Lissa Townsend Rodgers Rants

Nominees for the 81st Annual Academy Awards

The nominees for the 81st annual Academy Awards have been announced. Thus i must discuss....

Best Actor
Eh, i'm not bummed about DiCaprio not making the cut, simply because he'd give the Academy a more people-friendly alternative to Penn or Rourke. Ditto my happiness at Eastwood not showing up either--even he would admit he's not that great of an actor and McCain has already proven that 2008 was not the year of the angry old man. The nomination and the Golden Globe was the award for poor, addled ol' Mickey, which means Penn may get this as a double-makeup nod. You know: "We're sorry Tom Hanks has so many more of these than you do and, uh, we're sorry about Proposition 8." Back-patting ensues. Unless they go Langella, which would be the easy choice--he's known as a brilliant actor, has been for decades, but he's done enough hackwork to make the Academy and its denizens feel comfortable. And he was probably the most smoking hot Dracula ever. The movie was so-so, but my mom saw the play (also with sets and costumes by Edward Gorey) and has never gotten over it.

Best Actress
Winslet is obviously a lock. I mean, what, they're gonna give it to one of the Vogue/Elle/Harper's/Glamour covergirls or waste it on Streep, who, i believe, keeps them in her garden shed at this point. Melissa Leo, no way, because i recall making a bad indie movie with her about 15 years ago and she was a total "I am a great artiste" annoying bitch. And then she got to make a movie with Benicio Del Toro so i kind of hate her for that too. It'd be fine if she had been cool, but since she was annoying it makes me kind of jealous. Although i dunno how much of that is also the eternal "what if," as in what if i had continued on with my studies at Tisch at NYU and done the whole actress thing (and at least if I'd kept my major, i wouldn't have lost the scholarship) and maybe i'd be Chloe Sevigny right now. I say her because we have the same birthday and lived int he same neighborhood and at least two people that I know of have muttered something about how that would've been the kind of career I'd have had. Nice to think of as i sit here thumping away with a cold in the ghettos of Las Vegas. But, hey, i fight the good fight and i make more of a difference in people's lives than a dozen appearance in critically acclaimed independent films ever could... But yay Kate and her bodacious ta-tas. She is more lovely and talented than i could ever dream of being, so i envy her nothing. And she's pretty overdue herself.

Best Supporting Actor
Ledger gets the Peter Finch Memorial Best Supporting Dead Actor Award. The Academy continues to ignore Robert Downey Jr. Even when he's not in blackface.

Best Supporting Actress
Who are these people? As long as it's not Marisa Tomei, who may deserve this one, but did not deserve her last one, so we're all even here. (Speaking of which, please tell me i will not be forced to praise Mira Sorvino next year.) So this can go two ways. Supporting actress is traditionally the "pretty young thing" award, so Amy Adams. Or, go with one of the Black chicks 'cause, y'know, Obama and all.

Best Foreign Film
I hope for The Baader-Meinhof Complex, because i've always been a fan. Anti-fascist, anti-capitalist terrorists with leather trenchcoats and a cool shag haircuts. In Berlin, no less. If that is not the dream of every radical-politics art-punk teen, what is?

Best Original Song
This will obviously go to Peter Gabriel for the WALL-E number, which I guess is okay. However, the presence of two Slumdog tunes means we'll get at some big Bollywood numbers (Take that Debbie Allen!) and M.I.A. will get blasted as worst-dressed, since i'm sure she'll be doing her usual over-the-top 80's neon ensemble. Entertaining, but i do wish she'd just get into some super-glam Galliano/Dior.

Best Picture
Probably freaking Benjamin Button because it's the only big-studio epic on there. Besides, Slumdog has brown people, Milk has gays, Frost/Nixon has intellectuals, The Reader has Nazis, you do the math.

This Week's Line

This Week's Diva... No, Wait, That's No Diva
Yes, we're all deeply tired of Sarah Palin's sorry ass at this point, but i did want to address one thing. Many disgruntled Republicans have complained of Palin's "diva" behavior. Now, i'm glad they specified that it was her behavior and not her actual state. For example, you would never say Maria Callas was acting like a diva. You'd say she was being a diva. Which Palin most certainly is not, regardless of what she may pretend. Now, it's not just her appalling policies (book banning, choice depriving, shooting wolves from freakin' airplanes fer chrissake) or her fascist tendencies--those have never stopped me from admiring the echt-divaness of Evita Peron--it's that she's just not special enough. Put it this way: She may come from the woods but she is no force of nature.
Refusing to answer an interviewer's questions while blithely continuing your monologue is very diva-ish behavior, but not when the speech you were so desperate to make comes out like a recitation of someone else's college freshman notes. No, that would be the time for the wit, eloquence and self-assurance of a Tallulah Bankhead. And can you imagine anyone more distant from Sarah Palin than Tallulah Bankhead? The winking, the "you betchas," they shriek of a desire to appear ordinary that no true diva would even recognize, much less pursue. And, frankly, she's condescending to her audience and divas do not do that. They seduce, they berate, they adore, they ignore, they uplift, they cajole, they attack, but they do not condescend. And you can be down-home without being like that. I have seen Dolly Parton from the fifth row and you, lady, are no Dolly Parton.
Another reason she's not a diva is, truly, she's really just a teenager. As my friend Laura astutely put it, "she's like the mean girl" and indeed she is. As far as I understand it, the woman governed her state like she was in high school: Rewarding those who she likes today, punishing those she doesn't. Add in the desperate need for attention and the childish idea that being a politican means someone else picks up the tab for your trips, your kids' trips, your designer wardrobe (And how the hell did she spend over $150,000?! I mean, I know those suits weren't Prada! I saw no Alexander McQueen ballgown!), and anything else you might desire. In this respect, she exemplifies the very traits that men always said were the reasons women should not take political office. Emotional, narcissistic, greedy, she makes me ashamed of my gender and my nation, since I know, you know, even Bill O' Reilly knows that we have some truly outstanding women in our government. But, no, we gotta play amateur night at the beauty pageant with this bimbo who is still hoodwinking 'em that cunning and ambition are the same as intelligence and accomplishment. Publicly, people still act as though, as long as Palin can string three sentences together without crying or throwing up on herself, she's making a smashing success. Our expectations of her are that low. And low expectations never made a diva.
One thing, though: I will give her credit for the hair. That Breakfast at Tiffany's beehive she was sporting at the beginning was fun and I also enjoyed the Raquel Welch/Miss September 1971 sex kitten 'do she wore at the Republican Governors' Convention. But, beyond that, Ms. Palin is another ranting fascist blowup doll of the Far Right and talk radio airbags and Fox News blowhards will continue to babble about her brilliance and the media's sexism alll the while fantasizing about her dressed in leather, pissing in their mouths.
My only regret is that Hunter S. Thompson did not live to eviscerate this woman in prose.

This Week's Taste Sensation
Well, i have resumed my purisut of the ultimate caffeine experience--Yes, i did go green tea for a while there, but that shit just doesn't cut it when you're under deadline. Thus, the Starbucks Doubleshot Energy Drink. not only coffee, but ginseng, guarana, and vitamins. Yes, i know all that's missing from that combo is cocaine. The taste, as you can imagine, is a bit on the strong side, so the SDED is best enjoyed over ice in a pint glass. Out of the flavors, I prefer the mocha, although vanilla is nice too (the coffee-flavored one is just redundant). I also hear that it's quite good spiked with double espresso vodka, but I haven't gotten to that yet. Surprisingly.

This Week's Inspirational Website
So, I used up all my unused Delta frequent flier miles on magazine subscriptions. I've been getting the Economist each week--and actually read it too, thank you and did you know the impending recession will not be hitting the Third World as hard as the first and second so the burgeoning economies may actually catch up a little. But each month I receive a stack of W, Harper's Bazaar, and Lucky and ususally pick up Vogue on the newsstand as long as the starlet on the cover is not too objectionable. This is only further feeding my reawakened desire to dress up (or at least dress better) that has set in over the past year or so. I fret about the amount of black and grey in my closet and that i don't accessorize enough, as well as being even later for absolutely everything. (In good news, though, i bought myself this dress for my birthday.) Also aiding and abetting this process is Deep Glamour, a website that fusses over Madonna's purses and Michalle Obama's dresses, but also the sluttiness of Disney Princesses and the politcal incorrectness of WWI-era poster art. Good stuff.

This Week's Quote
“Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.”--Charles Bukowski

This Week's Netflix
The more I think about it, the more i wasn't crazy about it. I've always been really fond of Sweeney Todd (Yes, I used to have the original cast album. Thank you.), I even made my parents take me to see an in-the-round Broadway production when I was in high school that was quite awesome. But the movie, really, is far too pretty and sanitized--it just isn't grim enough. Sweeney Todd is like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as written by Charles Dickens. Not a Cure video. I feel this is largely because Depp & Bonham-Carter were both too young and pretty and sympathetic. Like that whole at-the-sea-quence that seemed to be mostly devoted to getting her dolled up in Gothic Lolita drag. (I mean, she looks fabulous. I love the tatty Victorian outfits. But Mrs. Lovett can not wear a smoky eye and a push-up bra!) And they eliminated my favorite number, where the villain flogs himself while singing hymns and ogling his lovely ward through the peephole.

