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BEST OF MANHATTAN
Media & Politics
BEST NEW TREND IN ADVERTISING
"YOU'RE A LOSER AND YOUR DREAMS AMOUNT TO NOTHING"
Just don't do it. Some ad spots we took note of during that fortnight of athletic superlativism we call the Olympics:
— Eight-year-old black boy plays a lone game of hoops in the driveway. He is determined. He is focused. He can't shoot for shit. After tossing up a few bricks and barely skimming the rim he returns to his laptop to watch footage of Stephon Marbury or some such player driving past several defenders for a reverse slam dunk. Inspired anew, he returns to the court. He dribbles. He drives. He still can't shoot for shit. Poor little boy, so young and talentless.
— En route to shooting the rapids, a quartet of thirtysomething males talks tough as they commandeer their kayak-laden SUV through backwoods terrain. Their bragging crescendos as they reach the river's edge. Glancing at the rapids, however, their puffery peters out. The leader utters some let's-not-and-say-we-did drivel; others agree. They retreat to their SUV and beat it home. These are not men. These are sissy bitches.
— Out on the ocean on her longboard, an attractive, pre-menopausal brunette—presumably a hot little fuck when she was younger—waits patiently for a wave. Meanwhile, a voiceover delivers crusty 90s-era empowerment cant: You always rise to the challenge. You believe your best years are ahead of you. A beat later, she's walking up the beach, surfboard under her arm, looking smug as all hell. Placing the board upright in the sand next to several others, she steps away and then cringes in embarrassment as they all come tumbling down like dominos. Think you're hip? Get a clue, grandma.
Dreams of heroism and achievement are so last century. Knowing this, the ad guys figure they'll curry a little favor by not bullshitting you. Whether hawking high-speed DSL, the new Lincoln Navigator or cholesterol-reducing Lipitor, the humor in these spots and others like them proceeds from the premise that you really aren't as great as you think you are. Not by a long shot, buddy. Keep an eye out for humiliation and failure. It's today's unique selling proposition.
BEST NEWSPAPER WAR
AMNEW YORK VS. METRO
Please dispose of properly. Not since the Post and the News tried to convince an uncaring public that they weren't interchangeable have two dailies battled so fervently for readers who just couldn't give a fuck.
We already have six major dailies: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily News, the New York Post, Newsday and the Sun. For the many gaps left by these half-dozen dinosaurs—say, in cultural and political coverage—we have three major weeklies: us, the Village Voice and the New York Observer. For whatever gaps are still left, Al Gore gave us the internet.
Which is the key to this latest media war. According to most media analysts over the age of 50, the precious 21-to-34 demographic is abandoning newsprint in favor of online news. In a desperate bid to stop the readership hemorrhage, major newspaper chains are launching youth-market free dailies. In Chicago, there are two: the Chicago Tribune's RedEye and the Sun Times' Red Streak.
This past year, New York's news landscape breathed deeply to let squeeze in a pair of its own free dailies: amNew York and Metro. Both are funded by the deep pockets of a larger news chain, and both are seeking those golden 21-to-34-year-old eyeballs. Both are thin newspapers filled with wire-service reports, infographics and large pull-quotes; they're meant to be read in the course of a subway ride, then discarded.
amNew York's primary investor is Tribune Company, which counts Newsday and Hoy among its local properties, and several newspapers and dozens of television stations in the larger stable. Its publisher is fiftysomething Russel Pergament, who was quoted in the Times as saying, "People used to think that in order to be important, a newspaper has to be thick. But the thicker the paper is, the less likely it is to be read."
By that measure, Pergament's venture is a runaway success. His newspaper isn't very thick, and it's far from being important. It is, in fact, an embarrassment, the worst piece of newsprint shit this city may have ever seen. The writing—when not culled from the wires—would give the worst hack cause to celebrate his talent; and the art direction is non-existent, making it the ugliest paper this side of the Post. We'd hate to blame Pergament alone, however: Tribune is a faceless behemoth, precisely the wrong kind of company to appeal to younger adults who, if you believe those over-50 media analysts, barely even know how to read.
In the other corner, there's the New York Metro, the latest addition to the internationally known family of dailies published by Metro International, S.A. Our Metro boasts three dozen siblings in such places as Paris, Seoul, Athens and Santiago, Chile, with domestic sisters residing in Boston and Philadelphia.
Though Metro is faring worse in terms of advertising sales—or so it would seem from a casual inspection of the two papers—it's by far the superior product. Perhaps it's the international pedigree, or actually having an art director who knows what he's doing. Either way, Metro is a pleasure to read.
Sure, it has flaws. The cheeky branding of each section ("Stuff," "Voices," "Essentials") is cloying and amateurish, and they had the bad sense to partner with TimeOut for their listings. A disclaimer on the op-ed page claims that "Metro has no official opinions," which is fine and good—a pretense of editorial objectivity is still laudable—but such ham-fisted declarations smack of immature idealism spouted by a stoned collegiate editorial board. We'd guess they're desperately afraid of political classification, which can alienate sensitive advertisers.
But Metro's biggest problem isn't editorial. The distribution is horrible. amNew York may be a company filled with junior-varsity rejects, but their circulation is aces. The street hawkers push copies into everyone's face, and the boxes are always stocked. Whenever we seek out a copy of Metro—and we do seek it out—we find the boxes stuffed either with old issues or, on more than one occasion, trash from the street.
We'd like to wish both papers well, but it's against our professional instincts. Instead, we urge improvements. To our wannabe peers at amNew York: Good luck spit-shining your hunk of dogshit. To Metro: Can we get our copies delivered?
BEST SPAM HEADERS (NO SEX)
"Abolish your bills the Christian way"
"why did you tell everybody i had aids?"
BEST SPAM HEADERS (SEX)
"pump your girlfriend with semen!"
"Sex that hurts - Stretch Till they Squeal!!!"
"drill your girlfriend's asshole to the max! intrinsic"
"swap some anus tonight"
BEST NEW
NATIONAL HOLIDAY
LOYALTY DAY, MAY 1
May Day, May Day. At first, it all seemed like just another lame internet joke:
The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day"… a day of celebration and reaffirming our allegiance to our Nation. NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2004, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance. I also call upon government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Loyalty Day.
Get it?
On May 1?
Yuk-yuk.
The purpose of the holiday, went the internet gag, was to "encourage citizens to demonstrate their commitment to our country by supporting our military, serving each other, and teaching our young people about our history and values."
Then came the punchline: It was real.
Loyalty Day will soon be appearing on a 2005 calendar near you. According to the presidential proclamation that announced its birth, Loyalty Day is meant to provide an opportunity for increased activity for the newly minted "USA Freedom Corps."
What's next? A mandatory citizen's guidebook titled Famous and Cherished Sayings of George W. Bush? Wait—we take that joke back. The last time we made a joke about "what's next," we got Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Healthy Forests Initiative.
BEST REASON NOT
TO GO TO IRAQ
BEHEADINGS
We're going to Disneyland. Yugoslavian joke from the late 90s: What will Yugoslavia be called in 10 years? Answer: Belgrade.
If the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Incredible Shrinking Post-Communist State, Iraq is the Incredible Shrinking Liberated Country. NGO workers and contractors aren't just getting bags thrown over their heads along empty stretches of highway outside Fallujah anymore. They're getting kidnapped in broad daylight in upscale neighborhoods in Baghdad while their supposed bodyguards sit on the couch and eat Ramen, watch CNN and pretend not to notice. And you thought it was hard finding good help on the Upper East Side.
Whatever adventure itch may lure us to Afghanistan or Pakistan in the coming year, Iraq got crossed off the list on the day Nick Berg supplanted Paris Hilton as the hot download. Of all the ways to spend the last few seconds of life, getting your head hacked off like a cow is the most horrifying for us to think about. We'd rather be drawn and quartered, even if it took five times as long. We'd rather get the water treatment, bees, bamboo needles, multiple gunshot wounds, rocket through the windshield—just don't push us onto our knees and start reciting the Koran while we wait for that first blow, that two-inch spine-crushing wound that won't sever enough nerves to blunt the pain between our ears as the blood spills out our neck.
But the worst thing about getting your head chopped off is the oxygen that often keeps the brain functioning even after your noggin has been completely severed from the body. Humans can't run around like chickens, but we can think. Before finally banning the guillotine, the French documented this with hundreds of examples. There is even one story about a Jacobin during the Terror who, when his executioner held up his head by the hair, managed to mouth a slogan as he hung there. Literally a talking head.
Who knows if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his boys will succeed in driving all the infidels out of Iraq, but with the beheading videos, they kept us out. We'll see y'all on Space Mountain.
BEST TERROR TARGETS
CITIBANK AND
THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE
Just tip us off first. We're not saying "Blow the fuckers up." We're just saying that Citibank's parent company Citigroup is the largest banking conglomerate in the world. They've transcended national boundaries, and they're not on "our" side: Citigroup was implicated and fined by the Treasury Department in 2003 for financial connections and "dealing in property" with groups like al Qaeda and Hamas. They also made shady money propping up WorldCom and Enron through the bankruptcies that devastated the companies' U.S. workers.
So then, they're on "their" side? Not quite: Citi is the number-one investor in fossil fuel development and has major defense investments as well, meaning they're a major war profiteer in the Middle East, which explains why they've become a target of Arab rage. Other standing allegations include investment in ecologically unsound oil drilling and rainforest mining, "predatory lending" in low-income urban areas and investment scandals connected to CEO Sanford Weill.
