Amy's Robot

The weirdest story in the news is the unfolding drama of Dr. Bruce Ivins, the government scientist suspected of being behind the anthrax letters of 2001. The FBI's investigation for the last 7 years has mostly been a mess, and they still haven't released real evidence that links Dr. Ivins with the anthrax letters.

Ivins killed himself last week with an overdose of Tylenol with codeine, which is a really bizarre way for a scientist who deal with deadly chemicals all the time to opt to poison himself. It's a really slow, painful death, taking days to destroy your liver.

The case has already generated lots of negative publicity for every organization that Ivins had a connection to. Without any real evidence to point to, the media is reporting random bits of information about him that have nothing to do with the anthrax case. Among them:

• The Red Cross. Ivins was a volunteer with his local chapter, and the AP photo of him above has been all over the news for a couple of days now. Is there ever good press about the Red Cross? I don't think there is.
• Kappa Kappa Gamma. Ivins was allegedly obsessed with the sorority after dating a Kappa in college, and visited houses around the country in the 70's and 80's. The anthrax letters may have been posted from a mailbox near the Kappa office at Princeton. Of course, this has nothing to do with anything, and reports about Ivins' interest in Kappa seem to have been leaked by the FBI to make him look suspicious and creepy in a way that is not at all connected to anthrax.
• Tame-sounding porn. Ivins also rented a post office box, where he got pictures of blindfolded women mailed to him. Again, who cares.

And how about the details of the FBI's investigation? They interrogated his two kids using highly suspect methods. In the Times: "They had even coercively questioned his adopted children, Andrew and Amanda, now both 24, with the authorities telling his son that he might be able to collect the $2.5 million reward for solving the case and buy a sports car, and showing his daughter gruesome photographs of victims of the anthrax letters and telling her, 'Your father did this,' according to the account Dr. Ivins gave a close friend."

The FBI also searched his house last fall, and "bureau surveillance vehicles openly followed the scientist for about a year." He was escorted out of his lab last year, which a colleague said was "so humiliating. It's hard to believe."

Dr. Ivins was reportedly suicidal for the last month and was hospitalized for 2 weeks in July, claiming that the FBI was going to arrest him for 5 murders. Which, of course, they would have done, if they had gotten credible evidence against him. The FBI had already admitted botching their misguided 2002 investigation against another scientist in Ivins' facility, Dr. Steven Hatfill, who just got a $4 million settlement.

So he ended up killing himself. Ivins' suicide is probably going to become a part of the FBI's case against him, but look: I've seen The Long Goodbye. Just because a suspect kills himself doesn't mean he did it. In a way, his suicide is going to let the FBI off the hook for a sloppy investigation that never found convincing evidence of Ivins' guilt.

But if he actually did do it (and there's some evidence, mostly circumstantial), the best motivation for mailing those anthrax letters that I've seen is that he wanted to focus attention on the threat of biological warfare. In the Times' article from the weekend: "To some anthrax experts, while reserving judgment on Dr. Ivins’s case, his identification as a suspect fit a pattern they had suspected might explain the crime: an insider wanting to draw attention to biodefense." He also held patents for anthrax vaccines.

Pretty ironic that the US's only deadly biological attack ever might have come from one of our own government employees, who had been honored for exceptional civilian service in 2003 for his work in anthrax.

The Times has a lot of especially good stuff today:

• A response from Rep. Charles Rangel about his 4 rent-stabilized apartments in a luxury building, which the Times exposed this morning. He fails to explain why he gets to have all 4 when one is the legal limit, and pretty much just comes right out and says that Harlem should be glad he still lives there.
• A piece on the Bronx Zoo visitors trapped in a broken-down tram, and their newfound sympathy for the animals they were there to see: "I can understand what animals feel,” one woman said. "You have no say in what happens to you. You lose all control."
• Amazingly in-depth piece on wooden roller coasters in Pennsylvania, which have a "different psychology of fear" than steel ones. (I agree--they're scarier.)
• Positive comments from New Yorkers about the city's plan to use two lanes of Broadway between Times Square and 34 St as a pedestrian park. Opening in August!
• New debate over who wrote the Serenity Prayer--a Protestant theologian? Aristotle? St. Francis?
• Obama gets in trouble for saying Americans should learn other languages; McCain gets in trouble for saying Social Security is "a disgrace."
• A court interpreter for Spanish-speakers wrote an essay saying that many immigrant defendants don't understand the charges brought against them or their legal rights.
• A.O. Scott tries to avoid thrill-ride comparisons in his review of Journey to the Center of the Earth. He fails. But he does note that one of the coolest uses of 3-D in the movie is when Brendan Fraser spits into the sink while brushing his teeth.

The greatest guy in NYC* might be renegade drug-policy activist and stand-up comedian Randy Credico. Today's Times has a feature about him and his strategy of protesting small-time marijuana arrests. He sits on his stoop on Gay Street in the West Village, a quiet block where pot-smokers like to go, and warns people not to smoke there because the cops will likely bust them.

A pretty harmless campaign, and as Mr. Credico puts it, "Listen, I don’t want people committing crimes on my street and I tell them not to." But he also spent a night in the Tombs a few weeks ago after yelling at officers and telling them "that that they should be 'solving murders,' not making marijuana arrests."

He may claim that his warnings to pot smokers are just a crime-fighting strategy, but Credico is a much cooler and stranger guy that. He's the same one who randomly offered Shawn Kovell $25,000 for bail when she was arrested along with "preppy killer" Robert Chambers--one of my favorite stories from last year. She ended up turning down his offer for unclear reasons (she said she would have preferred rent money), but Credico's generosity seemed to stem from his desire to decriminalize drugs and get people in trouble like Shawn Kovell out of jail and into treatment.