All I could think was this: "Dammit, if they'd gotten Tom Waits and Marianne Faithful, this would be the greatest film in history." Think of it. Marianne's half-"screw you," half-rueful "Worst Pies in London" (And, on her, the smudged mascara and the hoisted tits would work.) matched only by the chilling glory that would be Waits' "Epiphany" number. (Depp was good and all, but I know Waits' "Care for a shave?" would make the blood freeze in your veins. Remember his unsettling performance as Renfield in the otherwise kinda excruciating Dracula? Now that was a movie they should've gotten Helena Bonham-Carter for.) And, oh, their cannibalism duet would be so gravelly and witty and perfectly paced. I can see and hear it all so clearly in my mind and, thus, this version--while nice and all--frustrates me even more. Honestly, most of the people who loved this movie seem like they'd love pretty much anything by Tim Burton and/or with Johnny Depp. Who, at this point, i am completely over. I mean, great vision and all from Burton, but he's been working the same schtick for the past 15 years. "But you're not counting Planet of the Apes," you say. I know, because i really liked Ed Woodand i want to do the man some kind of favor. (Did you know Ed Wood was from Poughkeepsie, just like myself? I'd say there was something in the water that generated schlock conniesseurs if we weren't about the only ones. Vive le cinema mauvais!)

This Week's Video
Ah, In Search Of. How i loved you as a child. How i love you still because Atlantis, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, and Leonard Nimoy never get old.

Austin

Yeah, Austin. People had always told me how much I'd like it and, being slightly flush with cash after all the work and the tax return and all, i figured i'd take my first trip for no reason in many years--no wedding, no funeral, no family to visit, i just wanna go.

Our first big adventure was going to see Loretta Lynn at Stubb's backyard. Now, i'm not a huge Loretta girl, but she's old, it's Stubb's, we're in Texas, i mean, what the hell. And she was there with her big hair and her big blue dress with mutton sleeves and petticoats and sparkles just singin' her heart out. Except when one of the approximately 10,000 members of the Lynn family would take the mic. First, she did a duet with her son that wasn't exactly, um, appropriate, if you catch my drift. Then some other relative in the backup singers quintet stepped up and they all spent some time doing gospel songs and what was pretty much watching the Oak Ridge Boys sing the Eagles. A capella. Then some granddaughter who looked like Nicole Ritchie came out and sang and shouted about "Loretta Lynn in the hizz-ay!" And i said to myself, "Oh. No." We left shortly thereafter.

Another nice thing about Austin is the cheeseburgers. Despite all the barbecue and Tex-Mex, it's a very cheesburger-oriented town. Actually, as soon as i arrived in the hotel room, i went across the street to get a bottle of Tito's vodka (when in Rome...) and a cheeseburger at Sandy's. Then, of course, my other hotel was conveniently down the street from Hut's. Hut's has a marvelous vintage interior with old football pennants for every NFL team and pinups and black-and-white checked floors, where I sat on a nice chrome-and-vinyl swivel stool, ate a Mr. Blue burger (Blue cheese, swiss, bacon, dressing--I would've had the Ritchie Valens, but they weren't serving tomatoes.) and watched the Celtics absolutely humilate the Lakers. Which made me happy because i hate the Lakers even more than i hate the Yankees. Austin is also a big town for sno-cones. And they had a cupcake stand, but it was closed when we stopped by.

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, which is part bar, part movie theatre and completely awesome. I spent a joyous afternoon there, watching The Black Angels with basket of fries and glass of vodka before me on a convenient little rail-table complete with waiter to bring refills. They should have these everywhere. How they keep it going is by running a two-screen house with one screen reserved for pack 'em in, middle of the road fare, like Sex and the City with a cosmo cocktail special (Attended by lots of pairs of women with gym memberships and highlights--given that it was Pride Weekend, i was hoping some were fierce lipsticks, but they were just your standard bunch of chicks doing the career between the sorority and the wedding.) and the other side is stuff like The Big Lebowski white Russian fest or, the event i attened, a series of screenings of trashy 60's biker movies in honor of the Republic of Texas biker rally that was also happening that weekend. The Black Angels, however, was a very, very bad film, even by my bad-meaning-good standards. It threw up some interesting ideas about black-white biker gang tension and a cop playing the two gangs against each other (The kind of dense plotwork we'll leave to pseudo-Shakespearean masterpieces like Switchblade Sisters.) but generally just laid there like warm crap with an incomprehensible plot, unappealing cast and downright ridiculous lite-jazz soundtrack.

Also, there is a Johnny Cash theme bar, called the Mean-Eyed Cat, which is located in a tiny building that used to be a chainsaw repair shop--most of the bar itself is outside, a series of porches strewn with salvaged vintage lawn furniture spray-stenciled with things like "You wonder why I always dress in black/Why you never see bright colors on my back" and "Three feet high and rising." Actually, a lot of the bars tend sprawl out into backyards and balconies and lanais and courtyards and decks, especially the Jackalope, which seems to go on forever.

Finally, there are the unofficial mascots of Austin, the million-plus bats that live under Ann Richards Bridge. Every evening, they come swirling out in an endless parade of flying mice. It is, for lack of a better term, completely boss.

So, as they say, if you love it so much, why don't you marry it? Well, there are two things Austin has lots of that I cannot stand: humidity and hippies. Seriously, i hate them both and having both things at the same time, especially in a state known for its firearms. I'd just go ripping nuts and--shit! Wasn't it in Austin that the guy went up to the top of the clock tower at the University and snipered, like, two-dozen people?! Yes--it was. August of 1966. I know it turned out that the guy had a brain tumor and everything, but now i'm thinking the hippies and the humidity helped.

This Week's Line

Sorry I've been gone so long. I actually wound up with a bunch of writing work that kept me chained to my computer for about six weeks--except for the brief periods in New York City and Austin, about which more later. Anyway, without further diddling....

This Week's Schadenfreude
So, when I was in Austin, I spent a delightful bit of time at Hut's cheeseburgers, one of many vintage-neon, Eisenhower-era burger, well, huts in Austin. Hut's also has a marvelous vintage interior with old pennants for every NFL team and pinups and black-and-white floors, where I sat on a nice chrome-and-vinyl swivel stool, ate a Mr. Blue burger (Blue cheese, swiss, bacon, dressing--I would've had the Ritchie Valens, but they weren't serving tomatoes.) and watched the Celtics win game six against the Lakers. Which made me happy because I hate the Lakers even more than I hate the Yankees. As soon as that asswipe Kobe Bryant won MVP, I knew it was just a matter of time, he would utterly fucking collapse and, lo, the rejoicing. And it was fine to watch everyone's fucking favorite-ass team get not only beaten, but completely humiliated, whipped by the second-biggest margin in championship history. I mean, 39 points!? That's brutal. And it was gratifying to see Kevin Garnett, who you know had pretty much accepted that he was one of those guys who was never going to win a championship, win one was nice. One of the most genuinely touching things i've seen recently was the moment about 90 seconds after the final buzzer when some sideliner began interviewing and you could see it suddenly it hit him that he actually now had The Ring and he began yelling "Anything is possible!" while simultaneously laughing and crying and holding his new "2008 Champsions" baseball cap over his face so one could see it, before being bear-hugged by mentor Bill Russell. And Paul Pierce, who came back to the NBA after being stabbed 11 times (did not miss a game that season, either) and back to the finals after spraining his knee, is a warrior and, hey, give Ray Allen one too! Nice threes! Although it does piss me off that now half of the total NBA championships belong to either the Lakers or the Celtics. Someone who always roots for the underdog and, what's more, innately mistrusts if not downright hates any top dog, cannot like that--honestly, i was rooting for New Orleans. But, hey, i'll take what i can get.

This Week's Quote
"The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious."--Lester Bangs

This Week's Video
"My guitar is totally out of tune because my guitar is for kicking." Oh, the nostalgia. I cannot bear it. But, go ahead, witness this ancient British news video about the Jesus and Mary Chain. The feedback was loud and our hair was uncombed and we all wore sunglasses and threw bottles at the stage and our hearts were young and gay.

This Week's Diva
Linda Evangelista. I had almost forgotten. My very favorite 80's-90's supermodel. You can keep your Kates, your Christys, your Naomis, your Cindys and your Tyras, Linda was the shit. First off, she looked more like a vintage Barbie doll or 50's mannequin than any human being ever has. Two she was the absolute protean ideal of the haughty supermodel. It were La Evangelista who first said, "We don't wake up for less than $10,000" and also said, "I have become bigger than the product."
Mr. Diva, the original diva desginator, adds: "While being Kyle MacLachlan's babymama before he morphed into a Berkeley dyke and one-upping one dozen confections in a George Michael video. Including George HimSelf AND the Thierry Mugler motorcycle dress. And looking Elsa Klensch right in the eye backstage at the Gaultier Hassidic show and barking "NO PHOTOS PLEASE" before ripping open the cameraman's shutter to expose his film before getting him, though not Elsa, banned from the proceedings." [The fact-checker in me would like to add that actually the father of her son is an "unnamed prominent New York architect," which is even better in a sort of Dorian Leigh/Fountainhead way. But they did meet--At a Barney's shoot! Can this get any more Anne Welles?!--back when he was still Agent Cooper and shared a stunning duplex in Sohofor several years.]
What do I love even more about her? That this woman started out competing in beauty pageants. In Canada. And losing. I mean, can you imagine her standing up there with the rest of the competitors for Miss Ontario? Although I can imagine her standing there afterward, soundlessly clapping, smiling without her eyes and thinking "I will go to New York City and become the international supermodel and fuck you all in the ear with a donkey's dick"--okay, that last part is me. And what would have happened if she'd won? Would she have married the local football hero who became manager of North Bay's second-most successful used car dealership? Which then begs the rhetorical question: If Linda Evangelista never leaves Ontario, is she still Linda Evangelista? The mind wobbles. On Louboutin heels, no less.
Nowadays, there is no dating of greasy cokehead rockers, no yogawear companies, no celly-whipping, no furniture collection, no talk show. No, that would involve effort and that would be vulgar. Linda just stays at home with her piles of money and her baby, occasionally descending from her penthouse to be on the cover of Vogue. Like this divine shoot that reminded me of her to begin with. Really: Does anyone work that Tippi Hedren/Babe Paley look better? And could anyone else wear that ridiculous hat with such an utterly convincing expression of "Yes, I know I look beautiful?" No. That's why she's a diva.