They're also major proponents of global outsourcing and the temporary workforce, dragging down American working conditions and underpaying foreign labor while top execs pull eight-digit salaries. Adding insult to injury, their current "Live Richly" promotional campaign touts their attentiveness to the needs of the middle-class worker, encouraging the good living and material comforts that will supposedly come from dealing with their institution. Except that like any other multinational investment bank (see also "JP Morgan-Chase"), they could care less about accounts holding anything less than five grand, nickel-and-diming low-end customers to death with custodial fees to make sure your money will inevitably become theirs.
Citi have sold their corporate soul to Mammon and will do just about anything to keep money flowing straight to the top.
As for the New York Stock Exchange, where do we start? How can we finish? Stock speculation at the turn of the last century led to a little economic bust historians like to call the Great Depression. Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped the Feds from handing the economic reins over to a gang of glorified bookies. The stock market has brought us the dubious joys of junk bonds, S&L scandals, bursting tech bubbles, insider trading, 401Ks and other contemporary horrors, though its real legacy is culpability in promoting the single most dangerous assumption of American capitalism: the need for constant, unrestrained growth.
In order to stay profitable on the Big Board, traded companies must constantly expand business; when they plateau, the real fun begins. Companies either engage in a Russian roulette of book-cooking or mergers and acquisitions, creating artificial expansion, downsizing the workforce and hoping the bottom doesn't fall out when earnings don't increase. Or, they become branded behemoths like McDonald's, Nike, Citi, muscling into foreign markets and spreading so-called "American" culture where, frankly, it looks like it's not wanted.
NYSE, landmark that it may be, is not just encouraging irresponsible business practices; it's legitimizing them. The stock market and investment banks work arm-in-arm creating suicidal global business conditions that unsustainably consume world resources and ensure we really won't all get along.
Wait, maybe we are saying go ahead and blow the fuckers up. While you're at it, take out all the major credit-card companies—Fight Club-style—and reduce consumer debt to zero. We know we'll most likely end up eating rats in an urban free-fire zone if these bulwarks of American capitalism take it on the chin, but when the smoke clears in a couple of decades, and someone's figured out how to get that whole Star Trek future utopia business underway, we're sure mankind will thank you.
BEST LOCATION FOR A NEW POWER PLANT
GROUND ZERO
How about a windmill farm? We are not unaware of the desperate, growing need for electrical power on this scepter'd isle of ours, nor are we insensitive to the notorious form of civic shirking known as NIMBY. It is for the sake of some rendering of something resembling civic justice and virtue that we hereby call for the construction of a nuclear power plant at Ground Zero.
The financial industry in this town draws more energy than Broadway and the barrio combined. The market has always supported nuclear power, promoted its safety and efficiency. Surely the Grand Wazoos of Wall Street wouldn't object to a little unusual architecture in their midst in exchange for never having to worry about a blackout in Manhattan again. What's more, its presence would justify the creation of a fully automated air-sea-land defense construction the likes of which the world has never seen.
How better to memorialize the hapless victims of that terrible Tuesday than the certainty that the trains will run on time, the beer will be cold and the lights will always shine on the Great White Way? What better tribute to those who gave their lives for commerce, than the surety of the continuity of commerce in this, the city they all loved best?
Face it, Libeskind's Freedom Tower looks like something an eight-year-old retarded child from Quebec might draw. If we don't have the balls to rebuild the towers themselves, the least we can do is build something we actually need. No endless pointy mediocrity dangling into the sky at the behest of our reptilian, anencephalic mayor and his inbred constituency will grant us benediction or absolution when some Nimrod clone of Homer Simpson drops his crack pipe into the grid somewhere in Ohio, shutting down NASDAQ, the NYSE and every house of domination from John Street to Bayside.
Tribeca residents may be comforted by Henry Kissinger's oft-quoted observation that "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."
BEST PRESS-
RELEASE HEADLINE
"YOUR CHILDREN ARE WHAT YOU EAT... Dr. Denise Lamothe encourages parents to help their children by helping themselves."
BEST PAGE SIX
CORRECTION
SEPT. 14, 2004
They all look alike. "[I]t wasn't Jam Master Jay the other night at Crobar. It was loud and dark and our intrepid reporter has trouble distinguishing among Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Fab Five Freddy and Ol' Dirty Bastard. Jam Master was murdered two years ago, and we apologize to his family…"
Not imagining that anyone could be so fucking stupid, we assumed the correction was some sort of inside-Page-Six joke. Then we dug up the original item, dated Sept. 11: "At the Maxim party at Crobar, Jeremy Piven, Paris Hilton, Simon Rex, Bijou Phillips and Jam Master J gathered to watch Avril Lavigne and Public Enemy perform."
Avril's still alive, right? Right??!
BEST NEWSPAPER
FOR KINDLING
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Bonfire of the vanity papers. Having anticipated that life in Manhattan during the Republican National Convention would be about as unpleasant as it turned out to be, we scheduled our vacation for late August and early September. Thus we avoided being swept up by overzealous police and held for two or three days on some West Side pier.
But late summer nights, chilly in northeastern Pennsylvania, are harbingers of the coming fall, so we planned a useful experiment for our stay in the Delaware Water Gap. One of us had recently reread Edwin O'Connor's valentine to machine politics, The Last Hurrah. In the novel, the protagonist, Frank Skeffington, while evading reporters' questions about his candidacy for re-election, mentions possible retirement, "far from the madding crowd." He says to one reporter, "…during the winter months, I would…take the paper which you represent," explaining that "…I have found from long experience that your paper burns very well. Makes grand kindling. I don't imagine, by the way, that most people are aware of that. If they were, your paper's very small circulation might be substantially increased." Thus inspired, we brought numerous copies of the New York dailies to test as kindling. We added charm to our evenings by building several fires.
Some papers were nearly useless. Despite its heated editorials, the New York Post doesn't do much for a fire. Apparently, Murdoch uses the cheapest possible newsprint. It doesn't burn so much as oxidize, slowly turning black without ever really igniting. The Daily News was only a marginal improvement. And The New York Sun proved a flash in the pan, vanishing in a puff of smoke before our logs and pine shavings could ignite.
But The New York Times—that's the paper for us. It enkindled quickly, burned slowly, and invariably fueled a solid, long-lasting fire. We've renewed our subscription.
BEST GLOSSED-OVER NEWS STORY
THE CRIME RATE ISN'T DROPPING
Short-term memory loss. We've been hearing it since Giuliani was in office: The crime rate is dropping dramatically across the board! On the streets, in the subways, in the parks, in all five boroughs, the statistics for every conceivable type of crime are falling. They're the lowest they've been in 20 years! In 30 years! The last we heard, the crime rate in New York City was as low as it had been since 1916 or thereabouts.
Then late last May, both the Daily News and the Post reported that the crime rates were falling because the NYPD was fudging the numbers. Some crimes weren't being reported at all, and others were being downgraded to lesser crimes in the reports, just to ensure that those statistics for major felonies stayed down.
Even crime victims were reporting how difficult it was to even report a crime. One man in Chelsea who had his wrist broken in a gay-bashing incident said the cops who responded to his 911 call wouldn't even take his statement, and that he had to make several visits to the local precinct before the assault was even logged.
But after the News and the Post ran those stories, little more was said about it in the mainstream press. What did we hear instead? Hey! Guess what! The crime rate has taken another dramatic tumble!
BEST ARGUMENT
FOR PERESTROIKA
Start with the MTA. One out of every one thousand Americans works for the City of New York. If that doesn't frighten you, it should. They have very elaborate iron-clad agreements, these people, guaranteeing them things like weeks of vacation time, personal leave, paid sick days and pensions guaranteed by the taxpaying public gauged at the rate of 50 percent of their final year's salary, allowing for overtime. They are notorious for racking up extraordinary overtime hours in the final year of service.
Bureaucracies, once created, never seem to obsolesce themselves. Like the Taxi & Limousine Commission or the godforsaken abortion we know as the Port Authority, they fail at the completion of their assigned tasks yet proceed to plunder and loot the public on the premise that more money will solve the problem.
Our annual education budget in this city exceeds that of the entire country of France. The School Construction Authority (SCA) consumes the guido share of that budget. Custodians can be had for far less than $80,000-plus per year; contracts can be voided. Ask the airlines how to do it. Ask Wal-Mart.
Under the leadership of Peter Kalikow, the MTA has proven itself completely inept, and has demonstrated nothing but contempt for the public in its refusal to open their books to public perusal. Where are the consequences for their horrible choices?
Estimates vary slightly, but the NYPD seems to be somewhere between the eighth and tenth largest army in the world. Feel safe yet?
Next year's city budget proposal exceeds $47 billion. Wrap your head around that. It's more or less .01 percent of the GDP of the entire world, according to the CIA.
It wasn't always this way, and it doesn't have to be.
BEST REASON
TO BUY THE SUN
COL ALLEN'S RUINED THE POST
The Sun also rises. There's nothing sadder than seeing people who still think that the New York Post is some kind of right-wing newspaper. Yes, the editorial page is certainly conservative. There's also the Post's Deborah Orin, who consistently comes up with scoops because she's allowed to write articles that leftist editors ban from other newspapers. Otherwise, the Post relies on Associated Press reports that often include a healthy liberal slant.
There's also a big leftist leaning running rampant throughout the rest of the paper—most hilariously in film critic Lou Lumenick's desperate pandering to Hollywood. The book section is also a real embarrassment. Fortunately, conservatives aren't missing out on much while giving up on the Post. Editor-in-chief Col Allen has turned the entire newspaper into a real disaster.
That idiotic front page proclaiming the Kerry/Gephardt ticket wasn't just bad journalism. It was also lazy Old Journalism, since the internet was already hot on the Kerry/Edwards announcement while the Post was still setting the hot type. Allen's also continually bungled the Post sensibility. Consider the recent Tuesday, August 17 headline: "Popcorn Kills Tot." That wasn't just a big, splashy headline. It was big, splashy and insensitive in a way that we'd have never seen in the old, better Post. The paper was lucky enough to survive Pete Hamill's short-lived reign. Looks like the luck's run out.
