Summer Splash : A Periodic Table of Fatal Amusements : Our professor of fun offers four itineraries guaranteed to please everyone from those who like it close to the edge to those who don’t

How many different arts events are available to cap any given summer night in Los Angeles? Trying to calculate this is like chasing the elusive last numeral in the pi equation, or investigating just how many different unused endings were conceived for “Sliver”: One begins to feel like a novice astronomer confronted by the sheer magnitude.

In a metropolis where “Amused to Death”--author Neal Postman’s critique of Western culture--isn’t just a literary theorem but the accepted way of life, then, the role of our annual “Summer Splash” supplement is to play a sort of Dr. Kevorkian, if you will--helpfully guiding you, the perplexed potential entertainee, toward the best bets for fatal amusement.

Will it be art or Arnold this June? Jazz or the Joffrey in July? Galleries or grunge? Porno for Pyros or Esa-Pekka Salonen? Monet, Mikhail or Mickey?

It feels like a sweaty Labor Day already just laboring over the lists of alternatives. So in the interest of making the season more user-friendly, we’ve come up with four different sample itineraries to keep four different types of arts buffs busier than sin. Simply choose your favorite demographic, then it’s on your mark, get set, and (as they said in “Wild Palms”) everything must go.

. . . And, well, sorry, Mr. Postman. Guess you had to be here.

ITINERARY 1: YOU LIKE TO WATUSI DON’T YOU

A rocky midyear road map for contemporary music buffs.

She’s a Maniac, Maniac, on the floor, and she’s twirling like she’s never twirled before. We’re thinking not of Jennifer Beals, of course, but rather the lustrous Natalie Merchant, lead thrush of 10,000 Maniacs, who’ll be starting off your pop summer at the Greek Theatre (June 2-3). . . . Next, catch up with erstwhile fun girl Cyndi Lauper, re-emerging from the “where are they now” file to preview her first album in four years at the Henry Fonda Theatre (June 4).

Up next is a veritable Woodstock for lingering members of the Sing Out! set, or maybe just a “Lollapalooza” for those of us already plagued by tinnitus. If I had a hammer, I’d pawn it to raise money for a two-day pass to the “Troubadours of Folk” Festival at UCLA’s Drake Stadium, which spotlights not only relative oldsters like Joni Mitchell, John Prine, Peter, Paul & Mary, Richard Thompson and balding Spinal Tap spinoffs the Folksmen but also slightly younger folkies like Peter Case and Mary-Chapin Carpenter (June 5-6).

If your preferences run less toward the acoustic and more toward the un-”Unplugged” mode, plan that weekend instead around a trip to the Olympic Velodrome at Cal State Dominguez Hills--for the first post-album appearance of Perry Farrell’s currently incendiary Porno for Pyros (June 5). . . . Having indulged America’s alternative group-of-the-moment, afford equal time to Britain’s current big thing, the glitter-reviving Suede, at the Hollywood Colonnade (June 11).

You have a whole day’s respite before it’s time to celebrate the--whoa!--20th anniversary of one of L.A.’s all-time great bands, Los Lobos, back at the Greek (June 12). . . . Unfortunately, the Lobos lay down their wolverine smoke the same night as a promising multi-act show way across town: KROQ’s “First Annual Weenie Roast and Sing-Along” at Irvine Meadows, the inevitable summertime successor to the radio station’s successful acoustic Christmas shows (June 12).

He’s hot, he’s sexy and he sings in French, sometimes: Exalted producer-cum-singer Daniel Lanois kicks off a swing of Southland shows at the Henry Fonda Theatre (June 19). . . . A month later, go digging in the dirt, shovel up your piggybank and pay any price to see one of the guys Lanois is most famous for producing, Peter Gabriel, at the Forum (July 22). . . . To carry you through the month between Lanois and Gabriel, the Wiltern presents very possibly the coolest white man alive: Leonard Cohen (July 5).

For the “post-modern” set, the largest-looming state holiday is, of course, the carnival-like “Lollapalooza,” taking place this year at the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area with a small army of acts including Arrested Development, Fishbone, Dinosaur Jr. and Alice in Chains (Aug. 7).

Then get outcher tie-die and shorts, young lovers: Neo-hippies have their heyday in August. First, there’s the Grateful Dead in a landmark appearance at the Rose Bowl, bound to be the quickest sellout of the summer (Aug. 14). . . . And, two weeks later, if the Dead actually finish jamming by then, you kids’ll want to head over to the Greek and ease your way into Labor Day by taking in the triple-bill of the Spin Doctors, Soul Asylum and Screaming Trees (Aug. 28), no?

ITINERARY 2: WHAT’S THE LOUVRE GOT TO DO WITH IT

A brief, balmy blueprint for friends of the “finer” arts.