This Week's Website
As long as we're on the subject of the past ('cause, damn, the present sucks), let's throw this one out there too. The New York Songlines: A block-by-block, building-by-building of what is and what was in New York City.

This Week's Taste Sensation
Yup, we're back at the Sonic again. Now, one of the culinary things i miss most about New York City (The rest of my top 5: The papaya-beef salad at Pho Viet Huong, the lentil soup at Bereket, the cheeseburgers at Corner Bistro and the Sofia pizza at Sal's/Rosario's.) is the coffee-chocolate milkshakes i get at Ray's Candy Store on Avenue A. Now, those are just coffee frozen yogurt, chocolate frozen yogurt, milk and malt powder, but the Sonic java chiller has actual coffee in it. You can even get extra coffee of you want. And i'm pretty immune to most of the things that have insidious effects on normal human beings like nicotine, ex, true love and belief in a benevolent supreme deity, but one of these things will have me zipping like a hummingbird until 3 a.m. And i am not saying that like it's a bad thing, but i'm just saying be prepared. Anyway, besides the effect of extreme alertness, they're also delicious, all mocha and coffee and cold in a 110-degree Vegas summer.

This Week's Tragedy
Bo Diddley is still dead. Who do you love, indeed.

This Week's Line

This Week's Pleasant Surprise
Well, actually it was a few weeks ago, but i didn't get around to telling you about it then. Anyway, the New York Dolls. Yes, we all know who they are. Or have a vague idea. But few of us have actually heard them, or else we've only heard "Personality Crisis" or "Jet Boy Jet Girl" on a bar jukebox somewhere--and, no, it's not even the "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" you're thinking of, you're thinking of the one by Elton Motello. Which has the same music as Plastic Bertrand's "Ca Plan Pour Moi" (which my shitty punk band used to cover), but that is another story. Anyway, yes, the New York Dolls: Another great founding punk band we won't quite admit how not entirely familar we are with.
But, as an old New York rocker chick, although my heyday was a good two score years after the Dolls', i felt obliged to go check them out when they played at Jillian's recently. Or what remains of them--with only David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain present (both on stage and on earth), they're dropping like Ramones. Reunion act with over half the band replacements? (Can you imagine having an audition for fake Johnny Thunderses in New York City? The line would go on for blocks.) Well, i didn't expect that much. But even if i'd had expectations, the Dolls would have exceeded them. To put it in the parlance of the realm: They kicked ass. The songs were great--especially the cover of Bo Diddley's "Pills" and it was definitely a very high-energy, shake your ass kind of vibe: Just like i'd heard it was back in 1973. And it was nice to see a little New York flavor. Would any West Coast band open their set with a recording of "Vissi d'Arte" from Tosca? Or dedicate a song to Malcolm Lowry? No, there's no value on intellect out here. Back East, even the thugs and the junkies tried to have a touch of the poet; out here everyone acts like the only institution worth getting an education in is jail... but i digress. And i don't know why I was surprised: The Stooges were fucking awesome too.

This Week's Find on the Used Bookshelves
Found at the North Las Vegas Salvation Army with its 1964 dust jacket still intact, we have Elegance by Genevive Antoine Darrieux. This book represents one of my favorite genres of weird book finds: Cold War-era guides to femininity. These books are full of weird advice on everything from eyebrow plucking to jelwery selection to girdle fitting to packing a suitcase to planning a dinner party to douching. Some of it's powerfully outdated, some of it remains surprisingly useful a half-century or so later.
Author Darrieux is an intensely uptight French Couturier--the look on her immaculately maquillaged face in the author photo is enough to give lessons on bitch to any drag queen or R&B diva. Elegance is full of important advice. Words of wisdom include which kinds of short gloves to wear to a daytime embassy reception and the different aparrel one wears to horse shows depending on what kinds of horses are being shown at what kind of show, along with "drop earrings are very dressy and should never be worn before 5 p.m. and never with a tailored hat" and "your various pieces of luggage are useful servants but they are very indiscreet ones, for they reveal your social situation even more then does your attire."

This Week's Quote
"I cry all day and all night until I'm so exhausted I can't function. Then I drink."--Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

This Week's Vegas Lady
This town's twisted idea of glamour sometimes impairs people's aesthetic judgement. Especially women. Especially once those women get past a certain age. Thus, what I have dubbed, the "Vegas Lady"--a woman whose weirdness of appearance could only happen here. This week's example was wandering the produce aisle at the 99-cent store on East Flamingo. she was around 60, shortish and squattish, with bleached-white fried-dead hair, wearing some kind of black caftan with giant multicolored scarf. Her face was devoid of eyebrows or eyelashes, but she had remedied this by drawing then on. The eyelashes were done in what looked like a sharpie, while the eyebrows and eyeshadow were done in what seemed to be crayon or maybe pastel--(Who knows? Maybe she used Cray-Pas. Not like she wasn't old enough or seemingly pack-ratty enough to have some stashed away.)--blue-grey for the former, purple for the latter. And it was all done very large. Not quite "seen from space" large, but definitely "visible for several blocks" large. She was dragging a red rolling suitcase and pushing a cart that had orange soda and knockoff Oreos in it while talking on her cell phone about when someone was going to pick her up after work. I pray to god it wasn't her pimp.

This Week's Special Thing
My new shoes! And i needed them: For the past several years, my shoe purchases havew been restricted to ballet flats for work and flip-flops for not-work. Thus, i have found myself in my newly (or i should say, re-newly) sartorially preoccupied state without any cute going-out shoes. Sure, there was the pair of divine black suede steve madden open-toes i bought for a wedding, but the four-inch heels make me as tall as Michael Jordan and as unsteady as Chinese scaffolding.
But calloo callay! Thanks to the DSW in Henderson, i have a new pair of electric blue patent-leather peep-toe pumps. the heels are a little more thinck and angular than i'd like, but the shape and the color are fabulous. One thing i did learn on my shoe-search: People keep making uglier and uglier things to put on your feet.

This Week's Netflix
I'm not going to kill it with critiquing the criticism, but Simon Schama's The Power of Art series offers up great classical music and glorious slow-motion pans over some fo the greatest works of Western art, all accompanied by film-quality re-enactments (Andy "Golum/King Kong" Serkis' turn as Vincent Van Gogh is marvelous) and Schama's retelling of the lives of the artists in his own strange intellectual/pulp fashion offers complelling narratives and fabulous images. Really, justcheck it out.

This Week's Line

This Week's Gubernatorial Misstep
Aw, c'mon everyone else got to play, why not me? The fall of uber goody-goody New York Governor Eliot Spitzer came as a shock. And, really, he must've been a hell of a goody-goody for people to be shocked when a politican is caught participating in, shall we say, extracurricular activites. But, hey, at least Democrats do it in the vagina. (Well, if you don't count "Gay American" Jim McGreevy, who we still joke about dressing up as Evita Peron while the masses intone "McGrEEVY! McGrEEVY!" beneath his balcony. "Mis demicasados! Mis Newarkiriquenos!")
So, let's cut right to the sordid. Many talked of the governor--or "Client Number 9," if you like to pretend the whorehouse was on the same island as The Prisoner--being into things that "weren't safe. I know the immediate thought is "barebacking," but i, being me, decided it was blood drinking. Think about it: With that bald head, those beady eyes and those pointy ears, i betcha Spitzer gets himself up in some Nosferatu drag and gets stone cold freaky.
Now, to the lady in question, "Kristin" aka Ashley (But she already had a hooker name!) Yeomans or Dupre or Dupree or St. Ives or whatever her name is. Of course, there are women who pity her as a more downtrodden victim of male exploitation, a poor aspiring singer forced into the world's oldest profession. One columnist even had the unmitigated gall to compare her to Marilyn Monroe. And let me tell you, a hooker who lives in an $5,000 a month apartment likes--okay, not likes, has done the math and has accepted--her job. She is not working the bare minimum to get by because she hates sucking married dick. She's not living with roomates in a crappy apartment so she can save up enough money to quit faking orgasm while some asshole sweats all over her. Nu-uh. No way. I ain't buyin'. This broad is lining up her reality show auditions right now. I don't care if she's a fellow female and i must stand by her. Hell, no! I don't see man/woman, i see people and people are venal, decietful, greedy. and corrupt.
Not that i'm letting Spitzer off the hook--note those words "deceitful" and "corrupt" in the above paragraph. Still, whenever stuff like this happens, i fantasize about the civil servant in question going stone cold unhinged during the press conference. Think of it. What if he had stood up there--without his wife, who should be in the Bahamas having a massage and a margarita right now anyway--and just gone off.
"I have no excuse! I make no apology! I'm the governor and I deserve to get laid!"
Maybe if he even went all pro-New York State on it: "New York has the best pussy in the world! No matter where I am, I gotta have New York tail and only New York tail ! Ask Mick Jagger! He used to have that shit flown to France twice a week back in the 70's! George Clooney has to stay off the Eastern Seaboard or he can't control himself! Are you kidding me?! Empire State trim is easily worth a grand an hour!"
Of course the problem with this argument is that she's from New Jersey. When i was younger, if you fucked someone from Jersey, we made fun of you for getting bridge n' tunnel ass.

