Lady Day

Jack?e Harry is in town and you're as excited as if you'd just heard from your long-lost, madcap girlfriend, the one who's always down for a glass of wine and a good time. You can't wait to see her. Even if it means driving 30 miles through a blinding ice storm to catch her poignant performance as Billie Holiday in the Delaware Theatre Company's production of Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill. The day before you catch her on stage as the world's most influential jazz singer, Harry sits in the darkened theater and shares tales about Philadelphia, where she spent summers with relatives while growing up in Harlem.

A Detroit singer and actress named Miche (pronounced Mickey) Braden has brilliantly managed what had seemed to me a next-to-impossible assignment in the area premiere of Lanie Robertson's "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill," which opened Friday evening at the People's Light and Theatre Co. complex in Malvern. Braden, appearing in the Attic Theatre production of this sensitive work, which PL&T has imported from Motown virtually in toto, doesn't particularly resemble jazz singer Billie Holiday physically or vocally (except for a subtle nod to her melismatic phrasing and a rough catch in the voice characteristic of her opening note in a song)

Kaitlin Ebner, a Millersville University student, came to shop for a birthday present - a semiautomatic pistol for self-defense. Her mother, Janet Ebner, was there for a revolver. Debbie Bond, a mother of two from Atlantic City and a first-time gun-wielder, did a little target shooting. "It was awesome," she said, holding a shredded cardboard target. Yesterday was Ladies' Day at the Lower Providence Rod and Gun Club, where about 80 women got some basic lessons in firearm use, archery and fly casting.

Independence Day Eve? That'd be Lady Gaga Day. The Taiwanese city of Taichung declared Sunday Lady Gaga Day to honor the postmodern, post-goth, para-disco, Pre-Raphaelite leader. Why is she such a hero to the people? Did her Gagaship bring lasting peace between Taiwan and mainland China? Close: She performed - for the very first time - in the island nation. NBC says the streets were lined with flags (and paved with gold?), there were discounts at hotels for folks dressed as Gaga and a show by Tai Ya tribal children.

DALLAS - In just the last few days, she has danced with cheering schoolchildren, chatted with troops, swapped ideas with busy parents, and engaged in a friendly cooking competition with stars from Top Chef . Michelle Obama is on a national tour to promote the second anniversary of her campaign against childhood obesity. The images have been disarming, intriguing, and nonpolitical - just the type of thing her husband's reelection campaign can't get enough of. Michelle Obama's travels offer fresh evidence of what an outsize role she has assumed in the public eye and how powerful a political ally a first lady can be. She said she was "incredibly enthusiastic" about making the case for her husband's reelection.

The narcs busted Billie Holiday twice in Philadelphia. As she says in Lanie Robertson's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, in previews last week and opening tomorrow at the Wilma, "I been arrested all over the country but Philly's the only place ever made me a candidate for federal housing. " The first time was in 1947. She was 28 years old and one of the hottest jazz singers in the country. She'd sung with the likes of Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Artie Shaw, in that tantalizing voice of hers that soared like smoke over the music, and she'd made a movie with Duke Ellington and she'd cut dozens of records.

A weird tale of a Vietnam vet's descent into madness and a British crime drama top this week's list of new videos. Also on tap: Cher as a self-involved mother and Clint Eastwood as a long-suffering cop. JACOB'S LADDER (1990) (LIVE) $92.95. 116 minutes. Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello, Macaulay Culkin. A psychodrama about a Vietnam veteran who thinks he is seeing demons, going crazy, or both. Robbins (in an understated, undiffused performance) stars as Jacob "Jake" Singer, a Brooklyn letter carrier whose reality disintegrates in this taut, metaphysical mystery.

Play it again, Jimmy. Jimmy Rudolph, who provides entertainment on the grand piano in Founders at the Hotel Atop the Bellevue, Broad and Walnut Streets, keeps a record of the most requested songs from patrons and tabulates the play list four times a year. At the top of his latest hit list is that vintage gem "As Time Goes By. " Rounding out Rudolph's top 10 are "Memory," "Unforgettable," "The Wind Beneath My Wings," "New York, New York," medley from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Left My Heart In San Francisco," "Send in the Clowns," "Moon River" and "Somewhere My Love.

If Malvern's 1992 edition of "A Christmas Carol" opens tomorrow, can Princeton's be far behind? Uh, about a dozen days behind, speaking in calendar terms, but quite a different breed of Dickens if one is to take press agentry to account. Would you believe Jacob Marley's ghost whizzing around the proscenium on a wire credited to "Flying by Foy"? In Malvern, the People's Light and Theatre Co. is all set to go with its Peter DeLaurier adaptation of the Dickens classic. It's the second time around for DeLaurier's concept, though the Malvernites promise a "newly designed production" using "modern theater technology to depict authentic Victoriana of the early-to-mid-19th century.

The Phantom let them do it. That pretty well sums up why Electric Factory Concerts, long the dominant local promoter of rock shows, has made a strong move into theater. The Phantom is what Allen Spivak, the Electric Factory partner most involved with theater, calls the musical The Phantom of the Opera. The profits generated by Electric Factory's long national tour of the show - Ken Hill's version of the Gaston Leroux novel, not the long-running Broadway version - whetted the firm's appetite for producing and presenting theater, and helped fund further theatrical ventures.