Last night in West Chelsea, at a gallery opening full of Pabst Blue Ribbon and those that enjoy it, collector and show curator Simon Cerigo found that one of his artists had gone missing, according to an attendee. Young Dash Snow, the semen-painter, New York mag art star and (inadvertent?) conceptual prankster of the downtown scene, never actually sent in any "art" for the show. Instead, someone from the gallery—Dinter Fine Art—hung up some doodled-on Village Voices that said "Dash Snow Peace." (On the price list, it was credited to Cerigo.) Jeez, Dash—even psych-folkie Devendra Banhart managed to get his work in on time for the show. And he doesn't even work in bodily fluids. Yet.

Well, you know we'd been lying awake at night wondering what Britney's public combustion meant—not just in terms of her status as a simulacrum of our culture, but in terms of the symbolic values she herself is assigning to her subversive actions. Umm, yes, that's what we were thinking. Today, thank heavens, New York magazine's art critic, Mark Stevens, has explained it all.

Seriously, who wants to bid on Britney Spears' nasty hair? Bid on a quite probably imaginary bag of "downtown" artist/heir Dash Snow's coke instead! If that isn't enough enticement, let's look at the pitch:

We'd never heard of Whitewall either — turns out it's about "the personalities that shape the art world," and not, you know, tires — but we're always interested in any departing editor in chief's loopy resignation letter. And this one is a doozy.

Ariel Levy's New York mag profile of the three rich white kids who are single-handedly keeping "downtown" alive got a lot of people roiled up this week — not least its elusive, controversial main subject, Dash "the Pollock of Peen-juice" Snow. On the Irak blog, Levy was called out as a "wacked reporter." Then, as so often happens, things got much harsher in the comments, and Levy was raked across the coals in the standard retarded playground-bully ways. Seriously, if you've ever kind of suspected in the back of your mind that some hipster dudes were thisclose to being skinhead thugs, but found skateboarding just in time, your suspicions will be confirmed by the scattershot misogyny and antisemitism on display here. So edgy.

On the pages in between the ads for $2 million studios in misshapen new downtown luxury condos in this week's New York Magazine, there are a couple of articles about how a few rich dudes in their twenties are taking drugs, sleeping in the same bed, making "art," and, you know, helping "downtown" retain its gritty cred. We're convinced! We especially liked the bit about how 25 year old art-richie scion Dash Snow (vaguely related to Uma Thurman, brother dates MK Olsen) goes about crafting his work: