Soggy Suits from Staten Island to the bahamas Soggy ...

As we guessed in the days immediately following the Staten Island Ferry accident, the lawsuits have been piling up fast. The injured, the uninjured, the bereaved and the merely startled are all grabbing for a piece of pie. As of last Wednesday, a total of 90 suits, seeking more than $2.2 billion, had been filed against the city.

That's why the city went to court last week, trying to put a cap on these things before it's too late. Attorneys claim that according to federal maritime law, if the city is found liable, all they'll have to pay out is $14.4 million?the reported value of the boat itself. What's more, this would essentially turn the proceedings into a class action suit. If they get their way, all the lawsuits will be handled in one fell swoop before a single judge, instead of tying up courtrooms with 90 separate cases. Also, by offering a paltry $14.4 million, the city hopes a bunch of the litigants will opt to settle out of court. (Which we figure most of these people were counting on from the beginning anyway.)

This is a case of the city scrambling to cover its own ass?and we can't really blame them this time. Only problem is that most of the litigants aren't content with merely suing the city. They're suing the captain, the co-captain, the Port Authority, that old shoeshine guy, King Neptune, anyone and everyone they can somehow connect with the events of Oct. 15.

We have the sneaking suspicion that as these suits roll on, whatever happens to them, a lot of people are going to lose, a lot of people are going to be left even more miserable than they are now, a lot of time and energy and anger and money will be cast to the four winds. And after all the dust clears, the only ones who are going to come out ahead, as usual, are the lawyers.

And speaking of questionable lawsuits, on Aug. 4, 2001, Wall Street banker Krishna Thompson was attacked by a bull shark while on vacation in the Bahamas. The shark chomped off most of Thompson's right leg. Thompson announced last week that, two and a half years after the fact, he's filing a $25 million lawsuit against, of course, the resort where he was staying at the time. (Which, we imagine, is easier than trying to sue that deadbeat shark.)

Thompson claims the resort should have warned him that he was swimming in "shark infested" waters, and that a nearby tourist trap was offering visitors a chance to hand-feed sharks.

"It's simple common sense," Thompson told Dateline in 2002. "If you start feeding a shark, you are going to teach the shark a relationship between humans and food."

Well, there, Mr. Thompson, it seems to us that sharks made the connection between humans and food a long time ago. That's why we think he should be suing Joseph Sargent instead. Sargent, the director of Jaws: The Revenge, was, after all, the man who finally convinced millions of swimmers that it really was safe to go back into the water.

Better yet, if he could find some way to blame his missing leg on the city, he'd be home free.

Porn Studies at NYU

The NYU campus was in an uproar last week, after a student there was actually denied something.

Film student Paula Carmacino, a junior, proposed a video project to her professor last October, who okay'd it. But when, just to be on the safe side, he bounced the idea off school administrators, they said "no."

Her proposed project was to be called Animal, in which she planned to contrast scenes of a couple having wild, uninhibited sex in front of a classroom with scenes of the same couple engaged in ordinary everyday activities, like reading the paper. It was intended to illustrate something about the differences between our public and private lives.

Why, there's a shocking and original idea! Clearly Ms. Carmacino had just been required to read a little Freud in one of her other classes.

Once she was told she couldn't film a couple having real sex in front of the class (a la Meaning of Life)?that she'd have to keep it within the MPAA guidelines for an R-rating?she immediately began screaming "censorship."

"This is where you unfold as a creative artist," she told the Times in what we presume were pained, haughty tones. Because obviously, being prevented from filming a hardcore scene in front of a roomful of students will hinder her artistic blossoming.

We have a few words of advice for Ms. Carmacino. First, there's nothing all that new about your idea. In fact, it's banal. Hell, we saw the same thing done on Family Guy a few years ago (with S&M gear instead of fucking)?but at least that sequence was funny.

Also, being as you're a film student, we suggest you do a little reading up on film history. Directors in the 40s and 50s, working under real censorship codes, came up with any number of very clever ways to express exactly what they wanted without getting caught. And most of the results were much more interesting and provocative than what would have resulted had they been allowed to show everything dead-on.

We should clarify that we here at New York Press have nothing against porn. Absolutely nothing at all. But we do have something against pretentious whiners with unoriginal ideas.

We admit to giving this dopey magazine more attention than it deserves lately, but by plastering their unspeakably inane cover stories at eye-level, they make themselves impossible to ignore. Last week's issue of New York's WASPiest listings rag informs ethnically challenged readers that the People of the Book?at least the reformed, media-friendly offspring of intermarriage ones?are "cool." It's one thing for the boys and girls at Time Out to recycle their own four-year-old stories, but 4000-year-old ones?

Page Two hears that circumcision is all the rage. Maybe Time Out can pony up a list of 150 superJew doctors for a fashionable snip, just in time for the holidays.

Crime Blotter Statistical Dead Heat

Last week, the city was crowing over the fact that New York's crime rate was "lower than it's been in 35 years." Ah, statistics?look at the numbers from the right angle, they'll say anything you want them to. In this case, the NYPD is being very specific. Homicides may be up slightly, but overall serious crimes?felonious assault, rape, baby-stomping and the like are down enough to balance it out.

But what about those other crimes? It seems to us that irksome crimes are way, way up?as are crimes committed by city employees. Bank robbers and tire-slashers had a banner year?as have those intrepid souls who stroll away from police custody.

Speaking of which, 41-year-old Junior McLemmon became the 26th person this year to slip out from beneath the long arm of the law. McLemmon had been arrested on Dec. 2 for carrying too much pot, but leapt from the police van and scampered away just as they were pulling into the Crown Heights stationhouse. The officers who were supposed to be keeping an eye on him, well, they're doing other things these days.

They aren't the only city employees who had a rough week. A sanitation worker named Milton Cambell was picked up on Dec. 3 after he and a Bed-Stuy neighbor got into a bit of a scuffle over who was entitled to a much-coveted parking space. He's being charged with menacing and the neighbor, we're assuming, is making the most of his newfound parking freedom.

On the night of Nov. 28, Dennis Cook, who works for the Dept. of Transportation, and his corrections officer wife Deshanda poured a few pleasant drinks while relaxing at home in Brooklyn. They then began (we're guessing) an intelligent debate about recent city council decisions. Before you can say "zoning issues," Deshanda was getting stitches in her head and neck and Dennis was cleaning up the broken glass. Both husband and wife turned themselves in to face assault charges.

Another female corrections officer, Robin Stainback, had herself a few and got in some trouble. Police stopped her on the night of Nov. 30 as she was speeding through Springfield Gardens. We can't blame her for wanting to get through the neighborhood as quickly as possible, but arresting officers felt her chances of doing so without killing anyone would be greatly improved if she weren't quite so lit.

It's not just city employees who are wreaking havoc throughout our fair town. A Sunset Park student was arrested on Dec. 2 and now faces assault charges. The identity of the mentally retarded 12-year-old has not been released, and neither has the title of the book he threw.