Best of Manhattan 2001: Entertainment

But Screwball beat the game and came back, quickly and effectively. The crew’s second album, Loyalty, was released this summer on Hydra/Landspeed. That first break must have only made them hungrier. Now 2001 finds underdogs Hostyle, KL, Kyron and Poet rhyming with the unrestrained intensity that hiphop as a whole was too self-satisfied to muster this year. Loyalty producers Ayatollah and Godfather Don contributed beats that should have rap’s ascendant Pro Tools posse ashamed of itself. On top of that add the near-perfect guest roster of M.O.P., Cormega, Kool G. Rap, Nature, Noreaga and Tragedy, and what else can we say besides that this, too, is how hiphop works, sometimes–thank God.

In short, UA Union Square is just another beat-down New York City movie theater now, no longer even trying to give itself the airs of superiority it had when it was young and cocky.

It’s the vocal range of the lone wolf, lurking above the tenor and below the soprano. Think of contraltos like Joan Armatrading and Alison Moyet, with their fluid vibratos, mature and tragic; divas without a megaselling worldwide hit to their proud names. In pop, the contralto is not the money voice. And then there’s Mary Fahl, a contralto with a college-girl face and kohl-streaked eyes. We don’t know where she got her regal voice, but it wasn’t at Space Mountain.

Fahl cowrote and released a four-song EP called Lenses of Contact this year, and it makes us embarrassed for both the mincing stampede of girl singers on the charts and for Fahl herself, who actually cares enough to sing, literally, from her guts, while daringly carving every phrase into dizzying terrain. She never goes reedy or ragged, even on a song like "Raging Child," where she chases a "poor girl" over her treacherous range. In "Paolo," Fahl loses her imperfect guardian angel to cigarettes and wine ("wherever you are/Say a prayer for me/I’ve been dancing with monsters perilously"); "Meant to Say" is the grandest apology we’ve heard in a long time; and "Redemption," the EP’s final track, is an anthem waiting to be seized, hopefully by an audience of strange birds with a fine-tuned ear. (Redeye Distribution, www.redeyeusa.com)

The message read: "GMM regrets to inform its supporters that Condemned 84 will not be appearing at the GMM Beer Olympics. C-84 has opted not to perform due to the fact that two bands who have African-American members would be performing on the same stage. We are shocked to hear that one of our bands would take this racist outlook in this day and age. We at GMM are also shocked that a band that we have invested time and money with in the past would come out and embarrass us with this statement. GMM and its bands are strongly anti-racist and we hope our supporters are as well."

Did you see her on Conan O’Brien batting cleanup for the bloviating Penn Jillette? She saved the show, turning a prepared layup session between O’Brien and herself into a piece of ur-hilarity full of bizarre pauses, glances, grunts and grapefruit slurping. She caught serious shit that night, too, having used "chink" in a joke the entire point of which was to parody just the sort of loony who actually would use that word. (Evidently, the Sino-p.c. thug brigade barraged NBC with angry mail and the network knuckled under a few days later, issuing a few pusillanimous grunts of its own.)

But best of all, Silverman’s as indescribably pretty in person as she is on tv. This we discovered recently when we spotted her walking down 2nd Ave. We swallowed, patted down our hair and approached, asking if she would repeat a funny line she has about getting serious with her boyfriend. "Sure," she said with a smile, obviously happy to oblige. "It goes like this: My boyfriend and I have finally gotten to the point where we’re comfortable peeing in front of each other–" "Yeah?" we said. And then she told us the punchline, but damn if we can recall it. See, we always seem to forget how jokes end, and truth be told, we were too busy melting.

The amateur teams that play here are nothing like the soggy-gutted, postwork beer leagues that clog Central Park softball–in fact, they’re about as amateur as the U.S. Olympic basketball team. Many of the players are imported to the U.S. specifically to play on these teams, sponsored by willing companies that support their unpaid, amateur status with a featherbed job. From the cricket tests played by elite athletes from Barbados, Jamaica, Pakistan and Australia to the Irish games staffed with Eire’s finest, the park is New York’s international athletic zone. For Latin soccer teams and Japanese softball players Van Cortlandt Park is their new home in their new homeland. They play for the love of the sport, usually in front of a tiny audience of spouses, mates and old immigrants.

