Flavor of the Week: Mama’s Boy
When people say RAY DOWNS is a motherfucker, they aren’t joking
“I’ll let you fuck me under one condition,” she said. “You have to fuck my mom first.” Her name was Star. And yes, she was a stripper. I was drunk, alone and depressed. I had just been dumped by a chubby girl with a pig nose; she was a bitch and an awful lay to boot. And she dumped me. I needed something quick. I went to the strip club on a whim. Walking through Times Square, the intense...
Knit Fit
On New Year’s Eve, the Knitting Factory will close for good . Has Manhattan become too soulless for the famed club, or is it the other way around?
It’s midnight on a Saturday night in Tribeca and the clock is winding down on the Knitting Factory’s existence. The dark, ramshackle club on Leonard Street has always had a forlorn quality. But tonight—with the street empty—it’s holding some line just for the sheer fuck of it; to spite the yuppie 9-to-5ers and European art dealers that will clink glasses of prosecco when it’s gone....
The Black List
With the election of Barack Obama, political correctness ain’t what it used to be. To help you navigate the new ins and outs, here are a few of the words, phrases, ideas and people that have now been officially blacklisted. Study carefully…
While recently browsing the video clips on Comedy Central’s site, I came across an oldie but a goodie: Chappelle’s Show. Feeling nostalgic, I clicked on “Reparations 2003,” a sketch where Dave Chappelle imagines what would happen if black people actually received the trillion-dollar compensation advocated by some as an apology for slavery. Having seen the clip before, I prepared myself for som...
Bash Compactor: Good Vibes
Ricki Lake Buzzes at Babeland
Ricki Lake can’t bring herself to throw away a vibrator. “I’m a packrat,” the actress told me on Tuesday at a fundraiser for the New Space for Women’s Health, a not-for-profit birthing center, held at sex emporium Babeland. “Since turning 40 I’ve really come into my own sexually,” she said. “I’m really getting comfortable with who I am.” And that mea...
Welcome to Her Doll House
The Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer goes out on her own
Dark piano music seems an odd fit for college house parties, but that is where Amanda Palmer first performed shows as a shy solo artist before forming The Dresden Dolls. “They were so intense,” she says. “I hadn’t found the humor to balance out the dark shit.” Her friends who attended the shows were encouraging but concerned by Palmer’s emotive, diary-entry intimate and revealing p...
Bash Compactor: They’ve Stopped Being Polite, Started Getting Real
Friday night, the producers of The Real World—exiled from bars in Brooklyn—were shooting a nightlife scene in the East Village dive bar Plan B. “Who are these people?” a redhead asked me as she watched Caitlin, the lithe, passable young tranny gyrating under the bright lights. She started grinding up against a tall jock in a plaid shirt. Lindsay Luv, a character on the show who was promoting ...