BEST TERRORIST
RUDY GIULIANI
He really wasn't joking. From his bully pulpit a few years before September 11, 2001, Mayor Giuliani publicly announced that the Board of Education building at 110 Livingston St. should be "blown up." When startled reporters asked him about this statement, he repeated himself.
Thousands of people are being detained indefinitely this very moment for saying things far less reckless, only they have no access to lawyers or due process. Fortunately for Rudy, he's pals with those who arrest anyone else for similar threatening speech. And they let him off the hook.
Clearly, his idea of blowing up public buildings was heard loud and clear.
Tell us again: How did this guy become the hero of 9/11?
BEST POTENTIAL
MTA SCANDAL
THE METROCARD FLOAT
A penny saved. Ever stop to think what happens to the tens of millions of dollars the MTA collects in advance from people buying weekly or monthly MetroCards? Does any of that money go into interest-bearing accounts? Dear MTA, how many millions are you earning off the sorry-ass straphangers who have no choice but to patronize your miserable subway?
BEST ONGOING NYU VS. COMMUNITY SPAT
SHUTTING DOWN THE BOTTOM LINE
There's a fateful name for you. Anyone who didn't already know that New York University administrators were douchebags for demolishing the Poe house on W. 4th St. should hate the country's largest private university for shutting down the Bottom Line. Despite having hosted some of the most important and noted folk and rock singers back in the day, and despite putting up a good fight, the Bottom Line was shut down by NYU's formidable team of lawyers.
NYU insisted that the Bottom Line was behind on its rent, leaving the landlord—one of the city's largest private-property owners, by the way—no other choice than to turn this Greenwich Village musical landmark into yet more classroom space. We're not quite sure how the Bottom Line was draining the bank account of a school that charges $40,000 per year per student, but we'll leave that to people who know how to do math.
The space, incidentally, has been vacant since the January 24, 2004 closing.
BEST BREAKING OF
A FEDERAL LAW BY
SOMEONE IN THE
WHITE HOUSE
THE PLAME LEAK
Those cuffs tight enough for you, Karl? It's a two-bit tale of revenge that doubles neatly as a 10-bit metaphor for the Cheney-Rove White House. The outline is already the stuff of early-21st-century lore: Africa expert and seasoned diplomat Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate an Italian-British intelligence story about Iraqi efforts to purchase "yellowcake" uranium. The documents turned out to be fakes—fakes so bad that they wouldn't have gotten Saddam Hussein a beer at a Rangers game without another form of ID. Wilson returned to Washington and dutifully reported this to the CIA. But this information somehow didn't filter up to the White House, and the Niger documents resurfaced in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.
Instead of using the forgeries as an example of bad intelligence, however, Bush somberly described them as a terrifying sign that time was running out on Iraq. When Wilson penned a Times op-ed alerting the public to the fact that they had been lied to, the administration began to distance itself from the now-famous "16 words" in the State of the Union. The Niger docs quickly became shorthand for missing WMD and much else.
But why lick wounds and spin when you can get even? A message also had to be sent to others thinking about contradicting anything the administration said. And so syndicated columnist Robert Novak (the same Robert Novak whom Karl Rove has used in the past for similar black-ops) let it be known in his July 14, 2003, column that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent—ruining her intelligence career, putting her in possible danger and letting the world know that somebody in the White House was cocky enough to break a little federal law known as the Intelligence Identity Protection Act of 1982.
That cockiness began to shrink a bit in October when the Justice Department opened a probe into the leak. A few months later, Bush and Cheney have hired private legal counsel and the nation waits for the DOJ to wrap up its investigation, which may or may not be after November 2. Most major players in the White House have already answered before a federal grand jury, opening up the possibility of somebody high up in the White House—Rove, Cheney, possibly even the president himself—getting nailed to a cross of perjury.
Meantime, all we can do is sit back and watch re-runs of The Untouchables, mindful that it was tax evasion that brought down Al Capone.
BEST PAGE SIX DESCRIPTION OF
A CLUMSY JUNKIE
RYAN NOEL, "FALLEN SOLDIER"
Dopes on dope on dope. On June 28, the electroclash world suffered a loss in the form of overdosed guitarist Ryan Noel of A.R.E. Weapons, reducing the world's pool of talented electroclash musicians by exactly zero. Leave it to Page Six to further the idiotic romanticization of a dead junkie with the following sentence: "The band will pay tribute to their fallen comrade during their show at B.B. King's Blues Club on July 13." Worse yet, the item's title was a straight-faced "Fallen Soldier."
BEST NEIGHBOR
STAN KILMARTIN
On the subject of Jack Kilbrittney. In mid-July, Jack Fuller was charged with the murder of 16-year-old Brittney Gregory of Brick Township, NJ. Outside the courthouse after the arraignment, 30-year-old Stan Kilmartin, a self-described friend of Fuller's, offered the following character assessment to a New York Times reporter:
"What does [Fuller] do? Truthfully? He robs drug dealers. He's a thief, but I wouldn't describe him as a pedophile or rapist."
When we get picked up for whatever it is we're doing wrong, someone give this guy a call. Thanks.
BEST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
ERNEST DESIRE THE CLOWN
AKA MIKE FANDAL, 212-794-2866
Ernest goes to the White House. Mike Fandal recently declared his intent to run for president, and the best thing he has over Bush and Kerry is that he admits to being a clown. "People terrified of clowns will have to face their fears," he says.
A former NYC cop turned professional clown, Fandal also holds the uncontested world record for long-distance running with a plunger on his head. (Careful readers will remember him as the plunger-headed performer who had to change his act after Abner Louima was sodomized in a police bathroom with a similar toilet tool.) Fandal also promises to bring balloons and laughs to all of America, and to make terrorists laugh so hard they will not attack. Failing that, maybe he can cream them with custard pies.
BEST OVERHEARD
FDNY JOKE
"How the hell did George W. Bush get the FDNY union to endorse him? Don't they know how anti-labor he is?"
"Yeah, but drunk drivers tend to stick together."
BEST PLACE TO GET BUSINESS CARDS YOU'LL NEVER USE
A MEDIABISTRO PARTY
What an asshole. "Who do you write for?" A Mediabistro party conversation that starts like this always ends with a prompt exchange of business cards, followed by the phony "Nice t'meet you."
No profession can boast as many career whores as the media world. And there's no better forum to brush elbows with like-minded ladder-climbers than a Mediabistro party. The website has established itself as a mainstream source of media news, workshops and job opportunities, not to mention a social outlet for journalists starving for friends, contacts, dates, or more likely all three.
MB's parties are usually monthly affairs at overpriced bars with no discounted drinks. Attendees are a strange mix of interns and editors, freelancers and photographers, all with the same purpose: to network. Most of the guys are dressed in a sports coat over a crumply button-down shirt with no tie (standard male journalist's outfit). Women are dressed like publicists, knowing that the room is filled with broke journalists who can't buy them drinks, but just may give them their next break.
Then there're the hosts in Hawaiian leis and the in-house photog who snaps pictures that pop up on the website a few days later.
In the right mood, we enjoy media get-togethers, particularly when free, or even discounted, drinks are in the picture. But we learned quickly Mediabistro parties are a complete waste. Try talking about something other than the media and you will be met with cold stares and frustrated glances. Everyone fidgets and looks at their watch, or shoulder-gazes behind you, seeking out someone more important.
When that happens, the best remedy is to whip out your business card, flash a smile and say, "Nice t'meet you." Then go find the nearest bridge.
BEST EVIL GENIUS
KARL ROVE
Mark of the Beast. As an ambitious super-nerd during the Nixon years, Karl Rove's greatest dream was to become chairman of the College Republicans. When opportunity knocked, he sank a knife into the back of a mentor who was ahead of him in line for the job. As an up-and-coming Texas campaign strategist in the mid-80s, he bugged his own office and blamed the opposition to distract the media from that week's gubernatorial debates, in which his man was widely expected to get pummeled.
On and on it went in the shadows of Texas politics until 2000, when Rove, now a grandmaster in the art of political black-ops, employed a ninja's arsenal in the South Carolina Republican primary. Rove was faced with an opponent of obvious integrity who spent more time in a POW camp than Rove's candidate had spent out of his Houston condo's pool. What to do? What else: grease the ground with slime. Vicious slurs were made on call-in talk shows and in calls to voters' homes, slanderous flyers appeared in the parking lots of churches and supermarkets, whispers were dispersed at rallies like anthrax spores. By the time it was all over, John McCain might as well have been Louis Farrakhan with a third trimester fetus raised to his lips.
When four years later another decorated veteran entered Rove's cage, the plan of attack was ready and waiting. But instead of poisonous blow-darts and hallways full of razor-edged jax, Rove pulled out the heavy munitions—this time more commando than ninja. The explosion from the mine Rove detonated under Kerry's war record created enough sea foam to once again obscure the fact that Bush was a soda-cracker chicken hawk who never got closer to Vietnam than the tennis courts at the U.S. embassy compound in Beijing where his daddy worked.
The details of these campaigns and numerous others are all documented in the book (now a minor motion picture) Bush's Brain, by longtime Texas journos James Moore and Wayne Slater. As the authors make clear, you can love Karl Rove or hate him, but none of his political opponents can afford to underestimate him. He is to be feared and respected first and second. There is little time for animosity. He fights hard, smart and dirty, like a rabid, cornered weasel. And goddamn if the deformed little motherfucker doesn't win.
