NO SHADE LIKE NEW SHADE

You can just cram your "cellar doors," thank you kindly—"opulent queer empire" is obviously the most beautiful string of English words conceived ever, definitely, the end. It's the new tagline for an equally new queer dance night they're calling "Shade"—but not shady "throwing shade"–type "shade" (the producers hasten to inform me), "shade" as in a cozy, dim, protective space where you go to be a lot bit naughty. It's slated to be another of these Tribble-like "once-a-month-ers" springing up at the Eagle (did you ever dream you'd spend so much time there?), a house/disco/electro dancetravaganza for queers of all stripes. (I think it bears noting that the Eagle, once a stalwart sausage-fest and ground zero of the insular leather crowd, has been saved and buoyed by real bio women, drag queens, queer punks, and transsexuals! Amazing days.) It's headlined by DJ Riff-Raff (aka Alea Mahone) and, all the way from some place called "Portland" (where?), DJ Bruce LaBruiser (aka Jenny Bruso), and it's produced by the brains behind Butch Queen. You are encouraged to "dress-up, dress-down; you do you." Sounds reasonable to me. The Eagle, 9 pm, $5, 21+.

SEX DRUGS DEATH DISCO—CLOSING NIGHT

For some peculiar and inexplicable reason, it is always mid-November that I get obsessed all over again with the sordid story of Michael Alig, James St. James, the infamous NYC club kids, and their drugged-out shenanigans and pursuant killing. I Netflix the damn movie Party Monster for the zillionth time (an irresistibly terrible film, starring Macaulay Culkin's ass at its freshest and Seth Green at his gayest), and I YouTube the documentary on which it's based. It's a compulsion I cannot explain. But this year, all this obsessive nonsense has been rendered completely unnecessary by the live stage production of the fabulously ignoble events surrounding the rise of the club kids and the fall of poor, Drano-filled Angel Melendez. Sex Drugs Death Disco stars Craig Trolli, as the maniacal and manslaughtery Alig, and Joel Steinpreis, who brilliantly portrays the foppish and delightfully twisted St. James. It's a solid, appropriately blood-drenched production that had me grinning my face off, and it nicely satisfied my once-a-year addiction—no Netflixing for me this year, damn it—and tonight is your very last chance to relive the depravity yourself. Re-bar, 7:30 pm, $15 adv/$18 DOS, 21+.