What better place to start the summer than with gulps of unleaded fresh air and classical gas up at the Ojai Festival (June 4-6), which kicks off a weekend’s worth of varied music programs with a concert by the Kronos Quartet at the Libbey Bowl (June 4). . . . Bringing the Range Rover back into town, you’ll brave the smog and chatty wine-slurpers at the Hollywood Bowl to take in the middlebrow Playboy Jazz Festival, this year including Wynton Marsalis, Mel Torme and a reunion of Les McCann and Eddie Harris (June 12-13).

About this same time you’ll start the museum-hopping season in major earnest at the L.A. County Museum of Art with “Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of Narrative Paintings” (June 10-Aug. 22). . . . Never let it be said that just because you’re an art lover you can’t appreciate the benefits of the beach. Why, you can be a connoisseur of sun ‘n’ sand and keep that trendily pasty complexion, sans sunscreen, by strolling through “The Lure of the Water: Impressionists at the Seashore,” an exhibition of the beachside work of Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Eugene Boudin, Gustave Caillebotte and others at the Norton Simon Museum of Art (July 1-Sept. 26). . . . Still, if your tastes run toward people draped in sheets on the canvas as well as off, wait for “Visions of Antiquity: Neoclassical Figure Drawing” at the L.A. County Museum (July 22-Sept. 19).

But for those who simply must sup and sip in the great outdoors, Hollywood Bowl-going of the classical sort begins with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s season opener, as David Zinman commemorates the 100th anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death with the new-to-the-bullpen Argentine soloist Nelson Goerner performing exercises for piano (July 6). . . . When we think of Latin jazz, we think of Bartok. We’re just plain nuts, of course. But fortunately, there’ll be much more linear thinking along the same lines back at the Bowl when Esa-Pekka Salonen and trumpeter Arturo Sandoval team up with the Philharmonic for an intriguingly cross-cultural program (Aug. 3).

Just when you thought young Kenneth Branagh had somehow wangled the rights to the entire Shakespeare estate, the summer is full of more mature hands retrying their hands at the classics on stage, most notably Hal Holbrook waxing old ‘n’ regretful in “King Lear” at the Old Globe in San Diego (July 10-Aug. 29). . . . Though it’s “Much Ado” packing ‘em in at movie theaters now, many are predicting the art-house movie hit of the summer will be “Orlando,” a filmic adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s fantasy novel (opening June 23).

If you’ve ever wondered how young bodies would look dancing to the music of Prince if they weren’t wearing outfits with holes cut in the behinds, you’ll get a rare opportunity when the Joffrey Ballet performs “Billboards,” a work scored by the Purple Guy himself (!), at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (July 21-24) and then at the Orange County Performing Arts Center (July 27-29). . . . On a no less contemporary tip, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project presents the works of Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris and the more traditional Hanya Holm at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, as close as we’ll come this year to a sequel to that ballyhooed Baryshnikov-Tharp superstar tour (July 30-Aug. 1).

ITINERARY 3: OF MICE AND MENACES

Family planning for you and your own little Dennis the Mensch.

Is there life beyond Barney? To wean the tots off that simple-minded brontosaurus, parents, we suggest a quick trip to “Jurassic Park.” Sure, it’s been rated PG-13 for “intense science fiction terror.” But it’ll teach the kids that dinosaurs are really menacing carnivores after all, and you won’t have to sing that mind-numbing Barney anthem with ‘em in the car anymore (opening June 11). . . . A week later, the summer’s major littler-kid flick, “Dennis the Menace,” offers the chance to flood still more of mom and dad’s hard-earned dough into the John Hughes coffers (opening June 18). . . . And if you want your brood reduced to tears--and not just because you won’t buy ‘em Nintendo--hold out for the salt-jerking whale tale “Free Willy” (July 9).

On the theme park circuit, veteran record producer Lou Adler presents the CHIME Festival, a three-day entertainment event for the family featuring children’s performers and celebrity hosts, at Knott’s Berry Farm (June 11-13).

Museum-wise, two attractions opening the same day at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum are the summer exhibitions most likely to catch the fancy of the young Wyatt Earps in your midst after a ride at Griffith Park’s nearby merry-go-round: “The Wild West: Photographs by David Levinthal” (June 12-Sept. 9) and “Cowboy Serenade: Roots of Western Music” (June 12-Oct. 3). . . . Now that they’ve adjusted to cattle, you’ll have a more than Fair chance of keeping the young buckaroos distracted for a day with the mixture of farm animals, rides and cotton candy at the Del Mar Fair (June 15-July 4) and the Orange County Fair in Costa Mesa (July 9-25).

Three Hollywood Bowl events portend family fun: First, there’s “Disney’s Symphonic Fantasy,” featuring the Bowl Orchestra and a lot of costumed characters up from beneath the Orange curtain (June 18, 20, 21). . . . That same Bowl Orchestra takes over this year’s Independence Day festivities, full of American music and Chinese fireworks--the L.A. Philharmonic no doubt too wearied from past years of “the bombs bursting in air” to take part this time (July 2-4). . . . A few days later, the kids--but not you, sorry--are welcome back weekday mornings for the annual “Open House at the Hollywood Bowl,” a festival of performances and arts workshops for tykes ages 3 to 12 (July 5-Aug. 13).