Forget thousand-dollar courtside seats to see pampered crybabies phone it in; for the cost of a subway ride you can see some of the best players in the world compete for free, simply for the glory of it.

We decided just to check and see what they were charging for an hour of pool. Who knew, maybe we’d see Freddie Prinze Jr. sink an 8-ball. So in we strolled, without a thought that our attire might be a problem, as we’d never heard the words "dress code" and "pool hall" in the same sentence before. We wouldn’t tonight, either. The guy they gave the job of breaking the news was, naturally, a black man the size of a garage door. He blocked our path five steps in and intoned with Barry White smoothness and a touch of sympathy: "Fellas, we at Chelsea Billiards are upgrading our look. And we’d appreciate it if you did the same."

Where did this "local" band come from–Switzerland? Oh, sorry, that’s just where some of them went to boarding school. There are plenty of other bands in New York who are more deserving of hype, and many more who have paid their dues. So what if these guys sold out their CMJ show at Irving Plaza–who do you think bought the tickets? The people who depend on Rolling Stone and Time Out New York to tell them what’s hot, we’re guessing.

But that’s not the case with shows at CBGB put on by Steve Mach, the club’s light man, and his production company, Action Cat Productions. Usually, these shows go to benefit animals in one capacity or another. And we really respect that. And sometimes the money goes into the bands’ pockets. We like that, too. But what we really like is Steve’s taste in music. Where else can we see bands from Minnesota with transsexual singers performing with such great locals as Charm School, X-Possible and hosts of others? And where else can we be entertained from the first band at 8 o’clock till the last at 2 in the morning? The best part is this: Where else can we see huge posters onstage behind the bands with portraits of a 3-foot pussy?

Not content with the up-and-comers they used to book, SummerStage’s organizers now bring international stars. Perennial sponsor Time Out guarantees attendance by thousands of clueless trendoids. At July’s Manu Chao show, the park was so packed that an ambulance couldn’t get through the mob. After that, SummerStage had massive crowd control, and seeing a "free" show in Central Park meant paying heavily in frustration: having to wait on a long line to get in, being fenced off from the grassy areas behind the stands and suffering the indignity of being corralled at every turn, culminating in a cruel and pointless funneled exit.

Next mayor, please, lay off three quarters of SummerStage’s staff and scale the series back.

The Inverse productions are not for the faint of heart: the assorted tongue twisters, casually delivered profundities and plays-within-plays–often performed as quickly as the large cast of actors can move and speak–can be baffling to even the most perceptive viewer. And the plays are long–sometimes three hours. But we’ve never regretted seeing one; in fact, we come away from Bromley’s plays feeling exhilarated, wrung out, giddy. Inverse’s ambition and ingenuity give us hope for the future of New York theater.

"It takes a lot of people to get our plays produced–so many actors, so many words; they tend to be long, tend to be epic–all the things producers at the higher levels of theater tell you not to do," says Bromley from his home in Brooklyn. "That’s why I started to produce the plays myself. But the cast and crew, who dedicate themselves to something with very slim commercial potential, are the real heroes."

Visit the Inverse Theater website (www.inversetheater.com) for information on upcoming shows, and to find links to free resources for actors and theater producers. Subject titles like, "Tips for Audition-Winning Headshots," and a signup list for the "Theater Production Idea-Pak," demonstrate what a tight ship the company runs. And while the online freebies are no doubt useful to many visitors, they are intended to spread the influence of Inverse Theater worldwide.

"We wanna sell our plays everywhere English is spoken–and where English is not spoken we want them to pay us to translate them," Bromley says. To date, Midnight Brainwash Revival has been staged in San Francisco, and Want’s Unwisht Work and Icarus & Aria in L.A. Inverse is also planning to invade New York City’s parks. "Shakespeare is saturating out parks," says Bromley. "I wanna move him to the fringe and myself to the center." It’s that kind of audacity that places Inverse at the top of our list.

