollicking new exhibition. “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present” opens to the public today at the Brooklyn Museum. We all know turntables are the new guitars though, so for something more current, go see DJ T. at the Basic NYC and KGB party.

Of course, it’s All Hallow’s Eve, which means you can chase zombies through the streets with the role-playing game Undead Invasion, and then march down Sixth Avenue with them and other ghoulish apparitions at the 36th Annual Village Halloween Parade.

And to find out how Madonna, Britney Spears and an amateur gay webcam pornographer fit into Dan Fishback’s new work, check out your perfect Saturday.

Take good care of it, water it and let your perfect Friday blossom. Just like the flower who wants to be a person in the play A Lily’s Revenge. Also today, Yeasayer perform with a 3-D light show at It Came From Brooklyn and the Wingdale Community Singers bring old-time Americana to the Issue Project Room. Or buy a nifty old-school camera at the PowerShovel pop-up shop and go shoot the d’n’b heads dancing to U.K. DJ don LTJ Bukem.

Of course, you can get into the Halloween spirit and have your senses assaulted at the Haunted House of Yes, or your clothes ruined by the copious amounts of fake blood at Killgore: The Resurrection. All on your perfect Friday.