BEST REASON TO LICENSE JOURNALISTS
JOEL STEIN
Win Joel Stein's prose. Joel Stein should be a blogger who gets four hits a month, not a salaried staffer for a major newsweekly. Stein's smarmy picture and particular prose no doubt appeal to Time's over-the-hill readers who like their coverage of current events safe and predictable, their puns cute and their writers inoffensive.
Examples:
On Dr. Atkins' death: "Even before the fat fracas ignited a war of facts, it had already dragged New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg into the lardy mix";
On pitching a show to VH1: "I have seen the ratings, and I am tiny in Canada";
On Republican rockers: "The reason my tour was looking weak may have been my lack of respect within the Southern rock community ever since I cut my mullet."
More than his work, Stein's self-promotion machine is among the industry's most disgusting. His website looks like it's designed to appeal to Teen Beat readers, and features a zany biography, writing samples and…photos: There's lil' Joel when he was just four years old, shirtless Joel in the Bahamas and Joel "attacked by [his] sister's dolls in the basement."
Is it possible that someone has finally deposed Spin's Chuck Klosterman as the nation's most horrific pop journo?
BEST STAFF EXODUS
VILLAGE VOICE
And they're still bloated. It has been a summer of blood at the Village Voice. The erstwhile alterna-rag founded in 1955 has been leading staff to the guillotine. Richard Goldstein (executive editor), Cynthia Cotts ("Press Clips" columnist) and Matt Haber (online editor) are the latest to rest their necks on the ink-stained chopping block. The suits call it restructuring. We call it a midlife crisis.
Management is the mouth-breathing, bald man who buys the latest apple-red ragtop to attract plastic breasts 20 years his junior; the editorial staff is the jilted wife whose years of loyalty mean diddlysquat. In other words, upstairs' bottom-liners are tripping over their walkers trying to lure a younger readership into neo-hip fads like flash mobs, burlesque and protest.
The aforementioned souls were far from the first victims of Village Voice Media's Reign of Terror. That honor is reserved for editorial content. What with porn reviews and rehashed Bush-bashing, their weekly lineup has Us Weekly's nutritional content. It's little wonder Cotts bolted.
BEST MOVE BY
THE VILLAGE VOICE
DITCHING GOLDSTEIN
On the other hand… Something had to be done. There's the bottom line to consider, you know, and Richard Goldstein must've been pulling serious coin. The veteran writer/editor had long ago become a true embarrassment. Consider his "Kerry's Pecker" column of June 7th, 2004, in which the dotty and dated journalist opined that "Kerry has to overcome the assumption that he's pussy-whipped, since he comes from the party of feminism. It hardly helps that his wife isn't willing to walk three steps behind her husband."
The ditching of Goldstein will also be welcomed by many openly gay writers who've had to live down Goldstein's insights such as, "Butch blue is Bush's color, in suits or jeans." Goldstein went out in a truly sad manner, too, trying to handle the Voice's "Press Clips" column and actually writing that Michael Moore "allow[ed] himself to be interrogated by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week."
Yeah, we're sure Moore was really sweating out that interview. The Voice will have to fire a lot more writers before it can be taken seriously again, but we'll gladly concede that getting rid of Goldstein is a step in the right direction. Don't worry about the poor, unemployed writer, either. Downtown Express has probably already made an offer.
BEST PATH TO INSTANT ASSHOLE STATUS
GAWKER.COM
Third time's the harm. The formula to climbing the media ladder used to be indentured servitude: internship leads to editorial assistant translates to 150-word trend pieces about pooper-scoopers. It's a dream countless fresh-from-j-schoolers buy into lock, stock and glossy print. Then came the little blog that could: Gawker.com. Thanks to publisher Nick Denton's deft purchase of Google ads, Gawker quickly became the go-to cheat sheet for media gossip and snark.
To summarize Gawker's daily postings:
1. Anna Wintour's a bitch!
2. The New York Times is stuffy!
3. Famous people walk past us!
4. Soho House rocks!
5. No, wait, Soho House sucks!
6. We're drunk!
In its first incarnation, Gawker's Page Six regurgitations were delivered with sass and even a few deft adjectives. In less than a year, New York picked up Elizabeth Spiers and offered her a plum—if invisible—position on a culturally relevant—if actually irrelevant—magazine. Next up was Choire Sicha, who developed an avid following with his daily musings about all the cock he'd suck if only he could fight his hangover. His writing was atrocious, so it's no surprise that the Observer fell for his pitches.
Now, the reins are in the hands of the unknown Jessica Coen, a blogger who has so far downplayed the gay quotient by playing up her tits. In true Gawker form, she makes repeated funnies about booze and dead horse Vincent Gallo.
Way to rock the status quo, Coen. We'll see you at BlackBook in six months.
BEST EXAMPLE OF A POL BARING HIS FANGS
GROVER NORQUIST IN EL MUNDO
The Greediest Generation. The World According to Grover: "Each year, two million people who fought in the Second World War and lived through the Great Depression die. This generation has been an exception in American history, because it has defended anti-American policies. They are the base of the Democratic Party. And they are dying."
BEST REAL FAKE NAME IN A POST ARTICLE
CORNELIUS DINGLE
Dingle, very. Not since that spate of Heywood Jablomés ran through the press a few years back have we chuckled so much at such an obviously fake name. Or so we thought.
We were ready to slag on the Post's Jason Carpenter for being gullible enough to quote a man calling himself "Cornelius Dingle." In a March 1 article, "Dingle" refused to lament the switch from token to MetroCard on the Roosevelt Island tram. "Kick the tokens out," the 33-year-old commuter said, "I'm glad they're gone."
We've been known to jump the gun before, so we turned to the desk-hack's favorite fact-checking tool and actually got a google hit for Mr. Dingle. As reported by our friends at Roosevelt Island's Main Street WIRE, Cornelius Dingle was one of 76 recipients of a certificate of appreciation for helping during the 2003 blackout.
Damn you, Dingle!
We'd like to apologize to Jason Carpenter for doubting his professionalism.
It's still a cool name, isn't it?
BEST AD CAMPAIGN FOR COMPLETELY SHAMING YOU AS OWNER OF THE PRODUCT
CINGULAR WIRELESS
Aw, c'mon, we just like a bargain. People made fun of us for choosing the budget-conscious cellphone service that is Cingular, but the service is good enough and we really like the rollover plan. Then came the ads in which Cingular customers are characterized as seeking out budget haircuts and meticulously demanding their change, and we were like, we don't need to advertise the fact that we're cheap fucks. We can be cheap fucks on our own. With or without your middling service.
BEST EXAMPLE OF GEORGE W. BUSH DROWNING
CAPTURED ON FILM
DEFINING "TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY" ON C-SPAN
How 'bout them evildoers? On Aug. 6, 2004, a reporter from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer asked President Bush to comment on the relationship between tribal sovereignty and the federal center in the 21st century. With the Sudan making headlines around the world, it was a legitimate question.
Bush panicked. As the audience guffawed, this is what the president dribbled out before calling on someone else:
"Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. You're a—you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities."
BEST GEORGE
SZAMUELY MOMENT
Just 569 more to beat the record. From the July 20, 2004 Newsday:
An officer spotted Byron Haynes running a stop sign about 4:30 p.m. Sunday; investigators later learned Haynes had just run out of Syracuse University's Bird Library with a stolen book, setting off the building's alarms as he fled… Police said Haynes offered no explanation when he was arrested. [Police spokesman Sgt. Tom] Connellan said he did not know the name of the book, but said it was one on religion. There were no injuries.
BEST MOVIE-RATING DESCRIPTION
"[R]ated Pg-13. Millions of people die, but nobody swears, copulates, undresses or takes drugs."
New York Times, May 27, The Day After Tomorrow
BEST BIO-TERRORIST PATHOGEN
SMALLPOX
Death by 1000 bumps. It might not have the sought-after, exotic dark-vomit death of ebola, but there are certain aspects of the smallpox virus that endear it to us. Every young elementary-schooler is mortified to learn that the great forefathers of their beloved country infected the natives, who were ultra-susceptible, with this horrible disease. The metaphysical clash of cultures manifested in a horribly physical way, with natives who might have uttered "the horror, the horror" if only their tongues weren't cracked and streaming with the oily wetness of burst boils.
Americans are once again hosts to the somnambulistic aggression of another major culture war. And although we at home are blissfully at ease with our meticulous conveniences, each one of our plasma screens or gallons of gas is a deathstroke to someone on the outside. We don't really know that we're killing people, and they don't really know why they're all dying.
It will take a special someone to see the connection, someone very sensitive who perhaps didn't grow up with a father figure or high school football—someone like a bio-terrorist. He is tortured, the weight of the world on his bony back. What can he possibly do to stop the cycle of strife? Sept. 11 didn't fix a damn thing; the devastation must be more extensive, the death count much higher, the terror more grotesque. A virus, he decides. His poetic mind can't help but see the 21st century as another dark age in the making.
We'd like to suggest smallpox. If only because it makes sense. It has a certain symmetry to it, and symmetry is something we all can appreciate, even terrorists who, say, crash planes into two identical buildings.
BEST FUCKWIT BLOGGER
MISUNDERSTANDING BLOGS
DANIEL RADOSH
Wee jerk. A humorist who's not funny is forgivable. But Daniel Radosh is also a blogger hack who's too lazy to even figure out what a blog is. This is not forgivable. His remarkably clueless May "Talk of the Town" piece about agent Kate Lee, who's signed up a handful of web geeks, began with this paragraph:
"Two years from now—give or take—Elizabeth Spiers, the founding editor of the gossip Web sites Gawker and The Kicker, will publish her first novel. Around the same time, Glenn Reynolds, who writes the political Web log Instapundit, will also have a book in stores. So, too, may writers from the blogs Hit & Run, The Black Table, Dong Resin, Zulkey, Low Culture, Lindsayism, Megnut, Maud Newton, MemeFirst, Old Hag, PressThink, I Keep a Diary, Buzz Machine, Engadget, and Eurotrash."
