Entertainment

Best Beatdown Jeff Koyen vs. N. Scott Stedman

The "N" is for 'nocked-out. It started as these things always start: with a taunt. In the June 11 issue of New York Press, we called the floundering fledgling L magazine "dreadful." We'd just launched our sister paper, New York Sports Express, and both publications were to be distributed in orange boxes. We didn't?and still don't?expect the Dumbo-based L to survive very long, so we offered to buy their boxes for pennies on the dollar.

The boys of L, in an attempt to capitalize on the diss, challenged us to a soccer match.

How gay.

L magazine is everything that New York Press despises. First, there's the limp-dick writing. From the opening page that cites Walter Benjamin to the shockingly weak descriptions of everything from walking tours to DJs to art installations, wasting so much space on so much neutered prose is a crime in an age when print should be rising above.

Then, there's the "Neighborhood Guide." Though readers are informed in agate that these back-of-book pages are "sponsored" by advertisers, the fact that they are identical in design and layout to the presumably non-sponsored reviews causes us to cry foul. It's our opinion that the editors are trying to deceive the readers by not being more clear in the division between paid and unpaid editorial. This is unacceptable.

Then there's the whole p.r. thing. Stedman admitted to us that he hired a public relations firm to capitalize on the "feud." More than anything else, this dot-com approach to publishing makes us want to beat the living fuck out of the L crew. We thought the p.r.-before-product mentality had disappeared, and we'd taken comfort in the fiscal and professional demise of 25-year-old "new media" rockstars who spent more time posing for photo ops than producing anything good for the world. Their legacy survives in Stedman.

The pussies at L declined our counteroffer of a bare-knuckle fistfight, so on Wednesday, October 29, New York Press/New York Sports Express editor-in-chief Jeff Koyen will take on Scott Steadman at Gleason's Gym. Yeah, yeah, we know that Koyen originally declined a boxing match, calling it a bit precious and citing celebrity boxing matches for their despicability. But now that he's been training for two months and has thrown a fair number of punches at large black men, he's ready to beat the tar out of the wispy Steadman.

Last we spoke with the noodle-armed N. Scott, he had more to say about his trainer's stories and his brother's independent film and the "after party" than the match itself. Clearly, our disgust and animosity failed to register, so we urged him to start training more seriously, lest Koyen be demonized for picking on the nerdy kid in the playground.

Yet he still doesn't understand the beast awakened. Expect a bloodbath.

Best Nightclub Remodeling Quiznos Subs 19-23 St. Marks Place (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), 212-253-8444

'Scuse me while I toast this rye. What during the 1990s was a rehab center smack dab in the middle of St. Marks Place, north side, was once the site of important New York music venues of yesteryear. In the 60s, at 23 St. Marks were the Electric Circus and Andy Warhol's Dom club. A couple of rock bands you might have heard of played here?like the Velvet Underground and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The development company that bought the space is more interested in doing to the East Village what's been done to Soho than they're interested in neighborhood history. The first tenant is a national sandwich chain, Quiznos Subs, and boy doesn't that get us as mad as?

Oh, crap. Who's kidding who? St. Marks has been culturally irrelevant for 30 years, so who really gives a fuck if there's a sandwich shop where Hendrix once banged Janis Joplin and then banged a fat load of heroin into his arm? Only children and nostalgists?and childish nostalgists most of all?claim that the good old days of rebellion should exist anywhere but in our memories. Those who refuse to accept the corporatization of New York City are doomed to be miserable. We're not supporting the commodification and branding of everything we've held precious, but neither are we mired in bitching and moaning and Ohmigod, can you believe there's a Madame Tussaud's where the old Harris was?

Like single-cell organisms, like weeds, like roaches, like Challenger jokes?counterculture springs up of its own accord. It doesn't need fertilizer. Nor does it need a museum erected on soil once so fertile. It will take root somewhere else, always somewhere else, and just because you're too old and stiff and stuck in the past doesn't mean it's not there. You just don't understand it, old man.

And furthermore, we'll take Quiznos over another stupid t-shirt shop any day of the week.

Best Party to Get Blunted At Deep Space Cielo, 18 Little W. 12th St. (betw. Washington St. & 9th Ave.), 212-645-5700

They call it stormy Monday. Despite its being on a Monday night, Francois K's Deep Space party is filled every week with folks throbbing to the Frenchman's eclectic selection of dubby cuts. Mr. K, of Body and Soul fame, has the most interesting, if not the best, fiesta in the city going right now, with Rasta mons grabbing the mic to lead you on a spiritual journey to find your blunted soul and spacey grooves that keep you moving all night.