Word is the composer–who’s much better known in Brazil and has released a number of CDs–loves the acoustics of this small room, better known for more "difficult" music, that nevertheless manages to pack ’em in on a regular basis. Come late summer it seemed that Cantuaria was everywhere–doing a six-night stand at the Blue Note ($45 if you’re lucky, compared to $10 or $12 at Tonic), being interviewed on a weekend All Things Considered (the woman host asked him if he "sleep[s] with his guitar") and generally hitting the big time. This doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll never play Tonic again, or that you might not find other, comparable treasures on their schedule.

Ironically, it turns out Glam started as a "party night" at the Coney, when its big red doors were open to us who so desperately craved the PRJ (Punk Rock Juice–Malibu & cranberry). Of course, back then we didn’t know shit about it because we were too busy getting drunk, throwing up on each other and making out with David Lee Roth. But now that we’ve discovered it, our Saturday nights are booked indefinitely.

Run by DJ Nikki Kane, unarguably the hottest chick with headphones to ever hit the streets of New York, the tunes vary from the Dead Boys to Weezer to Buckcherry to ELO! Finally, someone who knows rock ’n’ roll history and is not afraid to play it, along with new stuff that the hipsters in the East Village are so afraid to admit they like. DJ duties are shared by Michael T., whom we first met years ago singing "Sweet Transvestite," and whom we still have a small crush on today.

The night is fun and brings us back to the day. And with added bonuses like go-go dancers and bartenders who actually worked the Coney, we couldn’t be happier. Unless Glam 2001 were every night.

Like 21st-century versions of Pope Julius II and Donato Bramante–the Renaissance fellows who destroyed the Basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome with a design so excessive it helped precipitate the Protestant Reformation–Krens and Gehry now propose a multiplex version of the Bilbao Guggenheim near Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. The Guggenheim, the McDonald’s of art museums (with franchises coming soon to Las Vegas and Brazil), already has very little to do with art. Another Manhattan Guggenheim would be another monument to global capitalist pomp and muscle, and only confirm New York’s lack of artistic originality and gross corporatism.

There is–and always has been–one exception, however. The Museum of Television & Radio. The $6 admission even gets you into the archive. Like a multiplex, there are three theaters downstairs, all of them showing a continuously running variety of series, curated in such a way that there’s always bound to be something you’ll be interested in. Over the past few years, they’ve offered a "Woody Allen’s Television Days" series, a collection of Super Bowl commercials, a Muppet retrospective, a collection of Mr. Bean episodes. Animation, news events, dramas, comedies–there’s always something good. Pay your six bucks, see what’s on, go downstairs to one of the always-nearly-deserted air-conditioned theaters, and you’re set for the day.

Better still, there are never any commercials. Unless, of course, that’s what you went there to see.

And that’s why we love Noel Ford so much. Noel, pretty much a fixture over at the Continental for many years now, knows his stuff better than anyone. And whatever he doesn’t know, he reads about, figures out, then uses that knowledge. Lord knows the Continental books plenty of bands, and just on the odds alone a lot of them are gonna suck. But somehow Noel, with his golden fingers and ears of platinum, makes listening to a bad band not only tolerable, but sometimes downright enjoyable. Several bands have liked working with him so much they’ve taken him on the road with them. We hope one day, if our band ever gets successful enough, we can take Noel with us. But we know by then he’ll be on the cover of every sound magazine and we won’t be able to afford him.

Our favorite is the bizarre country/Celtic/punk band from Astoria called Lancaster County Prison. Their instruments include guitar, bass, drums, banjo and bagpipes. They play every song as if it’s their last, and we’re not sure that’s a compliment. Their club shows invariably turn into Pogues-style donnybrooks where every song gallops to a pile-driving crescendo that most bands reserve for encores. Their audiences tend to span all ages, with drunken revelers not sure whether they should pogo or clod-stomp; most just fall over after a while. A recent show at the Irish Rover in Astoria saw the band play from 11 at night to 4 the next morning. We left around 1:30, after lead guitarist Gerald Donnelly started carrying on about his grandfather in the IRA; we have uncles in the IRS more deserving of soapbox polemics. Still, we encourage you to stay through the hammy ethnic arse-kissing that all Irish bands fall prey to–if only to hear the bagpipe solo in their cover of "Delta Dawn." Lancaster County Prison are true country punk-rockers.

