Your Week: Politics, the Pennant Chase and Scissorhands

MONDAY ... While Plays & Players Theatre on Delancey offers a series of 10-minute, sneak-peek previews of area shows, including The Players Club of Swarthmore's A Few Good Men and Allens Lane's Bee-luther-hatchee, most of your favorite performers will be at the Crystal Tea Room for the 2008 Barrymore Awards, Philly's version of the Tonys, complete with black-tie and the red carpet. While I was recently told that I am "way, way off", I still feel pretty confident about my predictions. If your version of the theater involves a big screen and popcorn, the Troc is showing Iron Man. Chamber music fans should join 1807 & Friends for a night of Haydn and Verdi at the Academy of Vocal Arts.

TUESDAY ... In case you've had enough debating, noted sculptor Joyce Scott chats it up at the Art Alliance, while meatball-maker Marcella Hazan does so at the Free Library. For further proof of the End of Times, look no further than the Nick Cave show at the Electric Factory, for which tickets are still inexplicably available.

WEDNESDAY ... In Glenside, a Stills-less David Crosby and Graham Nash will play earnestly at the Keswick while the Peter Nero-led Pops play pleasingly (it's Broadway tunes, after all) at Verizon Hall for their season opener. And for those of you who can't get enough of political campaigns, Mary Patel and Joe Barber screen their documentary Electile Dysfunction, which explores Casey vs. Santorum 2006, at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute.

THURSDAY ... While the Phils annihilate the Dodgers at Citizens Bank Park, try not to snooze through John Sebastian and David Grisman at the Kimmel. And for all you people of a certain age who now have kids who, for whatever reason, will not be in school on Thursday at 2 p.m. (I don't know, are you allowed to go to the movies when you are supposed to be celebrating Yom Kippur?), the Colonial Screens 1990 fave Edward Scissorhands.

Be sure to check back on Friday for weekend picks.