Don't be intimidated by the party's location: Cielo. Although on most nights it hosts a jet-set of Euro-trashers and people with too much money, dressed in designer labels, this party asks that you come as you are. Jah cigarettes are discouraged inside the club, but it doesn't hurt to load up beforehand. The drinks inside will eat your paycheck. Dress to sweat your bum off.

Best Free Drug Gymnopilus spectabilis

Manhattan's magic mushroom. We've found this large, robust and mildly hallucinogenic yellow-orange mushroom growing in clusters on stumps and dead trees in Central Park, Van Cortlandt Park, Cunningham Park and other areas of mixed woods hereabouts. We were recently told that the strain growing around here will get you high, but the ones in California won't; we were able to catch a pretty good buzz from the handful we choked down.

Legend has it that G. spectabilis earned its nickname, "the big laughing mushroom," when a group of itinerant Japanese Buddhist monks came upon a group of nuns rolling around on the road, laughing boisterously. When asked what was so funny, the nuns could only giggle and point to the leftover mushrooms in their cookpot. They must have been hungry: The fungus tastes like Ivory soap, and the concentration of the psychoactive ingredient is pretty small. You've got to want it.

As with all wild mushrooms, making a positive identification can take some investment of time and effort. An overeager novice might, for instance, mistake Omphalatus olearius, the poisonous "jack o' lantern" mushroom, for the sought-after 'shroom of dreams?in which case, it's a bout of painful cramps and trip to the emergency room for a stomach pumping. With luck. Please, check a few mushroom field guides and get confirmation from an expert before you chomp.

Best Music Venue Irving Plaza 17 Irving Pl. (15th St.), 212-777-6800

Headbangers ballroom. We refuse to accept that every act we've seen at Irving Plaza just happens to be superior. Whether the stage is filled with the aimless stomping of a punk band like Zebrahead or the understated big band melodies of Keely Smith, not a single show we've seen at Irving has sucked.

Okay, maybe that's the beer and whiskey talking, but Irving Plaza is still the best venue of its size in the city. The owners have yet to succumb to the Clear Channel monopoly and do their best to offer cheap tickets for headliners like No Doubt, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Donnas. Sure, we're fans of Knitting Factory, Southpaw, Mercury and Maxwell's, who usually find a respectable balance between profit and respect for fans, but Irving has it down to a science.

We particularly admire the way Irving hosts two-night runs. One show is usually 16- or 18-and-over; the other, for legal drinkers only. Adult swim nights are typically sedate, with the jaded flocking to the bar, opening a tab and relaxing beneath the eclectic light-fixtures. You'll find them staring up at the tiled ceiling, resting their aging bones until the band plays their favorite song.

We dare say that no other venue could pull off a night of Christian rockers Stryper, with KMFDM, Pig and Bile scheduled for the next month and then, three weeks later, three nights of Dark Star Orchestra. Something for everyone, as they say, and we're big fans.

Best Foosball Luna Lounge 171 Ludlow St. (betw. Houston & Stanton Sts.), 212-260-2323

Table soccer to you. On a speed binge in a small town outside of Bratislava, we went up against two Slovaks in a game of foosball. As outsiders not quite welcome in the room, we were a little worried. Our table skills were lacking; these kids had been playing for the whole of their short lives.

In other parts of the world, foosball isn't the fratboy pastime it is in the U.S. It's more like darts to England: an integral part of a bar culture that's in turn integral to the whole culture. They take their games seriously in Eastern Europe, and are fond of badgering foreigners into wagers, the terms of which may not be clear.

Then there are the customs. Where we traveled, it's worse than just pedestrian to spin the handle (and thus spin the men). Do it once, get a sharp look. Do it twice, a gutteral curse. Continue to offend your opponents, and you may end up in a brawl. If they shut you out 10 to nil, you are expected to crawl under the table. The ultimate humiliation.

We brought home our fondness for one-on-ones playing with a drink resting precariously at the edge of the table (which also serves to discourage table-lifting). When we're in the mood for a match, we head down to Luna where a dollar buys a game and a five buys a pint. The action on the table is good, and there's plenty of room to maneuver.