That’s from a track called "Things You Sing to a Urinal" by the Astoria-based Bridge and Tunnel Club. Other gems here include "Song for Getting Stood Up in Front of a Dance Club":

And from the title track, along similar lines: "Sick of the theme bars on Avenue A/Tired of them I need to get away right away/Ten-dollar cover and nine-buck drinks..."

Yes, the lament of the recently arrived, relatively impoverished New Yorker, in this case apparently an immigrant from Philadelphia. These are the feelings we’ve had but felt were disloyal and suppressed. For fear of betraying our exes, ourselves, the glamorous myths of New York, whatever. Don’t worry, Bridge-and-Tunneler, stick it out and you’ll mind it all less.

Oh...the music. Somehow we knew it wouldn’t match up. Standard, plodding indie rock of the poorest recording quality we’ve ever heard, way beyond lo-fi. Son, keep on saving your money by not drinking in those bars and put what you save into some rehearsal and recording studio time. Then get back to us.

And Edwards, whose team is 1-1 as of this writing, will turn the Jets around: he has a track record of helping turn around New York franchises. As a player for the Eagles, Edwards–as has been repeated over and over–picked up "the fumble" in November ’78 that Boardwalk Joe Pisarcik dropped in the last seconds of a meaningless game, which gave the Eagles a miraculous win.

What isn’t written about was how "the fumble" made the Giants turn everything around. That game became the rallying cause for beleaguered Giants fans: they had had enough. Season ticketholders started burning their ducats outside of the Meadowlands, and Giants management saw that, after almost two decades in the wasteland, they would have to produce a winner. So they brought in the Tuna, drafted Simms and Taylor, and by the early 80s they were a contending team.

Let’s hope Herman Edwards can do the same for the Jets. Lord do they need it.

Then along comes Worse, the brainchild of ex-Furious George bassist Evan Cohen. Not only do these guys play to empty clubs packed with cobwebs and cockroaches, their drummer recently missed a bus and made the band miss their CBGB debut. Songs from these guys include one where the singer yells about preteen hairless wonders, and one called "I Get My Coke from the CIA" that’s so stupid it’s not brilliant. When Evan first called us and asked us to guess what the name of his band was, we guessed Pile of Shit. Turns out it’s Worse.

On the other hand, what if you had the world’s biggest home theater to yourself? That option is available at the end of a short train ride. On the Friday morning that the Latest Big Production debuts, head to Grand Central and get on the Metro North New Haven line. You’ll ride for about 20 minutes before getting off at the New Rochelle station. Go up the stairs that take you across the tracks, and make a right. Walk down North Ave. and take another right at Anderson. You can’t miss the shining exterior of New Roc City, home of Regal Cinema’s New Roc City 18 multiplex.

The New Roc City mall is, in itself, an amazing idiocy. Built as the host of a vibrant downtown New Rochelle nightlife, the structure boasts an arcade and ice-skating rink that are usually deserted during the day. Fortunately, the same can be said of the huge movie theater that anchors the structure. Regal Cinema spared no expense in giving New Rochelle the best in today’s moviegoing experience. There’s stadium seating, incredible sound, huge screens set in huge auditoriums–and, best of all, that splendid isolation. The first screening on Fridays is usually at noon, and folks who went there to see American Pie 2 on opening day enjoyed their own private screening room. There may have been another couple toward the front, but we couldn’t tell from our vantage point toward the back. At the same moment, some poor sap had paid way more than our $6 matinee price to see the same movie in a New York City theater surrounded by morons who hooted over half the sophisticated punchlines.

Riding off to New Roc City has become one of our last resorts for making decent movie memories. And after the film, enjoy some of New Rochelle’s finest dining. You’ve never seen so many donut shops in one humble downtown area. Or you might prefer to sample the restaurants of the actual New Roc complex. The Applebee’s is okay, but skip the Chevys. It’s not nearly as good as the Times Square location.

