It’s Buy, Buy, Buy ‘LA Alive!’

If to live is to spend, and the greatest joy of spending is to buy the unbuyable, then the weekend auction at the Music Center’s “LA Alive!” black-tie gala was to die for.

“Our goal was to have the kind of luxury items you can’t go out and just pay for,” said co-executive chair Joy Fein.

Some items were adventures more than luxuries, such as a night on patrol with a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter or pit passes to the Indianapolis 500.

But a week at Wimbledon with center court seats or a few days at the Villa D’Este on Italy’s Lake Como certainly qualify as luxury.

Falling somewhere between adventure, luxury and a thousand points of hype would be lunch for 20 at I. Magnin with high-powered Washington socialite Georgette Mosbacher.

Entertainer Barry Manilow (backed by Denny Le Roux’s band) was featured at the sold-out gala in the Grand Hall of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“Everybody usually says, ‘Oh no, not another dinner--can’t I just send a check?’ ” said Burt Sugarman, who chaired the gala with his wife, “Entertainment Tonight’s” Mary Hart. “We wanted to do something where people would be glad they got dressed and drove Downtown.”

Assisting in making the 550 guests happy were executive co-chairs Fein and Anne Johnson, and LA Alive! co-chairs Joni Smith, Deborah Tellefsen, Lili Zanuck, Pam Mullin, Mary Ann Mobley, Susie Field, Peggy Parker Grauman, Terry Stanfill, Keith Kieschnick, Jennifer Diener and Diane Morton.