If you ever challenge us, though, be prepared to follow our rules. Spinning is for pussies, and best be prepared to get on your knees. For the record, we took those Slovaks in the second game.

Best Low-Hassle Dead-of-Winter Getaway Isla Mujeres, Mexico

Don't tell anyone. Late February. Freezing rain for weeks. Alternately confused, depressed and angry, we wanted nothing more than to sun ourselves to a crusty bronze and avoid other humans. So we took a chance on Isla Mujeres.

"Chance," you wonder? Well, Isla's proximity to Cancun?eight clicks by ferry boat?doesn't exactly sync up with the notion of getting away from it all, now does it? We overcame our jitters with a little help from some old-timers on Lonelyplanet.com's Thorntree board (worthy of its own "Best of" award for no-bullshit travel advice). Too good to ignore were their promises of turquoise waters, immaculate beaches and degrees of quietude ranging from "stone-silent stillness" on the island's western tip to "low, but bearable buzz" in its small main town at the other end. Most persuasive of all was the assurance that encounters with loud-talking, Teva-footed gomers would cease the minute we left the Cancun airport.

The old-timers knew of what they spoke. Isla Mujeres is a narrow strip of Mexican joy straight out of the Corona ad. Bearing in mind its proximity to the States, it remains in a relative sense, undiscovered. Had we cared to, we could've snorkeled or gotten our scuba certification or swum with dolphins or sharks?Isla's full of that kind of thing.

But no thanks. A few four-on-four hoops games with the locals was all the human contact we needed (there's a lit basketball court in town). Yeah, there were gringos and gringettes to be found, but they were mostly there on post-Cancun detox and too hung over to fuck with our tranquility. Isla Mujeres is no Tahiti. But cheap peak-season accommodations (a good beachside room can be had for $65), delicious food and an absence of annoyance do go a long way with us. At less than four-hour's flying time from JFK (plus a 15-minute ferry ride) it's a darn convenient option?one we're sure to exercise again when the doldrums set in.

Best Anything-Goes Open Mic Faceboyz Sundays at Collective Unconscious 145 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-254-5277

Freakz. Sure, we suppose you could shell out $15 at some legit comedy joint to drink $7 Heinekens and watch Tonight Show veterans tell Schwarzenegger jokes.

Better to pick up a 40-ounce and drop $3 in the hat to keep a black-box L.E.S. performance space alive and laugh to the most original and unpredictable comedy show in New York. Every Sunday, Faceboy and a rotating stable of beautiful freaks and straight stragglers take the open stage to drop weird science and believe-it-or-not routines. Sign up and take the dive or just byob and watch; Faceboyz Sundays commands a visit.

(Breaking news: We've learned the Collective Unconscious has plans to shut the doors as of December 1. We'll keep you updated as the situation develops.)

Best Contemplation of Jailbait Lunatarium 10 Jay St. (John St.), Dumbo, 718-813-8404

Grass on the infield. It's Saturday at 3 a.m. and we know we're drunk. Our friends have all gone home to be couples, but we're left, wretchedly alone, still desiring some kind of crazy nightlife or action. More booze, maybe, or someone to kiss. Some extension of the evening's adventure. Yeah, we know we're too old for this. We should just go home and pass out in front of the tv with a can of peanuts in our lap. Instead, we wander down Jay St., toward the water where we know that Lunatarium usually has something going on.

As usual, it's packed with raver-kids in baggy pants twirling glo-sticks and dancing like idiots. Off to one side there's some stupid skater-type juggling flaming batons with a lack of precision that really makes our heart race. Someone else is making a finger-painting on a dirty mattress while dazed 16-year-olds try not to look awkward. The music's loud and obnoxious, and the sweat and heat are disgusting, but?wandering into the corner of the room with our plastic cup of beer, we come across a trio of them.

Lovely, poised, elegant. Totally out of place. Now this may just be the twelve-pack talking, but they have got to be the most beautiful people we've ever seen. And when we move closer and see them silhouetted against the East River and the Manhattan skyline, we're convinced it's love. Or something.

We head over, slur out something about the view and a conversation ensues we're only half aware of, and there is a gnawing wondering of morality in the back of our minds. Should we ask how old they are? Is it better not to know? Can we really overlook the fact that they think this is the "coolest place in the city"?

