David Mamet Rolls In His Grave* Crying, “Oy, Where Are The Adults These Days?”

Broadway producers look for that lucrative tween market, which obviously has more cash than it knows what to do with:

For Broadway producers, 10-year-old Jamie Carroll looks like an ideal theatergoer: she downloads scores off of iTunes, is a fervent proselytizer when she likes something and has lots of friends, two of whom she brought along to a recent Saturday matinee of “Legally Blonde.” “A lot of my friends say it’s the best musical they’ve ever seen,” she said.

Maybe. But Jamie’s father and her 14-year-old brother would not join them, considering the show too girly. Even her mother, Tacey Carroll, was only present as a chaperon: “This is a little more for them,” she said, echoing several other mothers at the theater, one of whom even dropped off her young charges and went shopping.

And that’s the rub for Broadway producers, for whom teenage and tween girls have become the demographic of the moment, wooed by marketing campaigns and featured as central characters in a flurry of shows in development, including “13,” about a teenager from New York who is transplanted to Indiana; “Princesses,” which is basically “High School Musical” meets “Gossip Girl”; and a musical adaptation of the movie “Clueless.”

Increasingly, though, some worry that the sugar-and-spice enthusiasm may be misplaced, because while teenagers and tweens may be helpful in creating a hit, they are far from enough to ensure one. For that, you still need grown-ups — lots of paying grown-ups — to want to come to a show.

*Just kidding, Mr. Mamet! We can’t wait for that Duran Duran thing to end to see your next play staged!

Then Things Got So Bad, He Started Wondering How Members Of The Bush Cabinet Would Respond In His Situation

Hey, at least you got a book out of it:

A new book by a New York City Teaching Fellows dropout raises questions about recent changes in the public schools — in particular, the alternative certification program the author quit.

The author, Dan Brown, joined the Department of Education program, which pulls high-achieving young people and career-changers into public schools for two-year teaching stints, in 2003. His “The Great Expectations School,” which is climbing the sales charts, recounts why he quit after just one year, a resignation following what he describes as so much stress that he had to begin taking medication to stave off premature hair loss.

. . .

Mr. Brown called his experience “triage.” One lesson, he said, was: “Don’t smile for the first several months of school.” Another instructed him to post a public schedule of what would be taught each day.

None of this, he writes, helped him understand how to keep his rotating roster of 26 (and sometimes more) fourth-graders from throwing their chairs, punching each other in the face, and throwing frequent tantrums.

At one point he portrays himself as so at sea that he turns to journalist Ron Suskind’s biography of a former U.S. treasury secretary, “The Price of Loyalty,” for management ideas. “What would Paul O’Neill do?” he asks himself about his classroom.

How Many Tickets Could You Possibly Get . . .

. . . to have enough to turn them into art is the real question:

A Brooklyn sculptor has found a new use for the parking and sanitation tickets he’s received -he’s turned them into protest art.

Using the tickets, along with foam and wire, Osaretin Ighile has fashioned what he calls “Mayor’s Bust.”

The likeness of Mayor Bloomberg chomping on a stogie was displayed on the steps of City Hall for an hour yesterday.

“This was created out of my personal experience. I live and work in Brooklyn, and these are tickets that I have gotten over time. Most of them unwarranted,” said Ighile, a Nigerian immigrant.

First You Co-Opt Painting Like A Lunatic, Banging Junk And Generally Making A Mess From The Pre-School Set, Then You Teach It To Them

Some parents send their children to Montessori school. Others, the Blue Man Group:

Bright colors, fun music . . . blue heads? While those are all staples at Blue Man Group shows, only the first two will be common elements at the theater group’s preschool next door to its 434 Lafayette St. theater, the Blue Man Creativity Center Early Childhood Program. Gearing up for its first year of operation for 2-through-4-year-olds, the center pulls from the sights and sounds of the Blue Man Group, focusing on “sensory tactile experiences” that help children grow emotionally and creatively.

“We draw inspiration from the educational philosophies that children do some of their most important learning through play,” the center explains on its Web site, theblueschool.net.

With a logo that incorporates a splash of paint, an electrical plug and a DNA double helix and a Web site that includes everything from a white paper on tot conflict resolution to a link to the Blue Man Group’s online create-your-own-art game, the program looks to address the needs of the whole child by way of creative expression. According to the school’s philosophy, such expression is a means of exploring and understanding both one’s own emotions and those of others.

. . .

The Blue School expects to eventually run through the eighth grade.

Exactly When Did Mini Storage Become Edgy?

Apparently the thinly veiled furvert campaign lost its punch and now those mini-storage pimps are experimenting with a more provocative strategy:

A Manhattan Mini Storage billboard on Manhattan’s West Side Highway is again stirring up both opprobrium and approbation.

A large sign at 44th Street and Twelfth Avenue shows a wire hanger with the words “Your closet space is shrinking as fast as her right to choose.”