April 17, 2007
IN OTHER WORDS . . .
Wow, that was a quick week, amazing how time flies when one is busy. It seems like everyone survived the great Nor'easter 2007 in okay shape. Houseboats floated, flights were cancelled, a few basements got leaky, but they still ran the Boston Marathon and the Yanks were at McAfee Stadium in Oakland, high and dry so to speak. Shall we get to the links? Yes, lets:
Extra, Extra - 4/17/07
It's a good thing Sharpton got those death threats from deranged Imus fans because he's upped his personal security and has police protection. No offense to Liev Schreiber or Eric Bogosian, but people who love and hate shock jocks don't kill people. Rappers, however, some of those guys'll kill you for real!
Grass To Be Cut In City Parks
Jen threw me this one after I dug up an amusing graphic of Grass perfume by Demeter. I do the math and wonder what the city is thinking replacing grass in city parks with artificial turf when the investment won't break even for 100 years minimum, but probably closer to 150 years.
Reasons To Stay, Reasons To Move
I actually made this graphic myself using PS Elements and used it as the basis for a perennial story about comparing the cost of living: what it takes to live like a Manhattanite earning $100K in different cities. Living like a bum is still pretty much the same everywhere.
Extra, Extra - 4/15/07
A great photo tops a list of stories, including a car flying off the West Side Highway and Trump's son not reacting well to "You're fired!"
It's Not Like Water Falls Out of the Sky, It Costs
NYC's got water problems as taxpayers are gonna have to fork over another $200mn to get their billion-dollar filtration plant built. And Bloomberg is pissed because the city council figured out how to fix the water scofflaw problem is to just raise rates on the people that do pay.
Hunts Point Residents Are Anti-Jail
Who does want to go to jail, anyway? But this is about the Bronx neighbors who don't want a house of D built in the lot they reserve for illegal dumping. The arguments of planners in these cases always strike me as vaguely racist or downright condescending as they explain "We're practically doing you people a service, as you won't have to travel all the way to Rykers to visit your father/brother/sister/cousin."
Arabic-Themed School Generates Controversy
What do you get when a woman wants to open a non-religious magnet school to promote bi-lingualism, cultural understanding, and name it after a Middle Eastern Christian man who grew up in the U.S.? You get called an Islamist nut. Critics say it'll churn out grads with a pro-Arab, anti-American frame of reference. If a NYC public school can churn out graduates who can even locate the Middle East on a map, I say go for it! Hearts and minds is a college-level course anyway.
Woman Rund Down By, Trapped Under SUV
That walk signal is meaningless. Like your mother always told you: look both ways before crossing the street.
Dummkopf
Mostly a lesson in Bronx appreciation after a German Army instructor tries to motivate a recruit holding a machine guy to pretend he's being yomamma'd by a bunch of black guys in the Bronx. Seriously.
Nor'easter Of The 21st Century
Everyone was eyes-open awake the morning I tried to post this and a server switch sent the whole apparatus hobbling on stilts. Fun look back at how differently--or not at all--the city approached impending weather disasters 15 years ago.
Extra, Extra - 4/14/07
I pick on a former pitcher for beating a cat to death and slamming his girlfriends around; consensus: hot guys can do that. The mysterious red pickup and its driver, who started the whole Corzine-crash phenomena is found.
Panama Murder Mystery
A Staten Island woman is found dead, dismembered, and set on fire in a Panamanian soccer field. Local cops correctly figure the butler (female employee) did it.
Keeping Starrett City Affordable
I wonder if Sheldon Silver was thinking "get the hell off my podium!" when U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer hogged the spotlight at an announcement over State Assembly legislation. Hey Chuck, if you want to be a state senator go for it, but they don't get the capital letters.
Sharpton's Death Threats
Sharpton is triumphant in getting Imus booted from the airwaves and now some of the latter's deranged fans want to get all Biggie-Tupac about it.
He-A Culpa
A pun so bad, I emailed the publisher to make sure it was usable, half hoping he'd talk me out of it. Nope.
Metallic Nature in City Park
Just a photo-post of a piece of artist Roxy Paine's installation in Madison Square.
Mill Hil Robbery
You know it's the weekend when not a single commentor writes in to excoriate you for spelling millenium with two n's. Otherwise, it's a crazy story about some tourists from Georgia getting Shanghai'd in a pretty nice hotel downtown.
Stormy Weather Set For Sunday
Basically a PSP (public service post) directing people to online resources for disaster preparedness as the city starts to psych itself up for the nor'easter.
Pols Pay Taxes Too
The Post paws through the tax returns of Gov. Spitzer and SAG Cuomo and we figure, what the hell, count us in.
Hollaback Girls And Then Some
I'm actually very proud of the graphic I created for this post, but the first commentor complains that it's "weak." The only time man-on-woman violence is ever really funny is when it's accompanied by regular use of the phrase "attack of the killer lesbians."
Extra, Extra - 4/13/07
Lucked out with a great black cat photo for Friday 13th. Then late-breaking news that NJ Gov. John Corzine was in a car accident and is seriously messed up. Also, I thought a funny bit about cops and bar owners.
Westward Expansion
Bidding opens for the Hudson Rail Yard, the largest undeveloped bloc of land left in Manhattan. It is real estate bloodsport in the making.
Face-Off!
This was initially much longer, but Jen told me to hack a good portion of it off, which probably made it better.
I'll try to post some more original stuff here this week. Frankly, I'm feeling a little bummed tonight about the VTech shooting. I have no connection to the school or any of the people there; but damn, 32 victims is a lot of dead kids.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at April 17, 2007 7:24 AM
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