We don't remember what we decided, but in the morning we're back at home alone, splayed out on the couch with a can of peanuts upside-down in our lap and QVC blaring at top volume.

Best Dose of Died-Young Angst Egon Schiele at Neue Galerie 1048 5th Ave. (86th St.), 212-628-6200

The horror. Today, Egon Schiele would probably be an insufferably quirky web designer, and his patron-mentor, the great Gustav Klimt, would be teaching multimedia at SVA. Fortunately for the betterment of mankind, both were dead before the 1920s were over: the 55-year-old Klimt fell to pneumonia on Feb. 6, 1918; Schiele, several months later on Halloween. The latter was a mere 28 years old, taken by influenza three days after his wife met the same fate.

Schiele left behind a modest treasure of portraits and landscapes that continue to influence artists. He presents his subjects in tortured twists, their hands tight and locked, many women with their privates exposed and far-removed from the accusations of "immorality" and "seduction" that landed him in jail for 24 days. His self-portraits are exercises in self-deconstruction?sometimes agonizing, sometimes whimsical, other times in between. They're instantly familiar to anyone who's ever seen Aeon Flux.

Anyone interested in digging into the soul of man?and woman?without regard for puffery or pretty baubles should see firsthand the work of this Austrian Expressionist. Locally, the Neue Gallerie offers a modest selection of Schiele's work. Stop by Sunday afternoon after a crisp autumn walk through Central Park and soak up some good, old-fashioned tortured-artistry. Being dedicated to German and Austrian art, the Neue also has a nice selection of Schiele's predecessors and peers?Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and the aforementioned Klimt.

When you're done, stop in at Cafe Sabarsky on the ground floor, named for Neue co-founder Serge Sabarsky and loosely modeled after a Viennese cafe. There's also the requisite museum gift shop, but we can't recommend buying reprints of Schiele's work. Simply come back when you need another dose.

Best Double Features Film Forum 207 W. Houston St. (betw. 6th Ave. & Varick St.), 212-727-8110

Let's play two. For almost seven years, we've been a member of this venerable nonprofit (which gets us in for $5), and we savor the arrival of every calendar in the mail. They're always getting their hands on gorgeous new prints of something or other, whether it's Rear Window or Chinatown. Film Forum's popcorn is the best in the city, and if you're hankering for something sweeter, try a Cheryl Kleinman cake or a Toblerone bar.

Even more compelling are the double features: two films for the price of one. In this day and age, it's a hard concept to grasp, but it's the god's honest truth. Recent pairings: William Wyler's The Desperate Hours with Detective Story; Dr. Strangelove with A Shot in the Dark; Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be with The Shop Around the Corner. A few summers ago, there was a lesbian vampire double feature. We brought tons of friends and ignored the men who looked like they were playing hooky from Tech Support.

Best Place for Socially Inept, Geeky Male Writers to Stand Around in Circles without Actually Speaking to One Another Any New York Press Editorial Party

Four virgins walk into a bar. Writers are interesting creatures. On paper, we're the bravest bastards on the planet. An article accusing the Crips of being a gay social club? No fear?publish it. But stick us into a social situation where we have to actually interact with humans, and watch our over-inflated pitbull mentalities shrivel up like a Polar Bear Club member's penis in February.

The best place to see this behavior on display is at our own editorial parties?or Sausage Fests 2003, as they're affectionately known among local bartenders. It can be hilarious watching a group of writers struggle to get up the nerve to talk to one another.

"Umm? Hey? Umm? How's? er? How's it goin?"

"Good. Who do?uh? Who do you know here?"

"Koyen."

"Yeah, me too."

And then the two nitwits go back to staring at their shoelaces and the long silence resumes. Thank god we serve alcohol at these things to get the conversation moving or it would be like singles night for gay narcoleptics.

Best DJ Who Should Be Producing Junior Vasquez

Do go gently. He alienated Madonna when he remixed a message on his answering machine from the Kabbalah queen ("Junior? Junior, are you there? It's Madonna?")?even if it wasn't really Madge's voice on the actual recording. But he was Junior. The Man. The mixmaster who produced some of the biggest dance songs of the 90s, the DJ who single-handedly transformed the old Sound Factory into a melting pot of drag queens, uptown voguers, Chelsea muscle boys and glowstick-waving ravers. With a scene that didn't even get going until 8 on Sunday morning and sometimes went into Monday, Junior helped establish the city's reputation as the club center of the universe.

