By Amy Blair

Last night after a minor tiff, my boyfriend picked up my cat and lovingly asked her, “Pong, how would you like to see Mommy get ripped apart by bears?” To which I affectionately responded that I was going to have to pee in his mouth while he was sleeping later that night. He told me I was sweet, but that he was going to chop my tits off with a machete. I informed him that he is a sick, twisted bastard and I was going to have to go have sex with another man for revenge. To which he responded with good riddance. Then we brushed our teeth, got into bed, and fell asleep watching Sports Center. All was right in the world.

Read More "WEEK IN CRAIG: Save the Drama For Your Mama" »

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Here's a great gift idea for your budding RN, or even better, for your junky cousin. It's the Luminetx veinviewer, which casts a light source over the skin and displays a photo of an area that's overly vasculated and ready for poking. Just imagine the look on the sunken in face of the heroin-addled person in your life when you present him/her with this present this year, which says both "I support you no matter what" and "I don't want you to have to inject yourself in the neck anymore" all at once. This is one present they won't hock immediately after receiving so they'll be able to bang up for New Year's.

Veinviewer via UberGizmo

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Famed fat lady painter Fernando Botero’s controversial “Abu Ghraib” exhibit is on view through Saturday at the Marlborough Gallery, so this week is your last chance to check ‘em out. Interestingly, Botero is able to express the suffering of the prisoners without exploiting them, and instead does them justice:

“These paintings do something that the harrowing photographs taken at Abu Ghraib do not. They restore the prisoners’ dignity and humanity without diminishing their agony or the injustice of their situation. Mr. Botero does this, as painters always have, through manipulations of scale, color and form.”

Not too many of the heavyweight artists have fully attempted to interpret or create works based on the horrors of Abu Ghraib so we have to applaud Botero for deciding to stir the pot. See more of the “Abu Gharbi” collection here.

Botero Restores the Dignity of Prisoners at Abu Ghraib NYT

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photos courtesy of: Gothamist

I have mixed feelings about the fate of 11 Spring Street. Gothamist spoke to the Wooster Collective and “exclusively reports” what’s been going on at the sacred street art spot:

"They told us that the new owners have asked them to curate the decoration of the building-- both inside and out-- through the end of the year, with a huge party on December 16th to celebrate the building, the art, and the end of the project."

Wooster goes on to tell Gothamist how "street artists" (as opposed to graffiti vandals) will be flying in from all over to paint the interior of the building and continue to slap the outside of the building with signature wheat paste style work, and for the first time in it’s multi-layered history, they’ll be doing it legally. Traditionally, the whole allure of 11 Spring St. has been its outlaw nature and continual surprise of who would show up next to bomb it. The idea of turning this graffiti-Kabba into a mini-posterized Phun Factory, especially a temporary one, serves as the ultimate antithesis to graffiti, and this location, in general.

Read More "Letter from the Editor: Cool Art Exhibit Masked With A PR Ploy Veneer" »

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Health-conscious reader, Vince Galvin, e-mailed us with this shocking discovery after taking a few sips of his recently purchased TeaNY Iced Tea:

"This bottle of ice tea was the most unbeliveably gross thing I've ever seen.

When I first opened I took a sip and looked in and saw something. A beetle. A large beetle. I let it sit a day so I could take a picture. By the time I got my camera, the ice tea had turned into a slimy jelly of mold and gook, carmelizing the beetle, as seen in some of the pictures.

If this is natural living, then I'm back on trans fats."

Ew. Of course, this could possibly be a purposeful new brand of tea -- possibly one concocted on this fateful evening. After the jump, behold the other startling visual evidence showing the decomposing images of Moby's dainty-man tea.

Read More "TeaNY: No on Meat, Yes on Anthropods" »

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Brent Birnbaum makes some interesting sculptures. He always has a vast supply of pop cultural ephemera on hand to manipulate into lasting works of art. We caught up with Brent and he agreed to answer all our questions and explain why his girlfriend wasn't thrilled about his used condom collection.

Read More "Brent Birnbaum Sculptural Strangeness" »

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By Amy Blair

Because I’m such a fucking sweetheart, I’m going to provide you, my dear, innocent, defenseless little readers with a couple of Public Service Announcements this week. Why? Because you can learn a lot from a dummy.

