​Smack in the middle of Times Square is a wonder of lamps, projections, shrines, crystal hangings, and more white than at Justin Bieber's last dental visit.

It's Qi, an ornate looking Thai restaurant at 675-Eighth Avenue (between 42 and 43 Streets), and the food is really good too!

The other night, chef Pichet Ong brought over a tangy array of prawns, pork, salmon, and so on, all in rich and interesting sauces.

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​My life is geting even kooky-crazier than before, with wild leaps from highbrow to lowbrow and back--and I love it!

Last night, I was in a Project Shaw reading of George Bernard Shaw's Getting Married, starring names like Emily Skinner, Andrea Marcovicci, and Cady Huffman, the Tony winner from The Producers who's also known for Iron Chef America.

Cady mentioned backstage that she's read Suzanne Somers's poems in the "Celebrity Autobiography" show--and with that, I pulled two separate editions of that very poetry book out of my bag!

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​I haven't actually scored there, mind you.

But whenever I go to such a place, I can smell the desperation and can sense the sexual urgency pulsing through the room along with the two-for-one margaritas and over-touched bar nuts.

I'm talking about a....

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​Some of you will say "Nope, that's not him."

More savvy types will coo, "Uh huh."

But anyway, now that you've seen classic movie star Burt Lancaster in full drag right here the other day, now you'll see him with full on nothing!

Definitely not safe for the office.

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​I get invited to a lot of free-food events that I cover for my job--and I'm thrilled about it, mind you--but a lot of times, I end up wishing I'd stayed home and opened a can of tuna.

First of all, "lunch at 12" usually means "lunch at 1:15," and even when I try to outsmart them and show up at 1:15, lunch suddenly means 1:30!

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Photo: David Shankbone

​Downtown favorites Murray Hill and Linda Simpson have teamed for many a zany Bingo night and other madcap debaucheries.

But last week, they made us buy double the tickets by veering off into separate projects
that combatted New York's gentrification with aggressive gender-fication.

At P.S. 122, Murray cohosted the wacky revue Avant-Garde-Arama's Wrecking Ball on Friday, though when I saw the show on Saturday, the MC was wry "aging hipster" Uncle Jimmy.

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​Last year, it was all that righteous fury about the Ground Zero Mosque and how it would surely end modern civilization as we know it.

This year, it can't possibly be Weinergate because that already happened and all the wieners have been grilled.

So what will it be?

The Awl asked various New Yorkers for their guesses, and naturally my answer was hands down (the throat) the best.

It's worth a scroll. It'll be the scandal of the summer if you don't do so.

Photo by Ash Fox

​Sparkly presence Darian Darling looks like so (above) at various clubs and haunts.

But Darian was just as cute as a young 'un, when she was a pint-sized Madonna, with a lot of help from mom.

Says Darian:

"Here are two pics of me dressed as Blond Ambition-era Madonna in 1991, in a costume that my mom made me, at middle school (6th grade) during Halloween.

"I, of course, did my own makeup! I had the monocle as well, but you can't see it. Also, I made a microphone headset out of a coat hanger and my mom's pantyhose."

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​You'll remember my mixed to negative review of Broadway's troubled Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.

Well, if not, here it is again.

Guess what? It got quoted in the ads!

Guess what? They made it sound like a rave!

The show's promotional materials quote me saying "Spectacular and thrilling"--but while I did use those words, they were hardly in the same sentence and it would be impossible to accurately quote them without a lot of dot-dot-dots in between.

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Tonight's Broadway Bares -- the stripping and dancing revue at Roseland benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS -- had a "Masterpiece" theme, with Baby It's You!'s Beth Leavel taunting the crowd by leering, "Are you ready to get a piece?"

And there were plenty for the taking.

In one segment, Roger Rees (The Addams Family) showed slides of valuable works he was allegedly auctioning off, like Starry Night Over the Meat Rack by Van Gogh, "who had a time share in Fire lsland."

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