We know you don’t care if we feel like we’re treated badly, because you think we will keep on coming, and if we don’t you can move to Jersey, and you’re right. But these sluggish employees are costing you a lot of money. Yeah, they’re unionized, and impervious to any whip-cracking, so we’re not suggesting that. But they will move for more money, and with the increased sales that commission brings, you’ll end up with more money as well. More money, George. And we won’t have to miss two innings because we were only fourth on line. Everybody wins!

"Miss Christina drives a nine four four..."

Oh ecstasy. This is it.

"Satisfaction oozes from her pores..."

Our head, squashed between oversized headphones, lolls back.

"She keeps rings on her fingers, marble on her floor..."

And then, one of our favorite commentaries on the age of plenty:

"Cocaine in her dresser, bars on her door/She keeps her back against the wall."

That would be the opening stanza to David and David’s "Welcome to the Boomtown," a minor hit from the early 80s; the song had a few months of airplay before it turned to ashes. But, like many songs from the shadowland of our high school, "Boomtown" stuck with us. We never saw it on an 80s compilation album, and you can bet that David and David CDs were not to be found in the chain record stores where we lived. Up until that great night when we downloaded "Boomtown" into our very own hard drive, all we could recall about the song was that first stanza. But if you can hum a few bars of a lost song, you know there’s another goof slumping around in the universe who has not only used that song as a mantra nonstop for 20 years, but sports a hookup with enough gigs to make an amateur goof’s daydream come true.

We searched and found "Boomtown" on Napster. Being a long, undanceably intricate song about urban class structure and the classlessness of drug abuse (maybe this was why the song disappeared without a trace), it took literally half the night to download. But the joy at a search and seizure well done kept us pacified until at least, oh, morning.

The same thrill happened with the download of a few other lost songs, and the discovery of some new ones: Michel’le’s Dre-produced and press-on tuff "Nicety" and "No More Lies," which outdid Shannon’s equally tuff "Let the Music Play"; Solomon Burke’s "Cry to Me" (used to such great effect in the seduction scene in Dirty Dancing); Stevie Nicks’ "Sleeping Angel" (from the pre-abortion scene in Fast Times); Tori Amos’ cover of "Purple Rain" (live and rare, maybe); Van Halen’s crucial ’83 US Festival opener of "Romeo Delight" (where Dave yells, "I forgot the fucking words!!"); and Skid Row’s tour de force "Monkey Business" (best metal scream ever, and who the hell wants to buy the whole album?).

Who wants to buy the whole album, indeed. Just as it seemed like Napster couldn’t be any more free and freaky, the drones who wanted us to buy the whole album stepped in and put a block on just about everything. All that was left were some raggedy numbers by the Artist (he ain’t no record company slave) and little else. Napster’s home page apologized profusely for the inconvenience caused by the court injunction, and promised to revamp Napster so it was bigger and better than ever, but we knew what was coming. The site quickly became a morass of searches and uploads executed in sneaky Pig Latin (if Madonna gets blocked from the upload, certainly DaMonna will make it though the hoops?), and finally, the night came when any search brought up an endless scroll of Britney Spears’ latest single. This made us real paranoid. We wrote to our congressman, and we got a nice form letter in return. Now we don’t go near Napster anymore.

Unfortunately, Neil isn’t. He passed away this summer. But not without first rereleasing some of the best music New York City and the rest of the world have ever had to offer, on CD. Recently we have heard some classic tracks from the New York Dolls, the Dickies, GG Allin and lots and lots of the reggae and dub that Neil seemed to love so much. Every time we ran into the guy he was always smiling, and always had the youthful energy of a 16-year-old on speed. He was liked by his peers in "the industry" for being so innovative, and loved even more by the artists who worked with him. We’ll miss Neil, but we know that his vision for ROIR (Reach Out International Records) will be carried on by his son and the rest of the staff at that wonderful label.

