Really, now, is no work of "art" safe with Running With Scissors (RWS) lurking in the streets? While last year saw New Orleans' campiest, draggiest crew lampoon such cultural touchstones as Sordid Lives and Bad Seed (which earned much-deserved awards for Brian Peterson and directors Richard Read and Flynn De Marco), this year already has one victim in The Birds spoof The Gulls (written by Dust Orphans legend and simpatico camper Ryan Landry). What next? Glad you asked: Valley of the Dolls, that Jacqueline Susann chronicle of the good old days of babes, booze, pills and bad seeds of another gender. This staged reading, which doubles as an RWS fundraiser, includes Peterson as the WASPy Anne Welles, Dorian Rush as ab-fab model Jennifer North, De Marco as All-About-Eve actress Neely O'Hara and so many more: Roy Haylock, Marcy Hesseling, Jim Jeske, Dane Rhodes, Sean Patterson, Jack Long, Todd Schaeffer and Ricky Graham (as "Broadway broad" Helen Lawson. So, um, yes, they're goin' fer the belly laughs, they are.) It will be interesting to see what co-writers Read and De Marco do with this script, adapted from the novel and Mark Robson's 1967 film that starred Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate, Patty Duke and Lee Grant. (Some clips from the film will be dropped in as needed.) Guests are encouraged to go for the door prizes and dress up in their fave cocktail-party attire from that lost decade. Tickets $20.

8 p.m. Wednesday, June 29
One Eyed Jacks, 615 Toulouse St., 606-9903; www.norunningwithscissors.com