Read More "WEEK IN CRAIG: Knowing Is Half the Battle" »

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Last week NYC was host to the music clusterfuck known as CMJ. It's almost as obnoxiousness as WMC, the main difference being that you don't have to fly all the way to Miami to hear corporately emblazoned crappy music, you just have to head below Houston. Anyway, it was to our delight to find this video on Fader's blog, since they, you know, "enjoy bigging up really good music." If by “really good” they mean one of the lowest energy performances that may have ever graced a live audience, well big it up is right. Check out The Blow’s (no really that's her name, ah the irony) Percocet induced performance and try your best not to nod off during her heartfelt outpouring.

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Vanessa's Dumplings 220 E 14th St

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2007's poised to be the year of the bubble bust -- or the year of oversaturation -- as many of the giant print media companies shift their dollar away from paper onto online. And one of the biggest to take the leap is rickety old iron horse Condé Nast who's both reconfiguring their print titles to add a stronger online presence and creating some new internet properties as well. One of the most intriguing is Flip.com, a "social networking" site for teenage girls. The object is to get sassy teenage gals to gab with their new MySpace buddies over on a Condé Nast platform so they can get a better idea of what type of winged tampon or jewel-encrusted cell phone case is best for them.

And one person that's supposedly been added to the this Think Tank is 24 year-old "Kate_e_Harris" who appears to have been forced to enter the MySpace arena at gunpoint to "contextualize the social networking and online space," where she then drops the bomb that Flip.com will be launching in 2007. However, her profile was adjusted in the last few days to eliminate all mentions of Flip, which can only mean she breached some sort of secret Condé oath and has been left for dead in some retention base outside of Teaneck. Nice knowing you, Kate. TTYL.

We can't wait for Flip.com, to open up it's doors, because even though we're not teenage girls, we're fans of "To Catch a Predator" and we can't think of a bigger hunk of chum to be thrown into those waters than this.

For more info about Condé Nast's big breakthrough about these whole confangled thing works, read Condé Nast internet publisher Steve Newhouse's rationale, and hints about Flip at a recent CSJ event.

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Kako Ueda makes art using an intricate Japanese style paper-cut technique that many would find in the art of making stencils and Kimonos. A Xacto knife is the instrument of choice for this artist and it’s amazing what can be made using a sharp blade and some paper. Repped by Smack Mellon Gallery, we caught up with intricate paper cutter to find out more about how this mind slicing art that takes on a sort of highly advanced Rorschach test quality. Kako answered all our questions and shows us how to play with cellulose.

Read More "Kako Ueda’s Paper Cuts" »

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With only 4 days to go till mid term elections we're getting ready for the last minute throngs of volunteers handing out flyers, last minute smear spots, and the littering of political placards across our cityscapes. But this guy above totally took us by surprise. This may be one of the most ghetto campaign rigs we've ever come across. He was driving through the streets of NYC with megaphones strapped to his hood, hand drawn banners adorning his car, and carrying on how "Rent is too damn high." Sadly, this may have been the one and only candidate that actually got our attention.

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By Amy Blair

Perhaps it’s because I hang out with a bunch of immature little rejects and alcoholics (hi guys!), or perhaps it’s because the universe contains an inordinate amount of ineligible losers in comparison to my impeccably cool friends, or maybe it’s just that being single is more fun than being tied down…but all I know is that I am twenty-nine years old and I know very, very few people in long-term committed relationships. In fact, I know four couples total, all of whom met in college or graduate school. Which is to say, be cool, stay in school. The pickings are slim on the other side.

Read More "WEEK IN CRAIG: Tales from the Lonely Listers" »

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(click above and watch me grow)

Even if some of you (prude, uppity bitch asses) see graffiti as an urban blight or the art tools of Lucifer, you have to at least appreciate the skill (and balls) it takes to bomb the intersection of Houston Street and Bowery in NYC. There's always cops patrolling, it's a high traffic area with cars from both east-west and north-south, and there are always the drunk assholes to deal with. Plus, these guys didn't just pop scrawny little tags, they burned that shit.

DYM Crew Does It Again On Houston Razor Apple

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Last night we were too busy looking for freaks and ghouls above ground that it never came across our minds to check the subways. We thought everyone just walks around NYC during Halloween. Thankfully photographer Gabe Toth got a few choice shots. And not for nothing, but have you ever seen a Medusa with such powerful fuck me eyes?

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