Seriously, the Mercury has become our favorite place to see live music over the past year. They’ve got all the young touring and local rock bands coming through–the Greenhornes, Dead Moon, the Mooney Suzuki, Cherry Valence, etc. The sound is impeccable, or it seems so on the rare occasions we can discern the music through the occasional ringing in the right side of our head: "Speak up, junior, you’re talking into Grandma’s Nebula ear!" Most importantly, the venue itself is somewhere between a local bar and a club, not as small as Maxwell’s or Brownies but not as arena-esque as the Bowery.

Tips for maximum enjoyment include keeping your sunglasses on in order to receive free beverages (the barman will recognize you as somebody because, let’s face it, you are) and crashing the band room (theirs is the easiest to infiltrate in town). Our line once we’re in: "Hey, where’s the toilet around here?"

See, there’s no balm as psychically potent as schadenfreude. Okay, if you happen to be one of the few who remained resolutely circumspect through that whole heady period, then watch it for bragging rights. Either way, one of the obvious enjoyments (and, we suspect, unspoken selling points) of this pretty good documentary is the restrained pleasure it affords, under the guise of objective viewing, in watching others get fucked a whole lot worse then you did. Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman–best friends and e-entrepreneurs who manage to raise $60 million in venture capital for their startup GovWorks.com–lose every dime, their time and their friendship, too. Sad story, indeed. That these fellows should happen to symbolize the true source of your malaise makes the viewing all the more pleasurable.

Really cool public statues should mean something to living people. There are very few big bronzes in New York that draw more stares or delight more people than the larger-than-life statue of bus driver supreme Ralph Kramden at Port Authority. Standing proudly with his lunch bucket over a (blessedly) ungentrified, dank-looking strip of 8th Ave., the statue of the blustery bus driver fits in perfectly there, and not just because of the bus angle.

Kramden and his wife Alice lived in the bleakest tv universe ever imagined. Their apartment was minimalist–in the bad way. There wasn’t even a cutout from a magazine to decorate their harsh, naked walls. The show made Kramden out to be a poor working stiff. Still, even a bus driver could afford a gallon of paint. His pal Norton lived a much less wretched life upstairs on what was, presumably, an equivalent salary from sewer work.

Kramden’s world was one full of rage, frustration and the never-realized hope for a big score. Try as he might, Ralph was chained to a world that mocked each and every one of his Sisyphean ambitions. As a Raccoon, Ralph was never more than a tenuous member; he could never be the lodge poobah. Ralph was trapped in a mean, little place. The only thing he had to brighten his world was his saintly and patient Alice, whose steadfast love he repaid with merciless bullying and browbeating. So it’s altogether fitting that tv’s most celebrated bus driver is immortalized with a grand statue standing in a place equally as bleak as the one he lived in during his television lifetime. Ralph has come home.

We wish Edwards the best with his newfound fortune, and if any moralistic so-and-so condemns you for asking God’s help in this situation, you can count on us for support.

After all, we spent every summer since we were 15 rocking back and forth and kissing fringes in the hopes that Wetlands, the chancre on lower Manhattan nightlife’s throb, would close for good. And this year we learned that the Lord has good taste in music.

Wetlands–pardon us, the Wetlands Preserve–was by far the worst venue for live music of the past decade. We shed a tear for the Gas Station and rent our shirts for Coney Island High. Now we see the fruits of our suffering. It wasn’t just the cloying hippie shit, like the "eco-saloon" (Jesus), since that’s a matter of taste and we’re not going to be so culture-snobbish. It was the offensively idiotic lima-bean stage, far too near to the back of the club, ensuring that the crush of fans really did crush each other, which in too many cases (we’re thinking Skindependence Day 1996) led to unnecessary violence. That stupid layout made friends of ours pass out or grow weak from heat exhaustion in the notoriously infernal "Sweatglands." And right near the stage was the club’s bar, where a bartender was always eager to overcharge you for anything, including water. We’d read about Peter Gatien’s problems with the law, hurl the paper across the room and yell, "Go after Wetlands, dammit! Wetlands!"

Yes–shut up–the club did some things right, like its early support of Konkrete Jungle and hosting the Okayplayer institution of Black Lilly. But for every Roots crew freestyle, there were 10 shows by Ominous Seapods or Bloo. We’ve been to maybe 75 shows at Wetlands, each time hoping for the best, and we’ve enjoyed exactly three. Once one of our high school bands played that club, and even though we didn’t know how to play our instruments, we knew when a soundman didn’t care about doing his job.