This Week's Totally Awesome Video
Remember Coolio? With the braids? Well, he's back and in a way i actually approve of: As star of his own internet cooking show, Cookin' With Coolio. Calling himself the "Ghetto Witchdoctor Superstar Chef," Coolio kidnaps fratboys to teach them how to cook. He pours his salt and oregano out of dime bags. He comes up with a spinach recipe that will get your kids to eat their greens. He has busty but not particularly attractive women standing around and occasionally handing him ingredients. He shouts "Shaka Zulu!" at random for no apparent reason. And, most importantly, he'll "show you how to make a salad that'll get them panties off."

This Week's Quote
"When you fuck with the ape, be ready to go the whole route."--Robert Mitchum

This Week's Attainment of Inner Peace
Well, for many years, it has been my desire to have a library. A place with Gothic wood carving and little spiral staircases and leather armchairs and one of those bars that's in a big globe and shelves and shelves of morocco bindings. While i still have yet to acquire that, i do at last have this room in Las Vegas with blue taffeta drapes and my great-grandfather's drop-leaf desk and my grandfather's globe that still has the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on it. the desk has little pigeonhole envelope slots and drawers i have filled with checkbooks, fireworks, pencils and every greeting card i've gotten for the last seven months, the best desk of all possible desks. I have white walls and blue chairs i have reupholstered in my most punk rock Martha Stewart fashion. The window offers a view of a balcony with a disused weight bench that is occasionally surrounded by chirping toddlers with heads of dark curls and quizzical faces putter around looking for some long-lost toy. But mostly i have bookshelves full of books. I sit and gaze at their alphabetized spines and feel good about them and, by association, me. I sit and contemplate how the shelf that is made up almost entirely of Fitzgerald and Nabokov is likewise almost entirely made up of blues and green and greys in a field of red and orange and white (the most popular book jacket colors) andf it makes me happy. Small happy is the best kind anyway.

This Week's Line

This Week's Awesome Shopping Experience
So Rite-Aid is closing all of their stores in Las Vegas. So everything's on sale. So i've been stopping in on a pretty regular basis to see what i can get at a 10-60% discount, which is mostly booze and beauty products. Thus, my $12 fancy iPod case (it's a little padded metal box, just like you'd use to carry a bomb or $1,000,000 in unmarked bills), my $10 bottle of Southern Comfort, my stack of $1 tubs of moisturizer, my pile of ten-cent greeting cards. I am telling you: A store where both the body butter and brown liquor are on super sale is like paradise to me. I could fill up my blue plastic basket all day (pixie tangerine foot scrub, six-pack of Pacifico), wandering the half-empty aisles, a vacant little smile of bewilderment and satisfaction on my face. And it is kind of a relief to know that i won't have to buy toothpaste, tampons, soap or shampoo for a very, very long time.

This Week's Creepy Event
The Palm Mortuary is a chain of large death-processing plants in the Las Vegas area. And, boy, do they like to celebrate. For each holiday, The Palm hosts a "non-denominational" service and somehow this seems weird to me. Like the upcoming Easter Sunrise Service. I always kinda felt like visiting the graves of your loved ones should be a private experience. But here hundreds of people get together in a graveyard to have some kind of mass semi-religious gathering. Really, think about it: What are these people hoping will happen? That the dead will come back to life just like Jesus? Or maybe not quite like Jesus and they want to make sure it's their loved ones that eat their brains? (Hey, we may be undead, but at least we're still together!) And they're these giant creepy corporate monolithic places where you know in another 60 years, they'll start digging people us, mass grave-ing them and re-selling the plots. Corporate, I tell you. They don't make cemeteries like they used to.
Of course, like every time i see something like this, i have delightful visions of dressing up in head-to-toe black leather, firing up a giant black motorcycle and tearing around shooting great clouds of red smoke and blasting AC/DC. I have the same reveries when they do the "Gift of Lights" at Sunset Park at Christmastime, and i just want to plough through in a tank running over 15-foot candy canes, dragging the remains of giant electric gingerbread houses. (According to my new used palmistry book, I have the rare "killer's thumb," where your thumbs naturally point out and turn away from the rest of the hand. Well, i always knew there was something essentially wrong with me.) I guess something about it just sets of my tacky (and not good tacky) meter. What could be tackier? The Palm Mortuary's 9/11 service.

This Week's Taste Sensation
Not just this week, but every week, if you asked me what my favorite kind of food is, i might well say "condiments." Why? Because they make everything taste better. Eating without condiments is like writing without adjectives (well, maybe adverbs). So, with nothing especially luminous on the horizon, I give you my top ten condiments!
Trader Joe's Peach Salsa: I love pretty much anything peach-flavored. This is best consumed on chicken, pork, plantain chips and lime-flavored Tostitos.
Red Onion Confit: It's sort of like a relish and sort of like a chutney. Good with a steak you've melted a little blue cheese on top of, or with Brie on a cracker.
Marie's Blue Cheese Vinagrette Dressing: Best salad dressing ever. Try it on spinach with dried cherries and slivered almonds, but it works on pretty much anything, including bare lettuce.
Peter Luger Steak Sauce: I love Peter Luger. I used to live near there in Williamsburg back before it became a college town, back when it was still a 10 block-square crack den. But Peter Luger is a 120-year-old steak house staffed by surly old guys--no menus, just "Steak for one, steak for two or steak for four?" the steaks are aged and flawless (and, need I say, expensive as all hell) and normally it would be a crime to put anything on them, but a drop or two of this sauce does it just right. It also goes on the salads, the potatoes and whtever else. Speaking of condiments, Peter Luger's is also big on "schlag," a kind of Swiss ultra-heavy whipped cream. That goes on pie, ice cream, cake and coffee. Everything "mit schlag," as Marlene Dietrich used to say.
Pickapepper Sauce: Basically, it's kind of like Jamaican steak sauce--made with tomatoes, mangos, peppers, it's got a dark, stout-like taste, but also an edge of fruitiness.
Sweet Thai Chili Sauce: Another one that's like a universal solvent (or adornment). I don't mean the regular red chili sauce in the bottle with the rooster on it, but specifically the "sweet" variety, which has a lighter color and more jelly-like consistency. Also, this is a key component of my Best Scrambled Eggs Ever, which is made as follows: Mix eggs thoroughly with a spoonful or two of milk, as well as dashes of garlic powder, black pepper and white pepper. Scramble in pan and, when partly set, add about 1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese. Serve with abundant amounts of sweet Thai chili sauce.
Torito's Cilantro-Pepita Caesar Salad Dressing: You can put it on salads, tacos, chicken wings, burritos, cheeseburgers, tortilla chips, pretty much anything. It's like ranch dressing, but Mexican.
Vidalia Sweet Onion Relish: It's also excellent when combined with the condiment below, especially on hot dogs. A curry catsup and sweet onion relish hot dog is bettered only by the bacon chili cheese dog, and that is saying a lot.
H&P Indian Curry: It used to be called "Curry Catsup," then they changed it and i was terrified those bastids over the HP had pulled it, but they just renamed it. This goes on anything, but especially fries. Especially sweet potato fries. Also satay, spring rolls, fish n' chips, barbecue and burgers.
Ketchup: What can i say? I've been a fan since i was a tiny child, when people marveled at my ability to douse everything in red goo. When i was eight, i once caused great uproar and consternation when i asked for catsup at Brennan's restaurant in New Orleans. They were horrified and apparently the chef refused until told it was for a child, at which point a waiter bought it in a little glass dish "for Mademoiselle." Fer chrissakes, it wasn't like i was putting it on filet mignon: I was having scrambled eggs! But, yes, still ketchup on everything. Preferably Heinz: Hunt's is too sweet and generic is just ghastly. One must have standards when it comes to these things.

This Week's Religiopolitical Observation
We could be forgiven for sometimes thinking out national government is run by Evangelical/Born Again whackjobs. But, the more i think of it, i realize that what those assholes are, are Calvinists. Particularly heavy on the predestination. The idea that God has selected us before birth to be damned or saved would naturally appeal to a bunch of entitled children of wealth. After all, you can easily tell the damned fom the saved because all the damned people are poor and have nothing and the saved people get all the money, the power and the women, as Tony Montana would say. I'm not sure where it is that Jesus said "the rich should get richer and the poor should get royally screwed." I mean, i'm not familiar with the Bible (Oscar Wilde's Salome, yes. DeMille's Samson and Delilah, yes. Monty Python's Life of Brian, of course. Last Temptation of Christ, totally, several times, but not The Passion because i think making a snuff film starring Jesus is just plain wrong. It's kind of sad when i feel like i respect Mel Gibson's god more than he does.) but i'm pretty sure that was not part of his dialogue. However, it totally backs the Calvinist predestination philosophy. Yes, poor people should be tricked out of their homes for the benefit of Wall Street financiers: God wants them to have the money because they're better human beings. Poor people are wicked sinners who don't deserve houses. Of course the lower classes should pay taxes and the rich should get tax breaks: That's just the government carrying out the Lord's work of reassignning all earthly wealth to the chosen people. And we all know George Bush thinks he's Christ anyway.