This was our church, and we were his acolytes. Even then, however, the Master (as he was already calling himself) was given to temper tantrums?like stopping the music for a few minutes if he didn't think the dancers were paying enough attention. But we put up with it because there was no one else like him.

Junior learned his craft at the feet of Larry Levan, mythical sorcerer of the Paradise Garage, and we lived for moments when he sampled the backbeat of a song like "Street Life" in and out of Mary J. Blige's latest. When Sound Factory morphed into Twilo, Junior was back with his towel dancers, a seven-foot drag vamp named Kevin Aviance and his signature dubbing of deep house into a trippy vibe. Only this time he had his own DJ booth and private bathroom (soon to become his standard demands).

When Twilo fell victim to GHB fallouts, Junior moved over to the city's largest club, Exit, where he began his anti-drug crusade and tirades from the booth. He called his Sunday morning party Earth, but for most, Pure Hell would've been a better name. The Gestapo tactics of his special security force, who inspected the inside of women's thongs, intruded upon male patrons and forced open the doors of toilet stalls, eventually turned off even the most avid Juniorites.

The nadir of his spinning career occurred during Miami's White Party weekend, in which the crowd was so incensed by his antics that they bombarded the DJ booth with water bottles. Having alienated every other DJ in town with snide asides on his website and in the press, Junior, now in his mid-50s, just celebrated another birthday in exile at the Roxy. The Roxy!

And so the question hangs over the dance floor: Is the party finally over? We hope so. Junior should get back into the studio where he belongs, and leave the journeyman DJing to the young bucks.

Best (and Only) Classy Comedy Club Carolines on Broadway 1626 Broadway (betw. 49th & 50th Sts.), 212-757-4100

I'm pretty sure I saw this guy on tv once. Most people avoid comedy clubs for two reasons. The first: They never know what they're going to get. Might be an unknown genius, or you might have been better off saving the $15 cover and watching Comedy Central. The second is that you might find yourself singled out by a jackass on stage whose idea of humor is ridiculing you for having been born in New Jersey.

Carolines on Broadway has more or less solved both of these problems. It's a headliner club, which means you go there to see a specific comedian. If you want to see Dave Chappelle or Mark Maron, you can buy tickets to see Dave Chappelle or Mark Maron. You will not be subjected to the owner's wife or the "comedian" who stood outside the club distributing fliers or a walking catastrophe whose only reason for being on stage is that he cajoled 20 friends into seeing him. You'll see the comedian you paid to see. Also, Carolines is a huge space, more like a theater than a typical comedy club, making it rare for a comedian to address individual audience members.

Quality and civility don't come cheaply. Carolines charges about double what you pay at Manhattan's comedy shacks. Depending on the headliner, it's worth the expense.

Best Revival of a Lost Movie Tradition Freddy vs. Jason

Get ready to die, punk. The first time we walked by the poster in the subway, we stopped, rubbed our eyes and pumped a fist in the air. We saw all the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies as a kid in the 80s, and here was the ultimate battle between the baddest two supernatural villains around. And they're still on the side of evil!

In an age in which the Terminator is an avuncular quip-machine and Wes Craven has turned the horror industry into an offshoot of wacky teen comedy, here was a return of honest-to-goodness machete-through-the-skull and knife-glove-through-the-guts horror.

More than that, Freddy vs. Jason also signifies the return of the lost "ultimate match-up" genre, the Dracula vs. Frankenstein and Godzilla vs. Mothra tradition kept alive in recent years mostly in small-screen video games. There is something very cool about plotless, decontextualized battles between two great characters. Remember Kareem Abdul-Jabar versus Bruce Lee in Game of Death? Even if you don't, and even if you missed Freddy vs. Jason, that's okay. We'll explain everything when we meet you in line for Alien vs. Predator.

Best Neighboring Borough The Bronx

No news to C.J. On one short trip, you may see a bodega, a car wash and a castle. The breakfast of choice on a 90-degree day is hot chocolate, and though we always decline sugar in our coffee, some always seems to make its way into our cup. We're blond, so people say, "Good morning, teacher," or gently inquire: Are we looking for the school?