If you’re looking for traditional stage productions suitable for the older kids in your clan to be dragged along to, possibilities include the Gershwin-heavy “Crazy for You” at the Shubert (June 4-Aug. 22); Richard Chamberlain in “My Fair Lady” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (July 7-18) or the Orange County Performing Arts Center (July 20-25); and “The Will Rogers Follies,” the more recent Broadway hit starring Keith Carradine, at the Pantages (July 14-Sept. 26).

On the concert tip, the pre-teen set may enjoy a performance by Disney recording act Craig ‘n Company at Warner Park in Woodland Hills (July 11). . . . But those with teen-aged diva wanna-bes in the house should know about two appearances by Whitney Houston at unusual pop sites: Embarcadero Marina Park South (Aug. 23) and the Cerritos Performing Arts Center (Aug. 25 and 27-28). . . . And those with daughters 12 and up should be forewarned about the clamoring ‘n’ cajoling that may lead up to the first Hollywood Bowl appearance of the much-worshiped Duran Duran. They may not be the Beatles, but at least they have bangs (Aug. 23).

ITINERARY 4: SUPER MULTICULTURAL BROS.

An advanced course for the more adventurous culture-crossing thrillseeker.

Theatrically, Anna Deavere Smith’s one-woman show “Twilight: Los Angeles 1992” addresses life in L.A. after the riots at the Mark Taper Forum (June 3-July 18). . . . But hey, there’s no one-woman show like an Annie Sprinkle one-woman show; the ex-porn star and performance artist brings her wacky, wacky “Post Post Porn Modernist” to the Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, for the truly post-timid only (June 10-19).

For a wholesome, historical breather, catch the dance spectacular “The Cotton Club Reborn” at the Wilshire Ebell (June 13), or the jazzy Louis Jordan musical tribute “Five Guys Named Moe” at the Doolittle Theatre (July 15-Sept. 25). . . . Then get heavy again and drive South--figuratively speaking--to see Cannes prize-winner Holly Hunter in the Beth Henley-written and -directed “Control Freaks” at the Met in Hollywood (July 16-Aug. 15).

Next we put you through your gallery paces, starting with “In Search of a Black Middle Class,” which will not be curated by Leonard Nimoy, but which will take place at the Museum of African American Art (June 2-July 18). . . . Then go downtown to see how actual starving artists live, work and bemoan the loss of Gorky’s at the LACE-sponsored Open Studios Tour (June 6). . . . Just for dual perspectives, use the same day to check out both the new Times Mirror Hall of Native American Cultures at the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park (opening June 6) and “Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes,” the 200-piece pre-Columbian show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (June 6-Aug. 15).

Jazz-wise, a best bet would have to be the tribute to Cannonball Adderley and Art Blakey featuring, among many others, Branford Marsalis, McCoy Tyner and Freddie Hubbard, at the Hollywood Bowl (Aug. 11). . . . On a smaller scale, Spike Lee fans and jazz futurists will want to catch upstart trumpeter Terence Blanchard, of “Malcolm X” scoring fame, at the Catalina Bar & Grill (Aug. 17-22).

Send in the critics: Pia Zadora and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles sing Stephen Sondheim at the Wiltern (June 19-20). . . . That same weekend, sports fans, it’s the Dance Roots Ethnic Dance Festival--a gathering so danceable it had to be so signified twice--at the not-entirely-deserted Los Angeles Theatre Center (June 19-20).

When director Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of the Pacific Rim-themed, allegedly Japan-bashing bestseller “Rising Sun” comes out, you can decide whether to join the picket lines or whether Kaufman’s pronounced changes in Michael Crichton’s book have made it suitably P.C. (opening July 30).

Not to neglect the written word--popular poet-novelist Alice Walker, Wanda Coleman and Egyptian novelist Nawal El Saadawi hold a discussion at the Pacific Design Center (Aug. 31); Walker also reads from her work at the Crossroads Visions Theater (Sept. 2).

How’s this for a one-month trip around the musical world: C. J. Chenier and others at the Cajun and Zydeco Festival in Long Beach (June 5-6), followed by the Reggae Sunsplash bill at the Santa Barbara County Bowl (June 4) or the Pacific Amphitheatre (June 12), and capped off by the Mariachi USA Festival (June 26).

And, having delved into the gay, feminist, African American, Native American, Mexican, Jamaican, Japanese and Cajun experiences, it’s only fair that a real multiculturalist take in some token older white gents too, Eurocentric as it might seem. We recommend a road trip to see Frank Sinatra at Las Vegas’ Desert Inn (July 14-18) or the perpetually terrific Merle Haggard closer to home at the Orange County Fair in Costa Mesa (July 22). Finally, you might even deign to catch Andrew Dice Clay at the Greek, just to prove the encompassing totality of your inclusiveness once and for all, or just to get rid of those spoiling tomatoes (Aug. 26).