This Week's Quote
"When I needed your faith, you withheld it. Now that I don't want it and don't need it, you give it to me."--Marlene Dietrich, Shanghai Express

This Week's Line

This Week's Beefcake
As anyone who knows me knows, i've pretty much sworn off the menfolk. This is due to a lifetime of being treated like nothing but shit--sure, we all get it sometimes, but i cannot think of a man who didn't treat me like something he found in a burning paper bag outside his door late at night. I could go on, but we're trying to be amusing here and some of that shit even I can't make funny. Although people still do laugh....
Regardless, it's taken time--about two years since the departure of the legendary Evil Ex--to even appreciate masculine pulchritude once more. Just to look at, like paintings in the Met but, like paintings in the Met, the simple viewing itself brings me joy. First award goes to one of the contestants on the otherwise utterly worthless Bravo trainwreck Make Me a Supermodel. I speak of Ben, the unbelievably foxy prison guard. I cannot watch the show all the way through: it's just that vapid and the rest of the contestants are just that tedious. But i switch channels back and forth whenever it's on--Thursdays, conveniently simultaneous to TNT's NBA doubleheader--simply so i can stop whenever he appears and gaze in slackjawed adoration, punctuated by the occasional "Hubba Hubba! "Goddamn!" or "Jesus Fuckin' Christ, he's hot!" Those eyes, those cheekbones, the whole storyline with the California twink all after Ben's fine, not only straight but married self. All i can say is: Yes, please, may i have another?
Second prize goes to the alluring cowboy i watched playing speed roulette at the Imperial Palace last weekend. He was like a hot cowboy cliche, down to the high cheekbones, blue eyes, battered straw cowboy hat and the pack of smokes rolled up into the sleeve of his Hanes T-shirt. It was like the time Keela and i (well, mostly her, but i was totally into the idea and that is more than half of it, after all) were at the first Vegoose and became all enchanted with the ferris wheel operator because he looked kinda like Chuck Connors and we imagined him being all hot carny guy and roaming the west with his amusement park ride, last of the free men. Until we found out that he actually worked for Sam Boyd Stadium.... But, anyway this guy was actually much more fetching than that, sort of a Montgomery Clift/James Dean cowboy, except he actually looked big and macho enough to actually, you know, cowboy. And there he was, drinking his Budweiser and watching the big shiny wheel spin around. I was half-tempted to ask him for a smoke, but i figured he'd rather devote his attention to the Gwen Stefani looalike that was manning said wheel. No, literally, lookalike: It was the "dealertainers" celebrity impersonator poker pit and that was her schtick.
I wish i hadn't wasted my money getting a Master's, but had gone to dealer school instead. I could be shuffling cards dressed as Marilyn Monroe right now. Or Jean Harlow. Or Debbie Harry. Or Anna Nicole Smith. Or early Madonna. Or Rita Hayworth if they gave me a wig. Actually, given how shitty most of their impersonators are, they'd let me do pretty much anything. I mean, i have trouble telling who some of those people are. And then i'd have a reason to talk to the hot cowboy. Or the foxy prison guard. Or any of the other Village People, i guess. They may as well be, for all the good it'd do me.

This Week's Mighty Cosmetic Product
Also, as anyone who knows me knows, I am a serious devotee of Sephora and its racks and racks and racks of high-end cosmetics. I may be wearing a dress I bought for $5 at Savers, but i'll be wearing $20 lipgloss and $18 mascara. I'm telling you" It's worth the money. My big worth the money right now is the Diorshow Blackout Kohl Mascara. This stuff will give you lashes for days with one coat--we're talking big, awesome, Liz Taylor lashes, Bambi lashes, Gillian Girl lashes,

This Week's Cinematic Exploration
Ah, Big Lots, how I love you. Big Lots has been the source of many unexpectedly inexpensive necessities in my life. However, not since the surfeit of $1 copies of The Filth and the Fury has there been a score like my Cult Classics 20-movie box set. For a whopping $6.00, I got 20 classics of black-and-white cheeseball exploitation cinema. She Shoulda Said No is a classic black-and-white marijuana hysteria flick, with the added frisson of starring Lila Leeds. Yes, the Lila Leeds who got busted for smoking weed with Robert Mitchum back in 1948. Bob's career flourished, but Lila's was over except for the odd exploitation flick such as this. It's pretty heavy-handed, but it moves fast and the "high" scenes are great: Superimposition City like first-year film school, but the sight of showgirls and rainbows fading in and out over the undeniably lovely face of Leeds (who huffs her muggles like a pro) or ballerinas and grand pianos whirling through space as theremins go wild is still pretty gosh darn neat.
The Wild and the Wicked is another Hollywood morality tale, this time set in the 50's. Innocent kid goes to visit her glamorous sister in L.A., becomes an "artist's model" (wink wink) and a hooker about 10 minutes later. This movie didn't teach me much about the pitfalls of the high life, but it did teach me that, the more facial hair a guy has, the more evil he is. Mustache = minor henchman. Goatee = manager. Full beard = criminal mastermind.
Not that they're all gems: Gambling With Souls is a dull, episodic 30's morality tale starring a Z-grade Bette Davis knockoff; Mad Youth is similarly dull, but is at least brightened by periodic non-sequitur nightclub acts. A Mariachi band, a tap dancer, someone doing the limbo and a dancing goat: Now that's entertainment!
I haven't even cracked open Terror of Tiny Town, the all-midget Western, or Chained for Life starring Daisy and Violet Hilton (the only Hilton sisters who matter, y'all), not to mention The Cocaine Fiends, The Marijuana Menace, Sex Madness or Escort Girl. Final weird touch: mixed in with all this bottom-feeder schlock is legendary German auteur G.W.Pabst's silent masterpiece, The Joyless Street, starring a young Greta Garbo.

This Week's Taste Sensation/New Form of Intoxication
So, absinthe is now legal in the United States. I found this out a few months ago when i was sitting in one of my locals and noticed the bottle with German writing on the label and a postie note reading "$10 a shot" on it. I was sitting with one of the waiters (the bar is next to a steakhouse, thus is there's always guys in white shirts and black pants) and he asked what it was. Upon discovering it was absinthe, real deal absinthe, not that fake shit in the pretty bottle. I immediately ordered up one, on ice with a dash of sugar and a lime wedge. It was refreshing and surprisingly tasty. Soon more waiters arrived and they ordered up shots too. Then a few more people did. Then i had another. Then the rest of them killed the bottle. Somewhere in the course of the evening i got hit in the face with a door and then decided i needed to go home. Right away. As i jumped into my car, it occurred to me this might not be a good idea, given the heavy police presence along the road i would be traveling, my busted turn signals, the dents in my bumper. Then i thought: "This is the Millennium Falcon and i am Han Solo! We can make this run through Imperial territory!" and i drove the fortunately only about two miles home humming the Star Wars them, except when i'd pass some poor, pulled-over bastard and intone the "Imperial March" while pumping my fist in the air. Yeah, i know it was a bad idea and a goddamn miracle i got away with it.
Unfortunately, this is not the only nor the worst case of poor judgment i've shown après avoir dansé avec la fée verte. It will make you do some absurd shit you would not normally do, so be careful. If i had a babysitter, i would bring he/she/it with me but, as i have no such companion, ultimately i just have to lift my glass and hope for the best. Although that is easier when i just stay the fuck home. Which i should do more often.

Sophie's

Edited version.

Original version:

or decades, it was the same story every day at Sophie’s. When the scarred wooden doors swung open in the morning, old Slavic men shuffled in and slumped over their cheap beers. Afternoons brought Irish carpenters skipping out of work early for a pint and NYU students cutting class to play pool. As the light faded through the plate-glass windows, it’d gradually fill with musician types, off-duty bartenders, middle-age-verging artists and even more college kids. By midnight, all of the above were mixed and mingled together, talking books and politics, jobs and ex-wives, hitting on each other or hitting each other. Last call swept them all back out on to Fifth Street--and, less than six hours later, the cycle began anew.

But the pub’s old narrative may soon be interrupted. Bill Corton, who has owned Sophie¹s--and its sister bar, Mona’s--since the late 80’s is selling out. “The whole neighborhood has changed,” he explains. “We catered to the neighborhood service people and artists and they’ve moved on.” Combined with health issues and the demands of raising kids, it felt like time to make an exit of his own. Both bars--complete with liquor licenses and ten-year-leases--are on the market, their fate to be determined soon.

A bar dating back to the Koch administration may seem ancient, but its history actually stretches back even further. Sophie’s is named after the wordly-wise babushka Corton bought it from in 1986. “Tough, tough old Ukrainian woman. She buried two husbands in this business,” he recalls with a chuckle. “It started on Second Avenue and 23rd. I lived above her when it was on Avenue A.” When she decided to sell the joint, Corton took it over: “Any young person at one point fantasizes about what they would do if they owned a bar.” He continues, “It was a dream and that opportunity presented itself.”

Long ago, I spent a year or two practically living at Sophie’s. I still have memories of bathing a roommate’s bruised heart in well bourbon shots at the window. Of breaking up a fight between two underfed record store clerks. Of waltzing to Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea” with an seventy-year-old wearing a union-logo windbreaker. Of drinking dollar drafts in a backless satin dress and earrings made of chandelier pendants stolen from the Limelight. Of trying to use the toilet while simultaneously not touching the seat and keeping the broken door closed with my foot. Back then, Sophie’s was just one of many dingy watering holes spotting the East Village: The International, Cherry Tavern, Verkhovyna, the Old Homestead Inn, Lucy’s—all but the last only a bourbon-soaked memory. Dim, grotty places you wouldn’t look twice at in passing, but which were like a fairytale tumbledown cottage in the woods that hid a palace’s worth or treasure: The legend of the night Frank Sinatra drank ‘til closing, anecdotes of the store clerk’s past as a Bollywood star, the guy recounting the courtside view of last night’s Knicks playoff game (yes, children, it was a long time ago)….

Nowadays, virtually every bar in the East Village offers precisely what it advertises--every patron will be of the same age range, income bracket, sexual orientation and aesthetic taste. You’ll see nothing you haven’t seen, hear nothing you haven’t heard and so the neighborhood lapses from a heady mix of cultures and influences to homogeny. Even if the artists could still afford it, why would they remain? What is there to surprise and inspire now?