Already we hear the whiny conventional wisdom rewriting Wetlands’ history, sitting shiva for any lost nightclub, no matter how inhospitable or consistently mediocre. We’d rather appeal to a higher power, and so now we’re going to talk to the Lord like we’re accepting a Source award:

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out the way we’d hoped. First, This Is Next Year leads off with the untalented Walkmen (we prefer Stewart Lupton as a frontman). The second track is by They Might Be Giants, which is not only lame, but unnecessary.

This Is Next Year isn’t a total disappointment; we found ourselves liking the songs by A.M. Radio, Grand Mal, Weeds of Eden, Geometry, Ex-Models, Rainer Maria, Interpol and Nada Surf. Plus the always likable Home, the French Kicks, Ida, Les Savy Fav and Enon. But overall it’s uninteresting, and woefully unrepresentative of the Brooklyn music scene. Where are Panthers? The Liars? Bad Form? Bad Wizard? High Society? Black Dice? How about Jonny Chan & the New Dynasty Six? Or the Ken Firpo Rent Explosion, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Monumentals and the Brought Low? J.J. Paradise Players Club, Unitard, Blood on the Wall, Sea Devils, Ramona Pinto and Tiffany Anders?

Then there’s the art, which as far as we’re concerned tends toward the "bad" side. We remember one work in particular, consisting of lines of red duct tape applied to a white wall. Not too engrossing, but the couple–in from Dubuque?–taking pictures of each other in front of it were kind of entertaining.

We’ve seen some really good bands play Good/Bad, and when we say seen we mean we’ve wormed our way down to the front where there isn’t even a stage to separate us from the musicians, which we like. Sucks if you hang around in back by the keg, though. We brought our own drinks once, because we don’t like beer, and what with Good/Bad’s generally cheap admission prices, you’re all set. We hope the dog (Little Meechee) makes more appearances in the future.

That’s why we thank our lucky strap-ons for Kia, the chick lead singer of New York’s most notorious band, Deviant Behavior. Not only does she perform pretty much topless and destroy everything in sight, she, like the late GG Allin, likes to put the microphone places it shouldn’t be. Plus she’s cute, and just loves to show off. Everything.

Someone once told us her nickname was "Welfare Titties" because she used to hang out topless at Coney Island High. Well, we like her titties, as well the rest of her and her band. You go, Kia!

Admittedly, it’s a bit personal between us and Master Osment, who was a principal in our first ever homoerotic dream. (Engorging himself on our tumescence as we drove a Peterbilt refrigerated diesel across the Sonora desert. Ick!) Still, this creepy little new-age grommet’s name ought to be added to the list of über-unctuous celebrities–say, preceding Roberto Benigni and Tom Hanks and following Al Roker–whose unfathomable popularity never seems to receive the karmic-cultural downdressing it so richly deserves. Bottom line: Osment’s an adult mimic who plays children with the same mannered precociousness regardless of what the role calls for. That he executes so proficiently is evidence of the possibility he actually is an adult and we just don’t know it yet. Either way, he’s got us all bamboozled.

People like that pussy Joe Lieberman and others often complain about the violence in video games, and have even pointed out some titles by none other than Rockstar. We, as New Yorkers, should be proud of our local video game company and the controversy that surrounds it. When you piss that many people off, you know you’re doing something right. These games rule.

But now we’re happy to announce that we’ve found another karaoke night (although every singer is pre-rehearsed and pre-picked). At Don Hill’s, one Wednesday a month, Steve Blush has put together a night that’s more fun and rocks harder than anything we’ve seen or heard in a long time. The band that plays the tunes is made up of Squeezebox Band veterans, including that great guitarist, David Matos, who rocks out with Bebe Buell. These guys know their metal, and they make every tune sound great–maybe even better than the original band that performed the song.

But here’s the kicker: all the singers are chicks. And we’re not just talking any girls here, but ones who can really sing. They’re all pros, and even though their melons might not be as big as their heads, they can sing the pants off any of those other rocker chicks out there like Axl Rose, Vince Neil or Bret Michaels. We love "Bitch" Night at Don Hill’s, and anyone who thinks this is just another annoying fad has got another thing coming!