Cool, new media takes over old media, but, um, not all these sites are actually blogs. This is not mere semantics. Furthermore, the paragraph is such an oversell because, obviously, signing with an agent isn't even close to the same thing as having a book deal. And of course, bloggers and other cool web folks with books is an old fucking story. Sassy Pamela Ribon of Pamie.com's Why Girls Are Weird book was released last summer. Tara Ariano of Television Without Pity has published a novel. Austin-based publishing house So New Media has already put out a handful of books from web writers including the gal who runs Zulkey.com.
We could go on, but we're going to let Radosh do his own research.
BEST VISITING POET
KEITH GRAMLING
Concerning Vincent Deperalta, the 17-year-old New Jersey kid who jumped 23 floors to his death inside the Marriot Marquis, Keith Gramling, 43, of St. Petersburg, FL, was quoted in the Dec. 8, 2003 Post: "This guy took a flying leap, but he didn't even let out a peep."
BEST DESPERATION
TED RALL STILL WANTS TO WORK WITH US
50 Most Pathetic New Yorkers: 1-50. First, Ted Rall took second honors in our 50 Most Loathsome Issue 2003, wherein we called him a "self-righteous shitheel," mocked his artistic ability and questioned his "First-Amendment puris[m]."
In response, Rall sent us a pitch for his unbelievably idiotic syndicated column (not to be confused with his unbelievably idiotic syndicated comic).
Amazed that a man so clearly hated by this newspaper's editorial body—and not just for his disgusting legal attacks on our boy Danny Hellman, but for his simpleminded politics, his shallow self-publicizing, his hairdo—would come looking for work, we teased him via email for several months, encouraging him to send rates, asking about the possibility that he might jump ship from the Voice.
But that wasn't it. In our 2003 Best of Manhattan issue, we recounted the exchange and called the comic-book Casanova a "prick who deserves derision from all political camps." Six months after that, he was described as "delusional" in our pages.
And yet, even after all these years, Ted Rall still wants to work with us. At an Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conference in June, Rall ran into one of the New York Press bigwigs and inquired about the possibility of running his column with us.
Holy fucking shit. We know that Rall reads the paper, because in his Nov. 7 blog entry he called editor-in-chief Jeff Koyen "a real piece of work," claimed we published a "screed full of lies" about our exchange and otherwise demonstrated that he simply didn't get the joke (i.e., we'd never in a million years want to run his column).
More than simple alt-weekly anachronism, Ted Rall is an asshole. How much more clearly can we put it?
BEST SUBWAY DRUG AD
ZANTREX-3
Mother's other little helper. For the longest time, we thought the ad was a parody. It had to be—there's no way it could've been the real thing. America's most powerful "diet pill," it exclaimed in bright, bold letters. It went on to promise fast weight loss, as well as loads of energy. Zantrex-3 was a "miracle drug"! The ad was pretty short on any solid medical information, but still, on and on it went, with the words "diet pill" and "miracle drug" made all the more fuzzy by the quotation marks that graced them.
We can see why they have to use the quotes, though—add up all the promises of what the drug can do for you, and it becomes obvious that Zantrex-3 was speed, plain and simple, same as all those great diet pills from the 70s (at least until they were yanked off the market).
It had to be a joke.
Then we saw the logos for Duane Reade and CVS down at the bottom. If we could still handle meth the way we could when we were in our 20s, by god we would've gotten off that train, made a beeline to the nearest drugstore and bought ourselves a carton of this shit.
BEST LOCAL "CRIMINAL"
DARIUS MCCOLLUM
Mystery train. Everyone who knows him seems to like Darius McCollum a lot. They say he's a great guy. They've written plays about him. Even the press has always treated McCollum with some degree of bemused sympathy, despite the fact that he's considered a hardened criminal with a long rap sheet.
Last June, McCollum was arrested for the twenty-first time at the LIRR's railyard in Jamaica. He had a hard hat, a set of transit keys, a reflector vest—the works. And not surprisingly, he was about to steal a train. McCollum, see, has been stealing trains since he was 15, and he's gotten pretty good at it. He could both talk the talk and walk the walk.
This time, just two months after his release from prison on similar charges, McCollum is being charged with attempted grand larceny, criminal impersonation, possession of stolen property, trespassing and possession of burglar tools.
McCollum, we're told, has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism that leads to obsessive behavior. Neither his friends nor McCollum himself doubt that if he's sent away this time, he'll just take another train as soon as he gets out.
We weren't the only paper around to (we still think wisely and correctly) urge the MTA to just give McCollum a damn job. After all, don't they want employees who love their work?
We aren't holding our breath, though. When was the last time the MTA did anything that made sense? No, we'll just watch poor Darius get sent away again, and set our stopwatches the moment he gets out.
BEST ABUSE OF
EMINENT DOMAIN
BRUCE RATNER
Atlantic Mall, part II. We have to hand it to Mr. Ratner. It was genius to distribute those flyers touting Jay-Z's part-ownership of the Nets, especially considering Prospect Heights' solidly African-American constituency. And the promise of jobs, jobs, jobs? Perfect for a neighborhood where the biggest employers are auto-body shops and bagel stores. But the coup de grace, the reason urban studies classes will speak of him for generations after he molders in a hell he'll doubtlessly try to develop (will the devil go condo?), are the underhanded dealings with the residents of 636 Pacific St.
In the past few months, Ratner has quietly paid 636 twice the market rate for their apartments. Contingent upon that is the residents signing a gag order restricting them from speaking ill against Ratner. In fact, when questioned, these residents must talk glowingly of the developer and convince their neighbors to also sell out before Ratner brings his wrecking ball a' bashing.
Suddenly, Robert Moses is no longer the city's biggest cocksucker.
This is all part of Ratner's plan to turn Prospect Heights into Jason Kidd's playground. It's a plan wrought with snafus, of course. For one, people live on uncondemned land proposed for demolition. Approximately 350 people. Second, the land is not even slated for demolition. This would require the use of eminent domain that, the last time we consulted policy, is for public projects, not private.
Who in the working-class neighborhood can afford $50 nosebleed seats? Moreover, the proposed Flatbush Ave. site is home to some of Brooklyn's heaviest congestion, not to mention a multiyear construction project building Ratner's own Atlantic Terminal project. If he wasn't so hell-bent on bringing suburban malls to Brooklyn (isn't Atlantic Center kept afloat by $1.6 million in rent from the Department of Motor Vehicles?), maybe there'd be a couple acres to build an ego-stroking arena. Sure is a hard-knock life, Bruce. We'll see you at the protest.
BEST REAL-ESTATE CATCHPHRASE
"LATERAL GROWTH"
Ends of the Earth. When they previewed the reopening of the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Times pulled out this intriguing and very useful set of words. "Lateral growth" means the development of world-class art institutions and cultural centers—as well as living options, of course—in the outer boroughs. And according to the Times it's going to be the dominant trend of the next 10 years. We agree. Manhattan is full. The only thing left to do is build a platform on top of the buildings and start a whole new street level like in Spider-Man 2099.
But Brooklyn isn't going to be the new Manhattan. It's going to be something entirely different, more akin to what it was before the boroughs merged, when we were all independent cities in competition with each other. In other words: Buy in East New York now.
BEST DEATH OF
BLOGGING
JAMESWOLCOTT.COM
At least it's not as bad as his novel. Want proof that blogs are a threat to big media? Check out JamesWolcott.com, where the Vanity Fair blowhard is allowed to bloviate all over the internet. This must be some kind of corporate plot to make blogging seem even more petty and irrelevant than it already is. Consider this deep thought from Wolcott, posted at the end of the Republican National Convention:
Now that the invaders have vacated, New Yorkers and normal visitors are free to move about the city and resume the life we led before the occupation.
Dear, dear, how pithy! Never mind that we heard that same comment from every tweedy creep on the Upper East Side. It's much more meaningful when it's presented as a crisply updated musing on the internet.
Wolcott's blog also allows him to gush about cable networks showing old Joan Crawford movies, in addition to letting us know that he recently had brunch with Elvis Mitchell. Don't expect to read anything about him leaving his immediate neighborhood, though. Wolcott would never risk running into the vast majority who don't know or care that he exists.
BEST PROOF
OF INTENT
DONNA GETS HER BLACK EYE
And she couldn't be more proud. In our June 30 issue, Donna Larsen
described her desire to be given a black eye by a man with whom she's having a sadomasochistic affair.
Some of you doubted the story's veracity. This is for you.
BEST LOCAL CRIME
DOUGLAS STIFF
Gutter ball. As always, there was no shortage of big, high-profile crimes in the city this past year. That plastic surgeon who killed the banker and sank her in cement was a lively one. So was that Juilliard student, and the Tiger Man in Harlem. We were awfully fond of that paranoid drunk-driving judge who accused the arresting officers of being racist, and wanted a painting of herself sitting at the station submitted as evidence.
There were shootings, stabbings, kidnappings, robberies, rapes—most anything you can imagine (and a few you wouldn't want to). But our favorite, thinking back on all of them, was the case of Douglas Stiff of East New York.
The name probably doesn't ring a bell, and to be honest, the 69-year-old Brooklyn resident never got that much press. But his story has stuck with us since last March, when Stiff picked up the phone and called 911 to report a robbery. Then he went out to his balcony to watch for the responding officers.