Corton seconds the emotion: “I miss the camaraderie, the different stories people would have.” Not that Sophie’s seemed to promise the riches of geography and history: No sign outside and no décor inside--just dark, stained walls and wobbly tables ringed by creaky chairs in front, pool table, jukebox and the faint (well, maybe not so faint) whiff of bathroom in the back. The room’s sole feature is an enormous, antique oak bar topped by a wee shingled faux-roof with tiny stained glass dormer windows, as though bottles of schnapps and vodka were happy Eastern European peasants lined up and ready to entertain.

“I’ve been running it as a mom-and-pop for 21 years,” says Corton. It’s not a business model many follow anymore. New York City bars used to be more like bodegas, dry cleaners or drugstores: A family business servicing a steady stream of regular customers. Now it’s all about getting in, packing them in, taking their money, then smacking a padlock on the door and getting the hell out. Given the liquor license and lucrative location, Sophie’s could be an appetizing prospect for tavern renewal. “I spoke to someone who owns a couple of bars on the Upper East Side,” offers Corton. Then he continues, “Actually there are a few people—bartenders--if they were to buy it, they would keep it mostly like it is.” Which would be just fine with me. I rarely visit these days, but am always surprised at how much of its scruffy, egalitarian charm remains. The liquor’s still cheap and the bartenders are still friendly. And, so, the saga of Sophie’s continues. For at least a little while longer.

This Week's Line

This Week's Totally Awesome Video!
Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders take on Andy Warhol's Factory, assisted by Nigel Planer (aka Neil, from The Young Ones) as Warhol. It's terrifyingly spot-on, and I say this as a person who used ot go up to the Whitney Museum to watch the movies for real. Hell, even Warhol acolyte/assuck Paul Morrissey has said that this captures the true daftness of the fabled Factory than any serious film--documentary or otherwise--yet.

This Week's Big Idea
Ending global hunger? Solving the environmental crisis? Creating world peace? Hell, no! I think big. I think impossible. I think of shit that would intimidate Mr. Spock tag-teamed with Paul Bunyan. Yup: Saving the Knicks.
Obviously, as the pundits say, asa the T-shirts read and the crowd at the Garden chants every night: Fire Isiah! Next, bring back Jeff Van Gundy--as generla manager. The Knicks are almost at the point where they'll have draft picks again and the vast gym rat Van Gundy network will find the most bang for the buck.
Speaking of good picks, there's actually been a few over the past few years and, really, those are the only players that are worthwhile. David Lee is solid, MVP at last year's Rookie/Sophmore game during All-Star weekend and, from what I've heard, has rock-star charisma up close. Nate Robinson is, as I have said more than once, "not just a Knick, but a motherfuckin' Knick." Truly, he comes closest to embodying the old-school toughness of my beloved mid-90s Knicks, whether his 5'7" ass is blocking Yao Ming or dunking over a Playboy bunny at the blackjack table. (No shit: He was going to do it for lat year's dunk contest but the Knicks administration decreed it "too dangerous.") Blankman is a damn good player for a sophmore and is only getting bettter, likewise for Chandler. That's your core. So cut loose Marbury, Curry, Ricahrdson, Randolph, whoever else they've got now and just work with the new kids. Maybe keep Juwan Howard, if you really want to. And then you pour the big investment into getting one sold player--someone solid, rugged, someone to scare the enemy. Like one of the Wallaces or bring Ron Artest home.
Then, for coach, here's the real coup de grace: Charles Oakley. Sure, John Starks is the one who coached his team to a USBL finals and now works in the Knicks organization, but Oakley is impressive. After all, it was he who turned Ben Wallace into Ben Wallace by taking the kid under his hawklike wing. He's so tough that the time he punched Shaq, Shaq turned around and punched the nearest white guy, so tough that he decked Charles Barkley on court. In the preseason. He's known for his heart and his blue-collar dedicationt ot he game and I think that, combined with the love-of-the-game front office and a hungry young squad could make the Knicks viable again. Or at least more fun to watch.

This Week's Taste Sensation
Unfortunately, Sonic has taken the deep-fried macaroni and cheese bites off the market--that's what sucks about Sonic, they did the same thing with their delectable southwestern jalapeno burger. Bascially, it was Kraft mac and cheese, sort of breaded and rolled into little chicken-nuggest-esque pieces. They weren't as much fun as they sounded, but they were worth trying. And I would dearly love it if someone would perfect the execution of this delightful concept.
So, as to good food one can still get, I'll have to reccommend the apricot white Stilton cheese and/or the Moroccan-spiced English cheddar with harisa that I recently got at Trader Joe's. I got them for Thanksgiving when I thought I might go somewhere for Thanksgiving, but I wound up just eating a turkey sandwich and watching Court TV. (I hate holidays. Holidays are merely desgined to make you spend money and feel shitty. It's a dull story and not worth telling but just know that I despise holidays.) Which was fine, because then I still had the cheese unwrapped and dainty a week later when two of my friends came over for an America's Next Top Model marathon. I put them with some white bean and basil hummus, some brie with mushrooms and an assortment of crackers and apples and it was fabulous. I felt like Martha Stewart, like any time you come to my house, I'll be able to pull splendid hors d'oeuvres out of my ass without even bending over.

What It Used To Be

So, I've done a few posts about old New York. This is a bit I wrote for a friend (well, acquaintance) that was going to publish a book of his NYC rock band paintings (hey, it was in France, they'll go for anything). Nothing ever came of it, but here's what I wrote, regardless.

Back before it was a Sex in the City/Wall Street-bonus/trust-fund boutique/Olsen twins nightmare, New York City's East Village was a very small town. Everyone seemed to wind up in the same places and eventually knew each other at least well enough to exchange a nod or a smile during a wait on the (long, slow, what is he doing in there anyway?) line for the bathroom. Happens once or twice more (a show in a basement on the West Side Highway, a party on top of the World Trade Center), eventually you exchange a few words and soon discover a whole connected galaxy of friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, co-workers, classmates, bandmates… which is how many of the bands who are pictured here came into existence. No plan of world domination, just a shared idea, a common purpose, a mutual goal and maybe even an occasional excuse to get loaded and make noise.

It was a scene that had gone on for years, but the mid-late 90s could be called its last gasp: Until the four horsemen of the previous paragraph arrived, the population was still dominated by families and businesses of Polish/Ukranian/Puerto Rican/Dominican origin and the rents and the bars were cheap enough that the artsy minority could live on their erratic income. After all, a high-paying job makes too many demands on time to allow you to start the evening graffiting the bathroom with a girl in a prom dress at an art opening in a coffee shop on Avenue A and end it with the bottom of the bottle and a fresh donut on a rooftop in Chinatown at 6 a.m. In between, it could've been a trip to a fashion show, to an Indian restaurant, to a rent party, to an opera box, to a punk rock gig, to a bodega with a rock critic, a corporate lawyer, a contortionist, a housewife, a male stripper, Beck…. But not matter how far you went, suddenly, eventually, inevitably a face from the bathroom line would swim into view, reminding you that you were part of a small circle that seemed to contain a whole city. And that you had just enough time to make it back below 14th Street before last call.

Not that it was all golden: Sometimes is seemed like the real reason everyone had such a small scene was so as not to have to reach too far to stab you in the back (the sleeves on this jacket are pretty tight and I really don't feel like actually lifting my arm anyway, y'know.) Some bands imploded in conflicting ambitions, shattered relationships, or the realization that having some A&R's expense account pay for that $60 entrée on Fifth Avenue meant that you could pick up even more $10 bags on 5th Street. Life as theater gave way to reality television—once The New York Times and MTV came calling with big corporations and big money at their heels, everyone started looking. Which meant that people started coming just to be seen, eventually crowding out those who were actually doing something.

These paintings offer an image that evokes the time and the people—gaunt, black-clad, poised in space like chess pieces or flung about like broken glass, depending on the band and the hour. But it was more than just an image and a soundtrack. It was the basement-damp n' cigarette-musty smell of the Ludlow Rehearsal Studios, where rats sometimes took up residence in the amps and someone always kicked over a lukewarm coffee mid-set. Maybe the taste of a cheese-stretching slice of Sal's pizza or an East Houston bagel, wolfing down sustenance at the beginning or end of another busy night, trying to use my less-dirty hand and not talk with my mouth full to everyone who says hello.

Or the warmth of the overcranked heat lamps and track lighting of the Max Fish bar, where the glare not only illuminated work by local artists, but invited the patrons to strip down to whatever threadbare T-shirt or designer party dress they happened to be wearing. (Although I do recall Alan the bartender bouncing anyone who went fully naked before last call.) As some of this art was on those walls, most of these bands were on the jukebox. That jukebox also often played Vince Guraldi's "Linus and Lucy"—I have a vivid memory of one last-call night that ended with several of us frantically doing the twist to "The Charlie Brown Song" as Princess Superstar climbed atop a chair, doffed her pimp hat and began yelling "Fuck being cool! Fuck the East Village!" Because, hip as it all was, that wasn't the point. The point was to create something, to create your art, whatever form it might take. And, well, if you could look good and hit a few parties while doing it, so much the better.

From the Past: Kindness of Strangers ’99

I have a nervous breakdown every time I go to New Orleans. After four days of bourbon, clarinets and cemeteries--well, to make a long existential crisis short, life just wasn't worth living. My friend threw me out of the hotel room, claiming my whimpering on the balcony kept her awake. With five hours until a 6am flight, I wandered aimlessly through the streets, eventually winding up at a dive on the far edge of the French Quarter frequented by old men and punk kids. I sit at the end of the bar, makeup cried off, carrying myself like my bones might break.

