Tapping a Vein of Creativity

Listen up, all you music memorabilia aficionados: There are still a few tickets left to the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences’ MusiCares benefit Feb. 27 honoring Tony Bennett.

A silent auction that precedes the dinner and concert at the Universal Hilton features memorabilia from various recording artists, some of it wonderful and some of it . . . a little weird. Proceeds help NARAS’ MusiCares foundation, which provides financial and other assistance to musicians.

Up for bid is a Rolling Stones tour jacket signed by the band plus guitars from Bon Jovi and Aerosmith. There’s also a trumpet that features Arturo Sandoval’s engraved signature, and a saxophone with engraved signatures from Benny Carter, Joe Henderson and Tom Scott.

Some of Bennett’s artwork will be on the block, as will charcoal sketches by Pat Benatar. And if you’re a Johnette Napolitano fan, get your checkbook out. She’s donated her “blood prints.” That’s right, the medium she uses is her own blood.

Doubtful she’ll be getting an NEA grant any time soon.

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Opening Move: In case you were wondering if your invitation to the opening of Carson’s was lost (that’s Joe Stellini’s new Beverly Hills restaurant, which opens later this month), there isn’t going to be one.

For one, Stellini and chef Michael Shaheen (formerly of Morton’s) want to work out the usual new-restaurant kinks without too much hoopla. And no, Creative Artists Agency president Ron Meyer--Carson’s most high-profile investor because the restaurant is named for his baby daughter--isn’t planning a CAA party either.

“He wanted to have a 75th birthday party for his mother here last week, but we weren’t ready, so he had it at Chasen’s instead,” Stellini said.

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Doesn’t Translate: The passing parade on Melrose is a little easier to observe these days now that there’s a Starbucks on the avenue. The other day we were getting our usual IV drip of Sumatra when a gaggle of thirty and fortysomething male Japanese tourists stopped in. Taking a break from a day of shopping, they were showing off their purchases to one another.

Evidently, the tourists are as trendy as they wanna be. They were buying up oversized, rap-influenced pants and shirts, Dr. Martens and clothes from the Gap. But it seems as though there is one look we won’t be exporting to the Pacific Rim--grunge. There wasn’t a plaid shirt in sight.