Pencil This In

TREE LIGHTING: Earlier this year, New Yorkers Fountains of Wayne transformed Demetri Martin into a lonely suit living in Brooklyn in this video. Tonight the band will be rockin' around the Stuy Town Christmas tree. A reader writes in:

I just happened to see this flyer hanging up for the annual christmas tree lighting. And what the hell is this...7:30-8:00pm, FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE. Seems like it's top secret, but there are flyers everywhere.

6:45pm // Stuyvesant Town [14th St and Ave A] // Free

READING: Acknowledged for his work this year with a Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, Robert Fagles will be celebrated again tonight at The Times Center. Awarded for his work on Virgil's Aeneid, he has translated multus plus plurimum of classics, including Sophocles's Three Theban Plays and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Tonight a troupe of literary heavyweights will gather to pay tribute to the academic, poet and master translator.

7pm // The Times Center [242 W 41st St] // $15

MUSIC: If you aren't basking in the easy listening, timeless tunes of Hall & Oates tonight at Beacon Theater...it's okay (though you should watch this video to make up for it). There's a free show at the Apple Store (not the new one) that'll rock your iSocks off. The New Pornographers take the techy stage for a free night of music. Get there early, we expect an iPhone-sized line.

8pm // Apple Store SoHo [103 Prince St] // Free

THEATER: Mark Twain’s play Is He Dead? was written over a century ago but remained entirely forgotten until 2002, when a Twain scholar discovered it in a U.C. Berkeley archive. Only now is it seeing the light of day, in a lavish Broadway production starring the hilarious Norbert Leo Butz, who won a Tony for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Butz plays a struggling artist who stages his own death to drive up the price of his paintings; farcical hi-jinks and ridiculous cross-dressing ensue. According to Times critic Ben Brantley, the magic happens “once Mr. Butz puts on a pink dress [and] shows the true comic genius of which he is made. From that moment the whole production feels as if it’s been pumped through with nitrous oxide. Jokes you would swear you would never laugh at suddenly seem funny.” – John Del Signore

8pm // Lyceum Theatre [149 W 45th St] // Ticket prices vary

Photo of last year's tree via Marianne O'Leary's Flickr.