"What's wrong?"

I never talk to strangers, being from New York City, but I'm drunk, I'm miserable and all bets are off. "Nothing. Everything. You know."

"Yeah." I look up: about 26, brownish-blonde hair, reminds me of a recording engineer I used to screw around with and a bass player I interviewed once. Somehow there's a conversation from there and he buys me drinks, lets me talk too much, even manages to make me giggle, eventually. But will I sleep with him, because that's where this is going. I mean, I figure I would, any woman knows whether or not she would within a minute, but the should and the will take a little longer. But I'm in the prime mindset to make a bad decision and, well, fucking a stranger might make me feel better. Or worse.

He suggests we go to another bar. It's rained while we were inside: the streets shine and the shadows deepen. "People disappear here all the time," they tell me--endless liquor, plentiful drugs, high murder rate, ghosts. People lose their reason. We walk back toward Bourbon Street, arm in arm, the whine of saxophones and roar of fratboys rising. A few more blocks to a smaller dive, the end of the bar again. He introduces me to his friends, none of whom seems surprised or even interested. Maybe he brings in teary-eyed out-of-town blondes every night. There's probably a lot of them around.

A few more drinks, he finally leans over and kisses me. Then the tumble into the taxi, driver adjusting the rearview, depending on whether or not he wants to watch. His apartment is high-ceilinged with slanted floors, empty except for a couch--he just moved here, so at least there's nothing to make awkward small talk about. I sit on his lap and within a few minutes he slides inside me: no shifting weight, no feeling for the angle, no pulling out and trying again--perfect fit. It's over before we remember to take our clothes off, but soon we're already trying to find another feasible position on the couch. I roll onto the floor and pull him on top of me. Bruises begin blooming on the small of my back and--Oh, Christ. "Ummmm...I have something really terrible to tell you."

He stops. "Yeah?"

"I--oh--this is awful. I--I forgot your name."

He laughs, kisses me. "Andrew."

We climb back up on the couch, I crawl under a sheet, cold but mostly sobering into self-consciousness. He tugs my hair, runs a hand between my legs and slips underneath me. I dig my nails into his shoulder, he tears off the covers. "What is this shyness thing? You're fucking beautiful."

We lie there until--"Holy shit! My plane leaves in an hour!" We run out to a payphone, call a taxi and wait, alternately making out and calling the dispatcher. I snuggle against the back of his neck, hand down the front of his pants while he bitches into the receiver and the sun rises. The cab never comes, the plane is gone, we give up and go inside.

In the bathroom, I stare at the shelf over the toilet: Royal Crown hair grease, Barbasol shaving cream. "I hope you're not putting your underwear back on," he hollers. I throw them at him. We fuck twice more. I hear a schoolbus outside as I fall asleep in his arms. Five hours later, he scribbles down his address while I brush my teeth.

I kiss Andrew twice and get into the cab, not looking back. As we ride toward the airport, I dig for the address. I can't find it. I don't know whether I lost it or picked up the wrong scrap of paper, but...nothing. I smile out at the freeways and bright blue skies, almost liking the lame song on the radio. Perhaps they're only kind because they're strangers.

From the Past: French-Canadian Male Strippers '98

As I flip through my old journals and discs, I figured maybe I'd post some of the mosre amusing--and, more importantly, already inputted into a computer--stuff. Here's a piece I wrote, oh, almost 10 years ago about the now-defunct Gaiety Burlesque. I was trying to get a job at the New York Press and this effort got me a trip into the editors to be damned with faint praise and called "kind of old." I wasn't yet 28 at the time. And both of them were well past 40. But, shit, if I needed other people's approval or appreciation to keep me alive, I'd have died back during the Reagan administration. Your hate makes me strong. One day, hopefully it will make me strong enough to kill....

Since I don't want to provoke any police orders and padlocks, I won't reveal exactly where I dragged my friend Charlie Brown on his birthday. Charlie had made it to his 28th year of being alive and his fourth being out without going to a proper strip joint--a professional place staffed by professional people, not the back room at the Cock or the lavatory at the Boiler Room. So, after hearty amounts of barbecue and brown liquor, Charlie, his boyfriend Linus, two girlfriends—Baby Girl and Lula--and myself tilted across Times Square just in time for the last "show."

Over the HoJo's, up the narrow staircase, slide 10 bucks to the disinterested hag behind the bulletproof glass, and slip through the turnstile into a dingy room with a dozen rows of soiled theater seats facing a small, sticky stage ringed with shredded silver tinsel and signs reading "NO SEXUAL ACTIVITY PERMITTED BY ORDER OF THE POLICE." I never tire of trying to figure out how to steal one of these for my bedroom. Charlie Brown and Linus alone would've stood out in this crowd of dumpy, middle-aged gay men, but three chicks decked out in leopard print, cowboy hats, and midriff tops were about as conspicuous as IRS agents at a Willie Nelson gig, and about as welcome...

Procedure: the stripper comes out, parades around, doffs his shirt and flirts with his fly, then goes backstage to fluff before returning full-frontally nude. Tips and applause are directly proportional to the angle of the hard-on. If you get bored--for me, the thrill usually wears off around the third or fourth penis unless something remarkable pops up--you can always bring a watch with a second hand and time how long it takes Tommy or Rico or Schuyler to get the little soldier to salute.

Since it's a weekday, there isn't the usual something-for-everybody selection--just a succession of buff, body-waxed, wholesome-looking white guys. Baby Girl is disappointed there aren't any brothers "or at least Puerto Ricans," I'm disappointed there aren't any skinny, tattooed boys. A cute, smiley blonde guy makes amusing little sound effects while he strokes his cock. Linus declares him "fabulous" and decides he must go up front with the most aggressively dirty old men and tip him. Lula strikes a blow for women's rights that would shame Susan B. Anthony (in more ways than one) and joins Linus. A tall, military-looking crew cut guy seems shy on his semi-clothed run, but returns with an aura of confidence and a dick big enough to make even this crowd of jaded old queens gasp. Baby Girl and Lula somehow hear the call of nature over the Top 40 soundtrack and go look for the ladies' room. I sincerely wish them luck. A very tall, chiseled model-type shrugs and grins charmingly when he doesn't come out quite as solid as hoped.

I go back to see what's become of them and literally bump into the tall stripper as he comes offstage. "Hey! It's a another one!"

"Uh, yeah. Where are the girls?" He laughs, points to a bench half-behind a partition, where Baby Girl and Lula are chatting with the funny-noise guy. His name's Marcus, he's from Canada. Just as I sit down, an attendant sidles up: "I'm sorry, but could you ladies to go back into the theater? Some of the customers feel uncomfortable going into the bathroom with women outside." I'll bet they do, friend, I'll bet they do. We obey, giggling and getting dirty looks.

After two more hustlers, the house lights blaze up and a disembodied voice urges us to get out but come again. As we file out the door, Marcus stops us---"Hey! Aren't we going to hang out?"

He corrals the tall stripper, Erick, and another one, Jean. He wants to stop by their hotel to shower, so eight of us pack into his tiny hotel room over at the Milford Plaza--Or was it the Comfort Inn?--channel-surfing cable, flipping though porno and monster truck magazines. Erick announces, "You girls cost me money! I can never get it up enough when there's women out front."

"They tell you when there's girls?"

"Yeah, the guy came back and said, 'Hey, there's girls out there.' And we're like 'Are they nice?' And he says 'Yeah, they're cute, I think they're strippers.' Hey, are you?"

We laugh that one off. He shrugs and rifles through Marcus' luggage, yanks out a studded leather harness. "What's this?"

Marcus, shaving with a towel around his waist, like some kind of studly shaving cream ad, answers him in French, the secret stripper language. Erick gives the item another suspicious glance before tossing it aside to look for something else incriminating. Strangely, I'm not turned on by any of this—granted, I've never been into musclemen, but once you know that a guy waxes his asshole, somehow he's just not sexy anymore.

Charlie Brown dispassionately flips through a porno mag--male/female S&M, hence nothing that would interest him much. "I'm tired."

"What d'you mean, you're tired? You're in a hotel room full of strippers! Don't I show you a good time?"

"I had to work late."

So where to take a bunch of French-Canadian strippers on a Tuesday night in New York City? Linus suggests Beige, but they just came from a roomful of horny old men. Baby Girl half-jokingly suggests we take them to Max Fish, an idea that proves too weird to resist. After our Fellini-esque entrance—much to my delight, it is witnessed by my arch-rival for the affections of a certain skinny, tattooed boy, but that is another story for another time--I go fetch the drinks, since Adam-the-bartender looks like he's waiting for an explanation. He doesn't know how to make the requested Blowjobs or Screaming Orgasm shots (I guess the boys forgot they're off the clock.), so we settle on Kamikazes, the first of about eight rounds of Kamikazes. The boys pay for everything—-each one delving into a fanny pack with a roll of bills that would impress Puff Daddy--and they never tip less than $20.

Besides the free cocktails, we also get to hear all the dirt: They come to the city, work two weeks, and go home with about $12,000. Most of the take comes from working after-hours-—they all stay nearby so they can take clients back to their rooms. They don't have sex, though, as we will be reminded repeatedly throughout the evening. Jerking off, receiving blow jobs, even the Japanese businessman who once paid Jean $1,200 just to sleep over, that's fine. But no sex. Really. And they're all just 24, which has the girls chopping down their ages—even I hack off a year and go for 26, while Baby Girl claims a (patently unbelievable) 23.

Charlie Brown leans on my shoulder. "I'm tired."

"Strippers are buying you drinks. Strippers are paying for the privilege of your company--"

"They're paying for the privilege of your company."

