She would be Cary Grant, if Cary Grant were a 75-year-old black jewel thief. Never did she grab the jewels and run. That wasn't her way. Instead, she glided in, engaged the clerk in one of her stories, confused them and easily slipped away with a diamond ring, usually to a waiting taxi cab. She is, says retired Denver Police Detective Gail Riddell, like a character from a movie — a female Cary Grant, smooth and confident. "She is very good at what she does," said Riddell. "She has the style."...
This one goes out to birthday boy Matt, whose presence is in no way limited by physical stature. All great men are short, aren't they? Angus Young, lead singer-guitarist of AC/DC, tops Maxim's list of the "25 greatest short dudes of all time," standing tall at 5 feet 2 inches. NBA guard Spud Webb, at 5 feet 7 inches, is No. 2, followed by Napoleon Bonaparte (5 feet 4 inches), Naim Suleymangolu (4 feet 11 inches) and Yuri Gagarin (5 feet 2 inches). The magazine, in its December issue, claims to be helping women "begin a long overdue fight against their genetically determined shallowness when choosing a partner."...
We moved to Long Island City. My old super, who is 72 years old and has only twice left a two-block radius on the east side, keeps asking us "How's Long Island?" She doesn't understand. LIC is in no way like LI. Unlike the Brooklyn old-school brownstone neighborhoods, and unlike the tacky weirdness of other Queens neighborhoods, LIC is a strange beast. It's a weird, funky neighborhood of factories and garages and stray houses. It's been filled up with old-timers, artists, Latinos, and now a new breed of folks looking for a reasonably priced neighborhood with a classic New York vibe. And we've found it in LIC. So I'm neighborhood proud. And there's a great website devoted to it all: LICNYC. Check it out....
Check out the great site built for the Met's van Gogh drawing show. And six degrees of (ear) separation... there's audio of Kevin Bacon reading van Gogh's letters!...
I've raved before about him. Now it's time again for me to plug Seth, a comic book artist whose new book "Wimbledon Green" has just hit stores. He's got an elegant line and a wistful style. He's graced the cover of your favorite Aimee Mann record. Now read the Onion interview with Seth (and check out the great photo)....
To anyone among the chattering classes who gives a damn
Judy Miller is gone from the Times. As Michael Wolff said during a journalism conference, it's easy to get up in arms about a reporter doing jail time for a leak from the White House. There's only one problem: that reporter is Judy Miller. She is celebrated and scorned, both famous and infamous. A dogged reporter, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of four books, expert on terrorism, confidante of powerful government sources through several White House administrations -- and yet Miller's credibility came to rest on a single question: Does she tell the truth?...
You've see it around town. The t-shirt with a big red stop sign that reads: STOP SNITCHING. Now law enforcement is having problems with thug justice: Criminals have always relied on a code of silence to evade prosecution. But calls to "stop snitching" have grown louder in hip-hop, which grew out of black inner cities to become a huge influence on youth culture across America. Critics say this taboo on "snitching" or informing is now part of hip-hop's mystique and makes it increasingly hard for police to solve violent crimes in inner-city neighborhoods. "The cultural shift that it is acceptable to tell people not to come to court to testify imperils the criminal justice system," said Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham. Many hot hip-hop artists glorify crime and violence in their music. The "stop snitching" calls have helped sell records and magazines while branding those who cooperate with law enforcement as traitors. The message is that drug dealing and shootings are normal and it's more noble to go to jail than to talk to police....
Yes, good Democrats won in New Jersey and my fair state of Virginia, and the best of the bums won here in NYC. But there's also really great news from Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvanian school board that is attempting to introduce the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution was yesterday ousted in local elections by anti-creationist campaigners. All eight Republican members of the board, the body that sets education policy for Dover, Pennsylvania, lost their seats to Democrat challengers....
Dear Mike- Come back to where you belong. The Democratic Party in New York needs you, no matter what Freddy Ferrer might say. Remember when Democratic voters wouldn't have elected you in the primary, so you switched parties? Times have changed. It's still the age of the hacks and career bureaucrats who think politics is about paying your dues and waiting your turn. Ferrer is a hack, devoid of ideas and inspiration. He needs to be put to pasture. Your West side stadium idea was ridiculous. We all hated you for it. But you were wise enough to let a bad idea drop and move on, while Ferrer is still talking about two New Yorks. But there are many, aren't there? We hated you for banning smoking in bars. It still doesn't feel right. But you were correct to think of it as a public policy matter, even though the romance of a cigarette at a bar on a New York night will always be with us (thanks to the movies). You showed us the flexibility of a good public servant. You raised taxes and cut programs when we were over budget, and cut taxes and added programs when we...
Here's another unholy stop on my continuing quest to see just how much human beings can pervert the natural order: turducken. When you put a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, and then roast it for eight hours, you get turducken (thanks to Mattthew for the reminder). I've heard of putting squab in chicken, and then chicken in turkey. But there's no name for that. There's a certain elegance about turducken. The name that fits together like a puzzle. The different birds, deboned, that fit together so snuggly with stuffing inside. I plan on using this idea behind all my eating habits, starting with my afterdinner mint: a tic-cert (a tic-tac stuffed inside a Cert). Turducken is a Bayou favorite. Here's a recipe. Here's a story about a town in Louisiana where turducken reigns supreme (includes great multimedia!). And here's another link just so I can type turducken....
The good folks at engadget sponsored their first-ever Halloween costume contest. Let's see: you take a blog about tech gadgets, and a holiday that encourages obsessive nerds with too much time to build things, and what do you get? A working life-size digital camera, complete with viewfinder? Check. A nutty helmet with scrolling text over the eyes? Yep. And, of course, a functional iPod. My favorite is the dancing Nintendo controller....
I feel like Seattle is clucking. Here's a great article about raising chickens in a city. It's illegal for us New Yorkers to have chickens in our backyards (although that doesn't prevent a lot of people, as witnessed in former Times food critic William Grimes' excellent little book "My Fine Feathered Friend"). There are some crazy and beautiful chickens out there, and I encourage everyone to order a dozen little ones and see what happens....
For those archivist/preservation types out there, here's a great website devoted to keeping old movie theaters alive (and reminiscing about those that are gone).: http://cinematreasures.org/...
It's not exactly Yalta, but there's a new peace accord in town. Nas and Jay-Z have officially ended their feud. It's probably good for the hip-hop community, but I can't decide whether this is good or bad for the music, since Jay-Z's attacks put Nas at the top of his game again....
