The Morning News' Choire Sicha (also of East/West) relates his attempt to convert an art-hating dot-commer to a Chelsea gallery gawker. The plan backfires and Choire gets converted: "I stood in the middle of the empty Mary Boone gallery, the most pristine money mill in the world, surrounded by a sold-out show of half-a-million dollar paintings. The impeccable staff were clicking their pens and answering their phones and I wanted to scream. Had it always been so awful?"
The complicated art of Chelsea [TMN]

Choire from East/West on Billyburg: "These days Williamsburg is a playground for Craigs List-loving retards and they call part of Cobble Hill 'No-Go,' for North of the Gowanus canal. Honestly. Everyone has a baby there, and if they don't, they'll buy one real soon. Overall, I found the whole Brooklyn quality-of-life argument really quite specious. Isn't quality of life embodied by not having to take the subway?"
No sleep til Brooklyn [East/West]

Songs from the off-Broadway puppet musical, Avenue Q:
"If You Were Gay," "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist," "The Internet Is For Porn," "I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today," "You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want (When You're Making Love)," "My Girlfriend, Who Lives In Canada," "There Is Life Outside Your Apartment," [and] "Schadenfreude,"
Puppet musical Avenue Q extends off-Broadway to April 27 [Playbill via Choire]

Choire from East/West issues an "appreciation" to the "Cab Driver Who Gave Me the New York Post and Totally Encouraged Me To Smoke": You might be the only reason I haven't grifted an arson fraud and moved to L.A. with the insurance money. I will always love you. Even though you're really really old and don't drive so good and I think you were muttering something about the Mayor's space ship while pulling hairs from your terrifying and probably fundamentalist-induced beard, I think you rock. I hope you didn't spend your five dollar tip on underage porn or Night Train or Hezbolla, and I hope I see you again real soon!
Two apologies and an appreciation [East/West]

If you didn't watch the Oscars, don't worry. (Seriously. Don't.) Choire from East/West documented the evening in excruciating detail. Some highlights:
· "Now Queen Latifah is singing with Catherine Zeta-Jones, some song from Chicago. Is Catherine preggers? Oh wow, she is. What are she and Michael Douglas thinking? Their children are going to have to wear helmets their entire lives."
· "Best actor: hot fox Adrian Brody! Who'd a thunk? From that Nazi piano movie. His nose is huge. I think I love him. I want to have a threeway with him and Halle. The more you stare at him the hotter he gets, like some sort of pornographic 3-D drawing. Wow, that sure is a nose. If he's against the war I really want to do him and his nose. I hope it's not fake."
· "Harrison Ford is so stoned up there on stage presenting. Dude is baked. OMG. POLANSKI WINS BEST DIRECTOR! Hollywood loves its non-extradited child rapists."
The Oscars: take it in the nose [East/West]

Buried in the middle of Choire's fuck-the-war,-let's-eat-carbs and-have-unsafe-sex speech: "As I look back to my pre-teen years, I remember my most closely cherished dream: my secret lust was for money, vast shitloads of it. At night I clutched my pillow and imagined it to be a harsh burlap sack with a big black dollar sign on it. All I really need is a couple million to start, enough to buy something not revolting in Manhattan that'll triple in value in a decade. From there I will build my slumlord empire, fleecing foreign NYU students and evicting the pregnant and the infirm."
Operation My Chunky Ass [East/West]

"If only a yawning hole could open up and suck them all down — into my bathroom floor with the retarded Kinko's employees, the methed-out gym queens, and the poormouthing dotcom retirees, the attention-starved waiters, the model crying over her asymetrical face, the teenagers with their whole lives ahead of them with no appreciation of that fact, unbathed record store employees, delivery men with influenza, secretaries with dyspepsia, cab drivers who no longer let you flout the non-smoking laws. Into my pit, senseless step-children of New York, pile up and decay."
Hate is all you need [EastWest]

A New York life, in which Choire Sicha is faced with a choice between his two cats, and his own survival through the bitter winter. Here's his ingenious guide to the making of a fur hat.
Pets or Fashion? The Easy Choice [East West]

Choire from East/West on why redevelopment of Hell's Kitchen is probably a no-go: "The High Line people are going to run into troubleI m surprised they ve gotten this far. Part of it is the presence of DEA and FBI (occupied) buildings around the highline. They don t want greater public access to their buildings."
Redeveloping the Hudson Railyards and Hell's Kitchen [Queso via Anil]

Blogger Mike took his video camera to Phil Kline's annual production of "Unsilent Night" in Washington Square park and witnessed the performance as it was being crashed by Santacon, "a bunch of Burning Man types in santa costumes,shouting HO, HO, HO, and bar-hopping to oblivion." Says Mike, "it was a great New York moment."
Unsilent night meets Santacon 2002 [GammablaBlog via East/West]

It had to happen. New Yorkers are finally sick of Atkins. Somei.e., the New York half of East/Westare rolling their own diet plans. A sample:

Choire relives childhood nightmares by subjecting himself to an adult spelling bee on the Lower East Side with the likes of Jonathan Ames ("the writer and total snack."): "A hundred people stared at me expectantly from their creaky butt-shaped wooden seats. The man with the Oxford English Dictionary gave me a single-eyebrow raise. To my right, four people had been knocked out of the spelling bee on everyone's favorite goatsucker, the whippoorwill. I mean, c'mon. Whip. Poor. Will. Get a grip, people."
History, repeating [East/West]

Choire from East/West models a limited edition Gawker tee.

East/West NY correspondent, Choire, has put up the "The Personal Ad of Truth," complete with a list of "11 reasons why no one should ever date me." It's funny. Go read it. Now. (I, too, have a strange affinity for bands that involve "five teenage girls from San Jose with the same first name singing about smoking pot in the backseat of a police car," but I always thought it was a selling point.)
The first honest gay personal ad [East/West]