Champale focused on classics from the past 40 years, like James Brown, Liquid Liquid, Tom Tom Club and ESG. He’d play "White Lines" followed by an N.W.A. song. While he’s not as professional as, say, $mall ¢hange or even Bobbito (DJ Cucumber Slice), neither were his patrons at dancing. We’d sacrifice intimacy and lack of skills for a good time any Friday night Hope we can find a new place as good as Contort Yourself.

What’s got us scratching our heads is the press release we received when Luxx opened this summer. "The first true nightclub and live music venue in the area," it trumpeted. "Luxx has...the only cabaret license in Williamsburg." Well, we’ll be sure to hightail it over there right now, we thought, seeing as how we only dance when it’s legal to do so. Look, we’re sympathetic to the Manhattan club owner who told us he’d like to see cabaret licenses phased out, rather than rescinded all at once, so that he and his partners didn’t lose a valuable asset. But this press release wasn’t designed for potential investors, was it? If so, it sure went to the wrong place.

We and just about every other twentysomething in the city have danced ourselves silly in a variety of nonlegally sanctioned venues in Williamsburg on lo these many occasions. These places have managed to evade the long arm of the law–how, we can’t possibly guess–did someone say "cost of doing business"? Hell, some of these places aren’t even "venues" in the normal sense of the word, and they seem to get along just fine–matter of fact, they’re raking it in. We’ve been to illegal music venues and bars with illegal dance scenes in Manhattan, too, and in other parts of Brooklyn, and maybe that’s why it just seems bizarre to us for a venue to be congratulating itself for being legal and aboveboard. Which isn’t to say we aren’t impressed with the fact that Luxx managed to get the piece of paper. We just think it would be better if those venues who’ve gone through the maze of cabaret licensing would speak out against it. Maybe then we could have even more of the kind of nightlife–and no, drinky crows, we don’t just mean bars–that motivated many of us to come here, in part, and keeps many of us from leaving.

So, we have made it our personal quest to figure out cool things to do for free in the city. So far the thing we’ve gotten the most bang out of have been the tapings of tv shows, and the most fun by far is Ready... Set... Cook! for the Food Network.

Forget Emeril. His tickets are by online lottery, and every yutz from here to Peoria registers to win. Emeril tickets are the taping equivalent of tickets to The Producers. Ready... Set... Cook! is more liberal, more democratic and a whole lot more fun for the audience. You register at www.foodtv.com for tickets, and you get to watch two episodes–about 2 hours’ worth of free entertainment. You get to see how the show works behind the scenes. We witnessed firsthand Ainsley Harriott’s inaugural show (he replaced longtime host Sissy Biggers); we got to meet him and get an autograph. (Emeril is whisked away by handlers at the end of each taping.) Between shows, they wheel out cookies baked by the Food Network culinary staff, and the other staff keeps the audience entertained with raffles and games.

Screw the movies. They all end up on cable anyway. Go see Ready... Set... Cook! That cookie would cost you big bucks at the multiplex.

Old men congregate at the bar, marginally younger women slurp beer and hurl darts in the vague direction of the bull’s-eye and a couple stick-skinny teenage boys with their vintage clothes hanging heavily from deflated white bodies angle themselves over the pool table. We watch them stab and shoot with violent dexterity. We watch them slap money on the edge of the table. And because we’re feeling gutsy, we announce that we’d like to learn to play.

The stringbean boys chalk their pool cues and agree to teach us. They take turns suggesting angles and guiding our arm. They buy us beer and when they lean over us, we can smell the soft smoke of their pregame joint.

They must be good teachers, because even in the haze of our slight inebriation, we suddenly understand the game. We’re shooting stripes into corner pockets, calculating the point at which contact should occur. We get the sense that they’re impressed with their own ability as much as ours. And at 2 in the morning, when we finally leave, they tell us to come back soon, we’ll play for money. We’re feeling cocky and think we might just take them up on the offer. ign="left">