When the three officers arrived in the building's courtyard, they paused a moment to discuss something. That's when the 14-pound bowling ball landed just a few feet away from them. Glancing up, they saw that it had been dropped from the 17th floor.
They charged upstairs, busted through the door and found Stiff with a pair of binoculars around his neck, another bowling ball out on the balcony and a nervous "who me?" smile on his face.
BEST SANITY HEARING
DANIEL RAKOWITZ
All I wanted was a Pepsi. By their very nature, sanity hearings are loaded with great comic potential. Rarely is that potential fulfilled the way it was throughout the Daniel Rakowitz hearing early this summer.
Rakowitz, or "The Butcher of Tompkins Sq.," as if we need to remind you, was accused of killing his girlfriend, dancer Monika Beerle, in 1989, dismembering her corpse, cooking her up in a stew and feeding her to the homeless in the park. In 1991 he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and shipped off to the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, a maximum-security institution on Wards Island.
Thirteen years later, he's a lot fatter but no less entertaining. The tabloids couldn't toss out the "soup-to-nuts" jokes fast enough, and the parade of witnesses, both pro and con, were full of delightful tidbits:
—At Kirby, we were told, Daniel is fond of hosting pizza parties and often orders in sub sandwiches. (Our question is, who in the hell delivers to an asylum for the criminally insane?)
—His former roommate reports being really ticked off the afternoon of the murder to come home and find a bunch of fingers in his good Tupperware container.
—Rakowitz keeps a collection of true-crime books in his cell, and threatened to eat staff members on at least a few occasions over the years.
—And Daniel himself, once he took the stand, insisted that not only was he completely sane, he was also innocent of the murder. No, he said, a bunch of his friends killed her while he was out taking a walk. They killed her and they chopped her up. All he did was clean the bones. And despite rumors to the contrary, there never was any human stew. He may have fed the homeless regularly, but he never gave them stew, human or otherwise. That story was started by a crazy homeless guy with a chip on his shoulder.
When he was finished explaining everything, he said, in essence, "There you have it. Can I go home now?"
Yeah, the laughs never stopped coming those couple weeks. And in the end, the jury decided that maybe Rakowitz shouldn't be freed quite yet, but he could be transferred to a lower-security institution where he'd be able to move around more freely.
Which leaves us wondering if maybe the members of the jury will be having sanity hearings of their own one day.
BEST "FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, PLEASE LET ME GO BLIND" MOMENT
COVER OF VOICE CHOICES, AUG. 11
Senior-citizen riot. Okay, so Kim Gordon was never really all that. If anything, her sex-kitten shtick over the years worked not to make us hard so much as uptight. Closer to the slit-skirt-and-slate-face mien of, say, Wendy O. Williams—prickly, cold, far from pretty. All of which was apropos of her art and just great we might add.
Big ups then to Gordon and the Voice for making us even more uptight with their "Voice Choices" cover in August. For those who missed it, the photo featured Gordon laying half-supine in the grass across hubby Thurston Moore's legs. In the shot, old Thurston dons a pair of fabutard sunglasses and Kim does her usual pout. As it's no doubt intended, our eye is drawn not to her face, but to the improbably wide gap in the back of her mini-skirt where the fabric has been tufted into a revealing fold.
And what confronts us there? Kim Gordon's wrinkly, withered, 51-year old-anus. Yum!
Sonic Youth have been working variations on this esthetic for years, but where it was once edgy and mildly titillating, it's now just depressing. More evidence that the band, like the weekly, is a decaying institution so much in love with itself as to be unaware of its own embarrassment.
BEST VOICE COVER
THAT ONE WITH PRESIDENT BUSH
A chimp? Holy crap, Ms. Conaway, that's some subversive stuff! Since Oct. 15, 2003, President Bush has been on the cover of the Village Voice at least 10 times. That's once every five issues. Apparently, the Voice's art directors and editors ran out of possible subjects. Which we can understand—there's not much going on in New York City, after all.
The political equivalent of Maxim putting a b-list tv starlet—and her overflowing tits—on its cover month after month, the Voice's Bush fixation is cheap pandering to that lamest of local pastimes: weekend-warrior Bush-bashing. Do the Voice editors really have so little faith in their audience that they dare not go "off-point" for more than a month? In the lowest moment of the year, they even found a way to feature Bush on the cover of their Sept. 15 "Fall Arts Preview."
Who knows? Maybe their readers really do chuckle smugly when they see Bush drawn as a monkey for the millionth time, or portrayed as an avenging angel, or placed atop a bomb Strangelove-style. We think it's mawkish and dull, but surely you don't become "the nation's largest weekly newspaper" by being predictable and lazy.
Right?
BEST JOURNALIST NAME
JUSTIN ROCKET SILVERMAN
You asshole. Bylines are curious oddities among journalists. They should be straightforward: first name, last name. But they're not. Scribes, perhaps inspired by E. M. Forster and Hunter S. Thompson, love to complicate things by throwing in first or middle initials, adding numbers or apostrophes or chopping off unneeded syllables. One journalist for the Times we're told even stuck a "von" in his name, apparently to give his byline the sound of Dutch royalty. Another famously added the number "8."
Our favorite, by far, is amNewYork's Justin Rocket Silverman. We're not sure if "Rocket" is his real middle name or not. No matter—he should be given half-off malts at Johnny Rockets for having the balls to go through life with this byline. Our guess is that he's dying to be noticed, a writer in love with himself as much as he's in love with his byline. Or maybe he just really loves rockets.
If it's not his real name, by the way, he should be shot. Not out of a rocket, but by a large-caliber handgun.
BEST EXAMPLE OF A PUNDIT BECOMING PARANOID DELUSIONAL
DICK MORRIS
Paging Pfizer. The former Clinton adviser/toe-sucking hooker connoisseur now writes a weekly column for the Post while regularly dispensing his unique brand of off-the-mark analysis and wildly inaccurate predictions in a series of books and on Fox News.
In between all that, Morris has cultivated what appears to be a manic obsession with a certain former First Lady and junior senator from New York, mentioning Hillary's supposed presidential aspirations in just about every column, and imagining her at the center of every American political development of the past five years—even if his theories contradict each other from week to week.
After Morris spent nearly all of 2003 first predicting a Hillary run for president in 2004, and then calling Wesley Clark her "stalking horse" for a few months after that, Morris moved on to other conspiracies. A few gems from the last year:
12/10/03: Al Gore backs Howard Dean for president. Morris says it's to position himself against Hillary for 2008, in the first salvo of a Gore-Clinton "war within the party."
12/17/03: Just seven days later, Morris reverses field and predicts that Dean will instead name Hillary as his running mate.
1/21/04: After Dean loses the Iowa caucus to John Kerry, Morris says his candidacy was "assassinated" by Bill and Hillary.
2/4/04: Morris predicts that Kerry will name Hillary as his running mate.
6/3/04: Morris writes that, obviously, the release of Bill Clinton's book was timed to screw Kerry and throw the election to Bush so Hillary can run in 2008.
7/1/04: Matt Drudge quotes a "top DC insider" as saying that "all signs point to" Hillary as Kerry's VP pick.
7/21/04: Morris spins Hillary's initial omission from the DNC speakers' roster as the beginnings of another "full-fledged feud" within the party, this time with Kerry, Edwards and the Kennedys on one side and the Clintons on the other.
9/9/04: Morris speculates that James Carville and Paul Begala, recently retained by the Kerry campaign, are in fact spies hired by the Clintons to sabotage the election and clear 2008 for Hillary.
You get the idea. And after all this, Morris wrote an anti-Hillary book, Rewriting History, earlier this year. The book jacket contained this blurb:
"Now, for the first time, Fox News political analyst and former Clinton adviser Dick Morris turns his sharp-eyed gaze on Hillary, the longtime First Lady, current New York senator, and bestselling author."
For the "first time"?
BEST EDITORIAL CARTOONIST WITH HIS HEAD UP HIS ASS
BILL SCHORR
Art by Steve Brodner, as published on the cover of New York Press, Aug., 25, 2004:
Comic by Bill Schorr, as published in amNew York, Sept. 10, 2004:
We're certainly not suggesting theft, but we would urge Schorr to keep abreast of his peers' work. Steve Brodner, after all, is hardly a lightweight in the industry.
BEST NEW KRISHNAS
POLITICAL CANVASSERS
We prefer the old krishnas. Last year it was those fresh-faced kids in the yellow t-shirts carrying the clipboards. Out of nowhere, they began appearing on sidewalks around the city two or three days a week, stopping people and asking, "Do you have a minute to talk about Greenpeace?" Thing was, they roamed in loosely knit packs, three or four of them stretched out down a block. Even before you finished dodging the first one, you had to start preparing to dodge the second. It was horrible.
Suddenly this past spring, the t-shirts were red white and blue instead of yellow. The clipboards are still there, as are the fresh faces. And they still gather three or four to the block, making it impossible to avoid some sort of contact.
Instead of asking if you want to talk about Greenpeace, they ask, "Want to help us get Bush out of office?"
What, you mean, like um…voting? Or do they have some other clever scheme in mind?
We have nothing against the idea of getting Bush out of office, however it's done. We had nothing against Greenpeace, either. What we do have something against, however, are these apple-cheeked, dead-eyed cultists of whatever stripe getting in our fucking way every 20 feet when we're just trying to get the hell home.
BEST NEWSMAGAZINE SCREW-UP
THE DEATH OF RONALD REAGAN
The great duplicators. Back in early June, the country paused to forgive and forget the numerous crimes of Ronald Reagan. Most celebrities, especially former presidents, get a pass when they die, and because they're dead, the mistakes and missteps of their lives are quietly transformed into a muted, nostalgic glow of approval. Even once-fierce political opponents overlook the years of struggle and strife.