There's fresh challah on Fridays and pans of barbecued everything coming out of kitchens. There are fancy pastries with guava or custard, and the beckoning of fried street food. There's salsa in the street. There's a subway packed with workers heading here, to jobs in schools and medical facilities and city posts. There's the occasional daytime drama?an attractive, well-coiffed woman in a stylish leather jacket and gold jewelry banging her hands flat against the token booth plexiglass: "Come out of there! I'll bust your ass!"

There are parks and pools. There's a car culture, but we can still get around via MetroCard. And once it's time to get back downtown, there's a million black limo-cabs. Oh, and don't forget that zoo and those bums in pinstripes.

Best Place for Orientals to Get Down Forbidden City 212 Ave. A (13th St.), 212-598-0500

Everybody Wang Chung tonight. Johnny, the owner, used to be a chef at a Benihana, so he knows how to throw a party. The food and drinks at Forbidden City are much more sophisticated than at his previous employ, however, with sake?as just one example?served in proper box-shaped glasses on tumescent green plates. In this charged lounge bar, Asians and the people who love them get down as self-mocking kung-fu flicks play on a huge screen at the back, and best of all, you'd never know from the anonymous outside how truly swinging it is within.

Best Hiphop Album The Ownerz, Gang Starr

Clip still full. We've been devotees of Guru and DJ Premier since we stepped into the arena in 1991. And 15 years after coming up, the odd couple from Boston and Texas is still reigning supreme and with class over the jokers, showing on The Ownerz that the patented Gang Starr formula is potent even after the group's canonization and the duo's personal domestication. Guru's flow is as fine and semiconscious as ever, cutting down all fakers of the funk with Preem behind him, crafting too-good-to-be-true beats worthy of the legend.

Despite critical accolades, Gang Starr never hit the big, big, big time. Instead of trying to catch up to MTV bandwagons, they've held cupped palms over the flame of raw East Coast hiphop and produced full albums of material with minimal filler. No faux thug bullshit, no poppy beatscapes programmed to please the kids.

In The Ownerz, the Gang Starr ethos is alive and kicking in one of Premier's trademark slap-you-awake interludes:

Yo, what the fuck is this shit y'all are listenin' to nowadays on the radio, man? You call that shit hiphop?? All you DJs are letting the program directors handcuff you and sit there and tell you how to mix? You fuckin' robots. Fuck y'all.

Few in the game have earned the right to spread this kind of fire like Premier. And we couldn't have said it better ourselves.

Best Club Promoter Rena Siwek B.B. King Blues Club, 237 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-997-4555

For love of the game. As a rule of thumb, we do our level best to steer clear of p.r. types. Like salesmen, public relations professionals are forever on the make?and it always comes at our expense. Unlike the salesmen, they work under a more obvious form of barter, usually initiating the relationship by handing something our way. Free tickets for us, for our visiting in-laws, a chance for our little brother to shake hands with the guy who impersonates David Lee Roth at the Van Halen tribute show. That's when the fun stops. Once you've bitten from the carrot, you're in debt, and the crafty p.r. pro has a memory like a collection agency.

We first spoke with B.B. King's Rena Siwek a couple years back, and in the time since, we've done nothing but take, take and take some more. Advance tickets, last-minute tickets, special events?anything we ever need, we make out like bandits. Unlike her peers, she's never asked for much in return. Seems that she actually enjoys promoting her club in the best possible light.

For being an absolute doll when, more often than not, we don't deserve it, here's a little reacharound to Rena, the Best Club Promoter in Manhattan, 2003.

Best Industrial Band Side 3

Get bent, Trent. Do you like blood? How about latex? How about scary hard beats and hot death boys? If you answered yes to any of these questions then you'll second our nomination of Side 3 as New York's best industrial band. Not only do Al Voili and Matt Slagle look extremely yummy while tearing it up on stage (does this sound like a ym article yet?), but the music is vicious, dark and intense.

Their latest recording, Halfway Under, has an exciting moodiness, pure in emotion and about as raw in sound as can be achieved with electronic beats. As important as the music, though, is the stage show. More then two guys on a stage, Side 3 is a projection, literally, of images that reflect the emotion and energy of the music. We always look forward to their next performance.

Best CD Cover

Best Armchair Traveling American Museum of Natural History Central Park West (79th St.), 212-769-5100

The fauxs of Kilimanjaro. We're always jonesing to travel, but our dayjob and cobwebby checkbook conspire to keep us stuck here for a bit. Whenever we need a little fix of flight, we head to the dioramas at the Natural History Museum.