"Still, don't I show you a good time?"

Charlie Brown departs shortly thereafter and, in a touching act of devotion, Linus leaves too. The boys continue regaling us with details. They all have girlfriends and lofts up north, and remind us yet again that they're not gay. They talk about what magazines they use for backstage stimulus and how they choose their own music--you mean Air Supply actually helps you get it up!? They keep flexing their muscles and asking us to touch them. Marcus thrusts a bicep in Baby Girl's face. "How does that feel? Do you like it?"

"Oh, I—"

Suddenly he stops and grimaces. "Damn, I just pulled a hamstring."

Lula, meanwhile, is in deep tete-a-tete with Erick, who looks like he's willing to give her a free sample. He tells her about the fiancee he recently broke off with. He also shows her his "list" of clients he has to make time for when he came to town. These guys are where the real goods come from: big money, a lot of four-star trips to the Caribbean, a condo--he tried to get one to give him a Maseratti, but had to settle for a jeep. Pauvre, pauvre vous. Jean and I decide to play pinball, he hands me $20 to get change for $2. I offer him the remaining $18, but he says to leave it. Adam waves it away "I don't take tips for making change."

Back to Jean. "He doesn't want it."

"Well, you take it."

I think for a moment, but I'm not (particularly) poor right now and they're nice guys. "Nah, you take it. Use it for tips later." He reluctantly stuffs it back in with the other $800.

At about 3:30, even I'm feeling fatigued and we bid protracted farewell to our new friends, who implore us to come back and visit. "We'll pay for you to get in! We'll go to clubs afterward!" Somehow, we don't make it before their two weeks are up and they take their 12 grand back to the Great White North. They next time I walk into Max, Adam shakes his head. "After you left those guys, we couldn't get them or any of the women out at last call. They offered us $1,000 to keep the place open another hour, but I wanted to go home. They threw down over $200 in tips." And he's complaining? I swear, between him and Charlie Brown, no one appreciates sex or money or anything I do for them....

This Week's Line

This Week’s Life-Affirming Website
I used to be one of those girls who took 90 minutes to get ready to go anywhere—in the words of Eva Gabor, "I ask myself more questions than Hamlet as I ponder which shoes to wear”—and I admit this as a person who knows the whole “to be or not to be” soliloquy by heart.
I miss those days, when I could be counted upon to be flawlessly tricked out at any and all times, even a mere sneakers-and-T-shirt combo taking trial runs and failed attempts, resulting in my usual state of 20-60 minutes late for everything. Then I moved to Vegas, where people are too casually or incredibly badly dressed and usually both. It’s pitiful. And, in my desire not to be any more conspicuous than I already am, as I spent the next several years standing alone in a crowded room, I decided to lowball the wardrobe as well. I have since amended that decision and acquired a full-length mirror (although I smashed it in a fit of temper) and am returning to my days of being completely done up (and quite late) and this website has proven helpful. While it’s not as sartorially effective as, say, a page of nothing but pictures of Catherine Deneuve and Marlene Dietrich, along with Richard Avedon Vogue photos, it does give one a few good ideas. Although I could do with fewer photos of Mischa Barton and Lindsay Lohan.

This Week’s Netflix: Kolchak: The Night Stalker
One of my favorite shows as a child, this series followed rumpled, cranky, misanthrope reporter Carl Kolchak as he stumbled into stories driven by supernatural phenomena from werewolves to swamp monsters to vampires to the devil himself (or itself, given that it kept turning into a dog). “The Trevi Collection” was about witchcraft and high fashion, featuring lots of the chiffon-heavy ersatz 70’s couture of the kind featured in Mahagony and The Eyes of Laura Mars.
The episode “Horror in the Heights” was one of my favorites, mixing Jewish and Indian religions, as well as the issue of elder care. But, more importantly, Kolchak was tracking a mythic beast who lures in its prey by assuming the appearance of whomever the victim trusts most. Of course cynical old Kolchak is immune to said monster, as he has faith in no one. Naturally, that’s not entirely true, and our intrepid (and probably inebriated) reporter narrowly avoids death at the hands of the shape-shifting backstabber. I know this was supposed to be some sort of uplifting sign that even the most pessimistic and misanthropic of us have our human connection. However, even as a child, I recall not being able to lose the terrible feeling that, no matter how vigilant we are against our enemies, we will inevitably slip up, thus causing our destruction. Oh, such a lighthearted little kindergartner was I.
As you may have guessed, The Night Stalker was a main influence on all the supernatural series, especially The X-Files—where they gave propes by givng Darrin McGavin a guest-starring role as the very first X-Files agent. Naturally, they attempted to remake this series, replacing cranky, rumpled ol’ Kolchak with oh-so-easy-on-the-eyes Stuart Townsend and a cast of toned, young multi-culti types, thus sucking much of the character out of the show, messing up the balance between the oh-so-earthbound schlump of a reporter with the otherwordly phenomena he investigated—not coincidentally, often wrapped in the guise of a glamorous model, socialites, tycoon or politician. Much like real life.

This Week’s Taste Sensation: Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick
It’s exactly what it says it is: a spicy breakfast sausage, wrapped in pancake batter, on a stick. Basically, a breakfast corndog, to be dipped in buckets of maple syrup. They only come in boxes of 12, thwarting any thoughts you might have of moderation, of stopping at eating a mere half-dozen. They also come in blueberry, which sounds good, and chocolate chip, which sounds gross. However, I would like to add that the new Carl’s Jr. teriyaki burger is a bit of a disappointment--with all the interesting stuff on it, it still doesn't taste much different than a regular burger. And I love sandwiches with pineapple on them.

This Week’s Good News
While the changeover from the Aladdin to Planet Hollywood wasn’t as upsetting as the loss of other classic casinos—after all, they had already torn down the old Aladdin to make way for the new one—it still wasn’t exactly welcome. One, we all know that the franchise itself is evil. And they made all the fuss about opening an outpost of Pink’s Hot Dogs, but it’s just some menu choices in the coffee shop and the dogs are served all flopped out with knife, fork and fries, thus losing the “all tastes and textures in each bite” effect that is the hot dog’s main point. And I miss the chicks in the I Dream of Jeanie outfits… but, then again, I’m never happy with anything. And there is a bright side: We’re finally getting an H&M, which means I can stop saving up money before and space in my luggage after every time I go back east. Of course the down side is that now I won’t be the only one in town with the rhinestone skull bag charm or Mamie Van Doren titty sweater or the Dia de los Muertos sundress. Although I am pretty sure that, even with a Sephora and H&M and a Betty Page dress shop all under the same roof, the good women of Las Vegas will still look tacky as all fuck.

Greatest Hits

Having been at this journalism bullshit for 13 or so years now, I've probably written something in the neighborhood of five million words, some of them better than others. Since most of it is scattered across numerous existant and non-existent websites and publications, here's a roundup of some of my finer efforts (I've left out most of the heavy hackwork. You want to see that, Google away) . Unfortunately, some of my best stuff is no longer available, but here's some of what is, in something approximating chronological order...

Las Vegas Citylife:
Atomic Liquors Crawl
Drinking in places that aren't bars Crawl
Pioneer Saloon Crawl
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds CD review
Hunter S. Thompson Crawl
Christmas shopping Crawl
Hooters & the Playboy Club Crawl
Drag bar Crawl
Celebrity midget impersonators writeup
Last call at the New Frontier Crawl
Douchebag bar Crawl
Nick Cave/Grinderman CD review
Doing shots Crawl
Amy Winehouse CD review
Bars with a view Crawl
Girl drink drunk Crawl
Double Down Christmas pick
Amy Sedaris' I Like You book review
Fancy cocktail Crawl
Cowboy bar Crawl
Modern Drunkard Convention wrapup
Bars of lousy bands Crawl
Bars of the late, lamented Stardust crawl

Black Book Magazine
Some itineraries they've pulled from the Vegas travel guide I wrote. Pretty much everything Vegas on this website is something mine unless otherwise specifically noted.

Las Vegas Weekly:
Play of the Day Steelers bar exam
The Las Vegas Drive-In appreciation
Roadhouse punk rock bar exam
Dispensary Lounge bar exam
Champagne's bar exam
White Cross Drugstore appreciation
Badlands bar exam
One of the best things I've ever done, a piece on soul music.
The now-defunct Stardust bar exam
The also-defunct Bond-Aire bar exam
Barbie convention writeup
Atomic Liquor bar exam
I spend midnight at the Seven Seas
Oktoberfest and Hofbrauhas bar exam
Lustful writeup on attractive NBA players
Dolly Parton: worship in the form of a review
The bewildered newcomer piece that was my first bit of Vegas publishing

CitySearch:
Kiki & Herb review
Greg Dulli/Afghan Whigs interview
Elvis Presley CD review
Anti-Beastie Boys column.
Respose to angry Beastie Boys fans.
James Brown concert review
Actually, here's the whole shebang. I was editor for alla this.
Frank Sinatra death rant
Nina Simone concert review
Article on underappreciated bands
NY Knicks and NY Jazz Festival column
DJ championship article I also took the photos for
Tom Waits retrospective
Vans Warped Tour review

Time Out New York:
Josef Von Sternberg appreciation
Princess Superstar interview
One of the greatest moments of my life: interviewing Tom Waits
Queens of the Stone Age interview

New York Magazine:
Sophie's
Broadway to Vegas piece
Smoking opium article
Films of vice roundup

Village Voice:
Raveonettes & BRMC review
Little Charlie & the Nightcats review
... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead concert review
Dirtbombs writeup
Deftones concert review

New York Observer:
Appreciation of Latrell Sprewell