The golden age of hardcore punk taught us many things, including the simple notion that Reagan was not a good guy. Sure, he was a kindly, old, soft-spoken grandpa-type. He told some funny jokes. He certainly was responsible for a sea change in the Republican party. But this friendly grandfather was the man who presided over the Iran-Contra scandal, oversaw insane federal deficits and lied about liberating Jews in concentration camps.
We got our latest look at how lockstep and sycophantic media really are when Time and Newsweek, competitors in the weekly newsmagazine game, put the same glowing photo of Reagan on their respective covers, a 1976 headshot of smiling Ronnie in a cowboy hat taken by photographer Michael Evans for an equestrian magazine.
And thus the dearth of ideas in the nation's newsrooms, the bland reporting and non-analysis and the overall uselessness of the once-great lions of the news world became apparent for about the 125th time this year.
Maybe it has something to do with the media's desire to make things uncomplicated and to boil complicated public figures like Reagan into easy-to-digest icons. The editors must have thought it summed up the old boy, or the way we think of him now. Time even juiced up the photo to make Reagan's cheek rosier, just to drive the point home. (Remember the blackening of O.J. in 1994?)
This boner didn't make waves, even in this culture where we have newsmagazines reporting solely on the reporting of newsmagazines. After all, these two magazines had done the same thing weeks earlier with identical photos of Saddam Hussein.
BEST ANTICAPITALIST TECHIES
MAY FIRST TECHNOLOGY COLLECTIVE
212-894-3386, mayfirst.org
If this is communism, color us red. Four-day work weeks. Three weeks paid vacation. Ten holidays (including May Day) and six sick days. Health insurance—including dental. The five members of May First Technology Collective think social change should start in the workplace, and have crafted their work lives to reflect their hopes of what a healthier world could resemble. Back in April, they changed their name, originally MediaJumpstart, to better convey the goals of a "non-hierarchical, healthy workplace with full benefits, sufficient time-off and a work environment of mutual support." To that end, the group has twice-weekly meetings and a monthly retreat, which they say ensures they remain tight-knit, and facilitates collective decision-making.
The group started back in 1999 with three friends who were disenchanted with the world of nonprofits. "Accidental techies," they were providing tech support in their workplaces, but not because it was their job—simply, no one else could. So MediaJumpstart formed as techie contractors for nonprofits. People hire them for website design, database building and technology planning, and May First helps organizations buy computers and will train them on software. They also host listservs and websites and provide blast-fax tools that are useful for media campaigns. As they've grown and the collective has changed, they're working to maximize the time spent supporting NYC social justice organizations.
Sometimes May First uses its own tools to initiate a campaign. A little over a year ago, in conjunction with other groups, May First decided to try to get Dell to stop using prison labor. Among other things, they set up a website from which people could fax letters to the company. While Dell did indeed desist, it insisted the cause was consumer complaints, not "special interests." Hogwash. May First's campaign centered on setting up the fax blast so that consumers could tell Dell where they worked and how many Dells their office used. And we assume, threaten to switch over to those awful Macs.
BEST T-SHIRT IN A STOREFRONT WINDOW
Sign of the times. It's rare for the seasoned New Yorker to get startled passing the t-shirts in Times Square or Chinatown. The "Jesus is My Homeboy" t-shirts—which portray a glassy-eyed, grinning messiah flashing a thumbs-up, à la Lynndie England—might trigger cries of blasphemy in Kansas, but it elicits nothing greater than a yawn here. "Pigfucking Moronic Inbred Losers For Bush"? We've heard the president called worse at our daughter's kindergarten. The vulgar and sexually explicit t-shirts—the ones that include all the words that begin with "p" and "c" and "f" and freely describe the lewdest of sexual acts? Most of us have watched HBO.
But we're confident that even the most jaded New Yorker will do a double take when they pass E. Rossi & Co. on the corner of Grand St. and Mulberry St. in Little Italy.
Most of the shirts at E. Rossi & Co. are fairly innocuous. There are the "Pray For Me, My Wife Is Italian" t-shirts, the "Everyone Loves an Italian Girl" shirts, the "Not Only Am I Perfect—I'm Italian" t-shirts. But one shirt stands out above all others:
Benito Mussolini, selling for $12.98.
Surrounded by two Italian flags, il Duce is portrayed in an heroic profile, and one can buy it in small, medium, large, extra-large and even extra-extra-large.
And although Primo Levi, Oriana Fallaci and everyone else who fought and suffered under the father of Fascism—and inspiration for Hitler—might not find anything amusing in putting this dictator's image on a t-shirt, the guys who run E. Rossi & Co. seem untroubled. The Mussolini shirt—they say—does brisk business.
For some reason il Duce just doesn't get the same kind of vitriolic reaction as his partners in crime—Hitler or Tojo. We'd suggest it's due to Mussolini being so toothless and stunningly incompetent in his imperial designs. When Hitler announced his intentions to take over the world—he meant business. He killed anyone and everyone who got in his way. Mussolini, on the other hand, couldn't seem to do anything right. When he invaded Ethiopia, his tanks fell apart. When he tried to conquer Greece, his army got into such desperate trouble that Hitler had to bail him out.
Mussolini is, in fact, undergoing something of a rehabilitation in Italy. His granddaughter sits in Italian Parliament and Silvio Berlusconi (the Italian Prime Minister) has tried to distance il Duce from his Germanic counterpart. ("Mussolini didn't kill anyone," Berlusconi told the Spectator—as boneheaded and untrue a statement as has ever been uttered by a head of state.)
We're fairly confident that if Hitler's portrait were emblazoned on a t-shirt the Anti-Defamation League would show up in full force and picket the offending store until the shirt was removed. But so far the ADL hasn't shown up at E. Rossi & Co. If you're looking to truly shock your friends, get your Benito garb before they get wind of it.
BEST ANNOYING
NEW LIT TREND
ASSISTANT LIT
Does anybody out there really care? First there was The Devil Wears Prada, the thinly veiled account of working for Vogue's Anna Wintour that was a scandalous success. Knowing enough power-mad editorial types, we've no doubt that Wintour is a stupendous cunt, so our problem with this Assistant-Tells-All micro-genre isn't the dishing, but its supposition of a blameless protagonist. In Prada, the assistant is cast as angel, a victimized and blameless piece of chum tossed overboard as breakfast for a black-hearted demon.
Hollywood's contribution to the fad, The Second Assistant, was no better. Like Prada, it features a signature coffee scene in which the heroine is sent to Starbucks with an impossible number of orders, given no decent amount of time to return, then expected to carry the mail out while juggling the lattes and cappuccinos. Whether it be the counterperson at Starbucks or the doorman at Conde Nast, there's always one sympathetic working-class figure who knows just how terrible our assistant really has it, and is ready with a kind word.
On the other hand, the lesser-known How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, by former New York Press columnist Toby Young, is balanced. Not only is the writing superior, but Young reveals himself to be riddled with flaws, lacking a moral center and, well, an annoying man. As Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter finally tells him: "You're like a British guy from New Jersey!" Perhaps it's because Young has little to prove that his tell-all was far more believable, and entertaining.
We know a lot of assistants and interns, and not just in publishing. The music, film and art worlds are filled with toadying little creeps just waiting to stab their superiors, their inferiors—even their best-buddy peers—square in the back as soon as they see their chance for a mention on Gawker. We also know a lot of bosses, and they're monsters with egos the size of Oprah's ass, circa 1985. Just know that the up-and-comers are no saints. They want nothing more than to become the monsters, and with the stink of "book deal" in the bloodied water, the feeding frenzy is likely to get worse.
Watch your backs, managers. Your worst enemy is the smiling ass-kisser sitting across the desk from you. He hates your guts, and he's taking notes.
BEST NEWSSTAND
INK, INC.
66 Ave. A (betw. 4th & 5th Sts.)
These guys deliver. The city's many newsstands look so promising, with windows wallpapered with magazine covers and dailies piled knee-high around the front door. Maybe there's even a few stale London papers mixed in for good measure. But upon closer inspection, street corner after street corner, it's the same selection of the same boring magazines and newspapers. And they never have what you're looking for.
You'd think that, Manhattan being the media capital of the world, there would be more spots to cater to the discerning print media wonk. But Ink, an unassuming storefront on Ave. A, is one of the few we've found.
It's a cluttered shop, with all available floor and wall space piled and lined with magazines and newspapers of every conceivable stripe. The foreign and domestic titles run the gamut from Provincetown Arts to Les Inrockuptibles to magazines about kayaking and Hillary Duff teen-zines. There is also a prominently placed and comprehensive selection of pornography, from Club International to Swank to High Society, sitting next to high-brow reads like Harper's and the London Review of Books.
Loosely and somewhat incoherently divided into different sections, back issues (going back months) sit underneath current issues. This allows you to pop down after you've missed Ken Auletta's in-depth skewering of the Fox News Channel or some celebrity's suicidal interview with an expensive and stupid Brit fashion-as-art rag.
Plus, there's that nice selection of English chocolate and a friendly and non-judgmental staff who won't look twice when you stop in for a Lion bar, last month's Barely Legal and the new Maximum Rocknroll.
BEST FUNNY PAGES
POST'S CRIME BLOTTER
Cop 'n' attitude. When we want a giggle, we turn to neither Andy Capp's shenanigans nor Hagar the Horrible's foibles. Instead, we plunk down a quarter and grab a copy of the Post. Sure, its "Kerry's Choice" headline anointing Dick Gephardt the next vice president was good for a few laughs, but for constant mirth (cut with murder) we flip to the Daily Blotter.