Up the stairs, past the pompous statue of Teddy Roosevelt and into the galleries where real stuffed animals are set into cases depicting their natural environments. Sure, the big blue whale and the newly renovated Hall of Ocean Life are impressive, but for an afternoon of voyeuristic adventuring, we make a bee-line the mammals every time. With the lights kept so dim that the displays seem to glow, the shaggy musk ox flecked with snow and the gemsbok nibbling beardgrass draw us like moths.

Each diorama portrays a specific time and place, and the ceiling and back walls curve to evoke a sense of open space. The beavers aren't just gnawing away in some random woods; they're on a lake in Michigan in July, and the sun just set half an hour ago. The fake plants, hidden lights, geological murals and somnambulant animals in the landscapes replicate those of the natural world so obsessively that they become their own studies in scientific devotion. They become their own worlds.

Perhaps it is this otherworldly quality that gives us the feeling of having returned from far, far away when we emerge back onto Central Park West. We're always startled by how a collection of stuffed animals in lit, painted boxes can trigger such palpable memories of places we've never visited. At least not yet.

Best Reason to Get Over Rock-Star Worship I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

Put down that guitar, asshole. Most of us know that rock's been dead for a long time now, but this documentary should've proven it to everyone else. (Dylan's unintentionally hilarious Masked and Anonymous is the dark, dank soil shoveled onto rock's coffin.) It's helpful to watch the DVD version of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco because of the band's commentary track. There's nervous laughter. There's acquiescence to lead genius, Jeff Tweedy. There's lots of mumbling stoner humor.

This shit is so over. You can see it in the way the members of Wilco casually gloss over the quiet, planned departure of former member Jay Bennett, the band's creative loony who got too real, man. The remaining players reveal themselves as a bunch of yes-men pretending that yes-men don't exist in their cool little world. No more messiahs for the messiah complex.

As the boomers slouch toward their wheelchairs, this type of rock star is dying. Which is great news for anyone who wants music without the suffocating weight of cultural "importance." The next generation of music fans are already so fragmented, so resistant to compartmentalization, that these false gods will never be heaved upon them, and they'll understand that what's cool to them may mean nothing to the kid next to them. And it won't matter. Sounds like heaven.

Best Drug About to be Criminalized Salvia Divinorum

Um, did you just see that? The first time we smoked salvia was a bit more than two years ago with a then-girlfriend. She'd just taken her first hits, to no effect; she reported feeling a little high, but there was no hallucinating, no "incredible five-minute trip," as her friend had described.

We'd been warned. Smoking salvia divinorum is a bit more complicated than smoking marijuana or hashish. First and foremost, use a butane lighter: The leaves must be incinerated quickly and completely, and that Zippo doesn't put out enough heat. Second, use a bong or water pipe: The smoke must be inhaled immediately and held for 30 seconds, and the water provides a cooling mechanism.

Native American shamans have used salvia divinorum for years, though exactly how long is up for debate. Shaman healers living in the Oaxaca state of Mexico are called curanderos; in Mazatec they are called chotacine, which translates as "one who knows." According to the curanderos, they use it whenever they feel it necessary to travel into the supernatural world in order to suss information that eludes their corporeal selves. Uses include divination, diagnosis of sickness and disease, and even locating missing persons and objects. The leaves, which resemble their cousins in the mint family, are traditionally chewed and held in the mouth like tobacco or crushed into a juice.

Research shows it to be non-addictive, and users report no increased tolerance after repeated use. In fact, some salvia enthusiasts report an increased sensitivity after multiple uses. Presumably, their bodies have learned how to process the active ingredient, Salvinorin A, more efficiently and effectively.

Our companion tried two or three more times, yet still felt nothing more than lightheaded. We refilled the little glass bowl, hit it with the sharp blue flame and sucked in the cool, white smoke. Immediately, we felt something lurking on the edge of our awareness, something a bit scary, a bit exhilarating. We packed another bowl and lit it up and?

And like?that. We were in another world. The room disappeared in waves of concentric circles, like ripples in a pond. As we looked around, our bookshelf, couch, coffee table, dog?all faded away as the waves pushed over and past them, sweeping them out to an unseen sea.

While the salvia trip was more intense than any acid or mushrooms we've ever eaten, it only lasted a few minutes. The ripples slowe