“Is that what you dream about: becoming a monster?” asks the experienced boy to the inexperienced girl in Twilight. Not just a seduction, that question posed by vampire teenager Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), probes Bella’s (Kristin Stewart) fear of her sexual self. The pop culture phenomenon of Twilight, based on Stephanie Meyer’s hit adolescent literary series, derives from its fascinatio...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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 ...