The Post excels at unearthing fellow New Yorkers at their most boneheaded, brutal and unintentionally hilarious. If it weren't for Rupert Murdoch, we would never read about Fort Greene's Derick Simmons, who admitted to beating his girlfriend with a frying pan because he was too tired to have sex. Or an unnamed wheelchair-bound man who stabbed his would-be assailant, letting him bleed to death while he "escaped in his wheelchair." How about Kevin Brooks and Jay Keppel, who beat one another with hammers and pocketknives after a dispute over a length of rope. Of course, it's hard to overlook Edward Kacsur, a Staten Island man who, while impersonating a police lieutenant, tried driving over two men. When that failed, he exited his car and calmly slapped an intended victim across the face.
Yup, it's this matter-of-fact mayhem that turns our frowns upside-down. It's a sight more than we can say about Family Circus.
BEST GRAMMAR SNAFU
Does he now? Providing new insight into the job hazards of the mayoral office, the Astoria Times Ledger, on August 5, 2004, reported:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who called the present Penn Station "a dreary, subterranean failure," serves more than 600,000 people daily and long ago had run out of space.
BEST "CRIME" THAT GOT WAY TOO MUCH PRESS
THE SHOOTING OF MONICA MEADOWS
But she's so pretty! Dozens of people are gunned down in the streets, on the subways and in their homes in this city every week, but most of them receive no more publicity than a couple lines in a police blotter. They're poor, after all, the thinking seems to go, and were probably involved in criminal activity themselves.
But when a pretty white "aspiring actress and model" gets grazed slightly on the shoulder by a stray bullet, look out!
The W train carrying Monica Meadows was pulling into the Times Square station on the afternoon of June 2 when the gun went off. As everyone in the car began to panic, Meadows noticed that she'd been "wounded." From the way the tabloids reacted, you'd've thought the Pope had been cornholed on live tv.
The Post was especially shameless (even for them), trumpeting this poor woman's tragic ordeal, her long, painful road to recovery (yeah, yanking that Band-Aid off must've really smarted!). Did a crazed gunman just start shooting up the subway train for no reason? Was it an insane, obsessed stalker targeting the beautiful young Meadows specifically? Why did no one see the gunman?
For more than a month it went on. The investigation into who could've shot such a lovely innocent was intense, ongoing—and fruitless. And Meadows was reportedly offered several jobs as a result of all the publicity.
Even when police investigators determined that it was no crime at all, that it was all an accident, that a gun in some guy's gym bag had gone off when the bag fell to the floor, it didn't matter. The stories kept coming—leading more than a few people to speculate publicly that the whole thing had been a publicity stunt, aimed at spicing up Meadows' struggling would-be acting career.
Well, if that's the case, it worked, at least for a while. And now, we never, ever want to hear about her or her non-tragedy ever again.
BEST UNSOLVED CRIME
THE MURDER OF MARK FISHER
The party's over, dude. Now that the notorious and daring ATM gang was finally busted (they were getting too cocky at the end), the year left us with two high-profile unsolved crimes. First, there's that Juilliard drama student, Sarah Fox, who was found strangled to death in Inwood Park last May. Wild speculations swirled around that case for a few weeks—that it was a ritual slaying, that a homeless park regular did it—but they came to nothing. When the trail went cold, the papers stopped talking about the case.
Then there's the Mark Fisher case.
Fisher, you'll remember, was the 19-year-old football player from Fairfield College in CT. He came to town last October with a few friends to have a wild ol' time in New York. Sadly for him, it turned out to be a bit more over the top than expected.
After barhopping for several hours. The group split up, some returning to CT, Fisher and a few others moving on to a house party in Brooklyn.
That's where things get sketchy. Fisher passed out on a couch sometime in the wee hours, then somehow, at some point, ended up in an SUV. Whether he was shot in the house, shot in the SUV or shot elsewhere, nobody knows. But the next morning Fisher's bullet-riddled body was found in the middle of a Brooklyn street, wrapped in a yellow blanket.
Police talked to everyone they could think of. They found out where the party had been held, and rounded up everyone who had been there. But nobody was willing, or able, to tell them a thing. Go figure.
It seems the cops know everything about Fisher's movements from the previous night until the body was found. The only thing they don't know is when exactly he died, and who killed him. From the looks of it, they may never know, until someone who was at that party finally cracks.
BEST GOVERNMENT AGENCY TO LOATHE
NYC TAXI & LIMOUSINE COMMISSION
Don't forget to tip big. In the days following the latest taxi fare increase, we spoke with a lot of drivers. We learned—surprise, surprise—that they were actually earning less money than before the bump. After the TLC raised the fares, some taxi owners in turn raised the rental prices for drivers. The end result is higher fares that annoy riders who tip less.
When the MTA raised prices, at least they claimed that some of the additional funds would go to their employees. When the TLC raises fares, the owners benefit.
What's actually happened is, we're walking more. Mayor Bloomberg banned smoking to make us healthier; all he had to do was raise taxi prices.
BEST NEOCON HUMOR
WOLFOWITZ ON IRAQ
I just flew in from DC, and boy are my arms tired. During a 2003 trip to Baghdad, Paul Wolfowitz was asked about the insurgency against occupying troops. The Deputy Secretary of Defense then informed a press conference with a straight face that the "main problem was that there were too many foreigners in Iraq."
Not one reporter in the room burst out laughing.
BEST LOCAL WAR PROTEST COVERAGE
DOWNTOWN EXPRESS
Hoist by your own retard. Downtown Express maybe has a seven-block distribution radius. Their ignorance, however, knows no bounds. Their March 26, 2004 issue featured a particularly memorable article by activist Keith Crandell covering a recent war protest. "What warmed my heart and even brought momentary tears to my eyes," he gushed, "was the recognition of the variety and intensity of the demonstrators." Crandell honors that diversity by quoting placards with uplifting messages such as "Re-Defeat Bush," "Send Chickenhawks Bush & Cheney to Iraq, Bring the Troops Home" and "Mission Accomplished: $$ For Halliburton!"
However, the real mindset of the protestors—and Crandell—was revealed by the accompanying photo by Ramin Talaie. The Express editors chose a picture featuring a sign declaring, "Saddam Only Killed His Own People—It Was None Of Our Business!" That placard, of course, is made by the conservative group Protest Warriors, a pro-Republican group that waves idiotic slogans for their own purposes.
BEST NEW
CATCHPHRASE
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Don't tell Saddam. Not since "bitch-ass" has a phrase captured the heart of the nation and gripped it firmly in its cold, cold hands until it's gasping for air and reviving childhood visions of nuclear holocaust. Try to get past the overkill and recollect the power of such a perfect quartet: Weapons. Of. Mass. Destruction.
Which is why we employ it all the time:
"That chick was a weapon of mass destruction. Gotta tap that shit."
Or, "Fuck you, bitch. Gonna go weapon of mass destruction on your ass."
Or, "You think your boyfriend's a jerk? At Thanksgiving, mine got drunk and totally acted like a weapon of mass destruction in front of my parents."
BEST ENCROACHMENT OF FASCISM
NYPD HERCULES TEAMS
Can you guys rescue kitties, too? Body-armored police with assault rifles patrol the city, hang around street corners, landmarks and the headquarters of multinational corporations. It makes sense—if New York City circa 2004 had shaped up like some 80s cyberpunk author's fever dream filled with predatory street gangs, killer cyborgs and disgruntled replicants.
As it is, there's barely been a credible terror threat, let alone an actual attack, and crime is allegedly at an all-time low. Why's the city slowly starting to resemble an armed camp in any one of the various countries U.S. forces occupy? Aren't the feds pumping billions into the military and intelligence budgets so that the kind of terror attack that would require immediate intervention by elite paramilitary units doesn't make it to American soil? Who exactly are they trying to cow with these stormtrooper squads? And finally, is there any precedence of scaling back law-enforcement measures once they're deemed unnecessary?
Militarizing the civilian police force was a bad idea, and it's starting to smack of third-world countries, where the guys with machine guns are meant to separate the rich from the poor. Yes, we understand the concept of security, we understand the concept of law and order, but there's also a queasy sense that tax money is being used to safeguard the new aristocracy: our corporate masters. If and when the bottom falls out of the economy—again, but worse this time—and the skyrocketing national debt runs the federal government into the ground, the haves are going to want to make sure the have-nots know what's up.
BEST SUGGESTION
FOR THE NYPD
HERCULES TEAM
BETTER UNIFORMS
A lockstep color palette. If we're going to be oppressed by a militarized police force, can we at least get them dressed up to New York standards? With all the improvements made to our local NYPD—from Dune-like non-lethal weapons to fancy trucks that can supposedly sniff out nukes like a French pig on the hunt for truffles—can't we get some matching black-on-black body armor and helmets for the assault-rifle-toting platform police?
Ask the Nazis: Uniforms work. One look at a bad-ass, dapper military cop, and every boy will want to be the first on his block to carry a semi-automatic weapon capable of rapidly pumping 5.56mm rounds into terrorists, anarchists and suspicious non-Caucasians.
Think of the children! They must know that if you're not cop, you're one of the little people, and who wants that?
BEST PARK TO
WATCH COPS BREAK THE SPEED LIMIT
PROSPECT PARK
Parks are for bikes. As legend has it, when Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed Prospect Park, they looked to correct their Central Park snafus. They added gentle strokes like untouched forests, rolling meadows and, unbeknownst to them, the NYPD's International Brooklyn Speedway.
From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. (as well as all weekend), the 3.5-mile road ringing Prospect Park is supposed to be the province of bikers, runners and erstwhile health nuts—like us, as unlikely as that sounds. During the last several years, we've become quite the bike freak. W