Turns out the Times has been covering Credico's one-man crusade for some time now. Three years ago, they did another profile of him, which reveals the origins of his activism: trying to quit cocaine and happening to hear about the large number of black and Latino people in prison due to New York state's Rockefeller laws:

When he's not on the comedy circuit, he works at the Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, a legal aid service that fights the racially-based structure of our drug laws, and also hangs outside 100 Centre St taking pictures of judges in drug cases and undercover cops bringing in drug arrests--"Pretty easy to spot," he said. "The cops are usually white and the perps are almost always people of color." In his stand-up routine, he jokes that "Bloomberg" is Yiddish for "Giuliani".

There's also a great video of Credico in today's piece where we see him talking to cops, complaining about the drug laws, and smoking a big cigar.

*besides Christopher X. Brodeur, that is

A new service called PopTok allows users to insert video one-liners of movies into instant messages and email. Creator Illi Edry describes the inspiration for his service:

Of course, it's this mentality that led to the whole world repeating "You're so money!" and "Yeah baby!" over and over again in 1997, but I see his point. (Damn, my references are old. I just can't think of any annoying catchphrases from Iron Man.)

The service is being tested now, but they say they already have 2,000 snippets licensed from studios that you can drag into your IM conversations. Neat!

The site offers a few examples of their available clips, which are mostly famous 2-3 second bits from movies like Austin Powers, American Psycho, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Borat, Scarface, some Bugs Bunny, and a Kanye video.

I thought I'd suggest a few clips I'd like to see:

• "It places the lotion in the basket" from Silence of the Lambs
• "I think men are wonderful", Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story
• "We thought you was a toad" from O Brother, Where Art Thou?
• "Shut shut shut shut up", scary Philip Seymour Hoffman in Punch-Drunk Love
• "Is that an alcoholic beverage? Is it for me?" from the highly-quotable The Philadelphia Story
• "Don't Speak", Dianne Wiest from Bullets Over Broadway
• "You're too much trouble. Get some therapy." from Tootsie
• Anything that either Teri Garr or Bill Murray says in Tootsie. It's a one-liner goldmine.

Suggestions?

The promo above shows that MTV is trying to reintroduce music videos. And it is promoting them by poking fun at itself and its all-reality-all-the-time programming. In this ad, Pete Wentz is talking with some MTV reality girl and tells her: "Music videos still exist, and we're playing them on MTV for you."

The show is called FNMTV which I thought was a pun on "Friday Night MTV" when the show premieres, and "Fuckin' MTV" which would be kind of awesome. And maybe it is, but they also claim "F is for Feedback, N is for new."

The feedback is the most annoying, absurd aspect. And this is why MTV is not as good as it used to be, when it really showed videos. On repeat airings of the show, random viewers submit their comments, as recorded at home, and they are broadcast with the videos. So you can't even watch the damn video.

You can watch the fan videos here. Here's a fan response to Flo Rida's "In the Ayer." The fan in question says "I really really liked it." I'm glad I know that. There's lots more, all on about that level.

Watching the show with the feedback on top of the video, felt like watching pop-up videos, only worse, and without really being able to hear the song.

I feel bad, because I am completely in favor of MTV showing more videos (and not just for the summer, thanks) but this execution is ridiculous.

Wildly successful writer and loathed memoir-fabulist James Frey has been having a rough few years. One thing he can be thankful for: he's not a child molester.

Another guy named James Frey got busted over the weekend for soliciting some kids in Washington Heights. First he offered a 9 year-old boy $5 to run away with his pants half way down. That same day he allegedly punched a girl in the face for refusing to give him her underpants. Ew.

The story ends well, though. He got caught when a group of teens, led by the older brother of the kid Frey offered $5 to, circled around Frey and cornered him until the police got there. "That's my brother. I didn't want anyone to hurt him," said 14 year-old big brother Jamel Hadley.

The Post has a good picture of the resourceful group of kids who captured the evil predatory James Frey:

Sex offender James Frey was also arrested in 2005 for abuse. Here's his file in the state sex offender registry, which makes the other James Frey look like an eagle scout.

Media punching-bag James Frey has a good interview in this month's Vanity Fair. He seems like he's more or less doing OK. Janet Maslin seems to have forgiven him enough that she wrote her review of his new novel (we're all just coming right out and calling it fiction this time) Bright Shiny Morning in his old style of short, sharp sentences, which he thankfully seems to have left behind.

The Democratic primary may be over, but it looks like we're still, on some level, freaking out about having a woman or a black man as our next president.

A Boston-based artist named Yazmany Arboleda was installing an art exhibit in a gallery today called "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton / The Assassination of Barack Obama". But don't worry, says the artist--he means the character assassination of the two candidates, as perpetrated by the media.

Well, the NYPD didn't care what kind of assassination he meant, and by 9:30 this morning had papered over the title on the gallery doorway. The artist, who just hit the free publicity jackpot, says he still plans to open the show on Thursday, but it sounds like it will run for only two days.

The NY Times post on the exhibit links to two websites that show its pieces, which mostly consist of doctored campaign photos, book jackets, and print ads about each of the candidates. The exhibit looks "edgy" to the point of being stomach-turning.

In case you're interested in learning more racist and sexist jokes and references about these two people, there's a whole bunch of them at the Obama exhibit site and the Clinton exhibit site. The artist says his exhibit is a "metaphorical"critique of the media, presumably the media's sexism and racism in how it covered the candidates during primary season. Critical analysis of sexism and racism is one thing, but when your art consists exclusively of cruel, belittling material, you could end up just looking like a jerk.

But it's not the content of the show that concerned the cops, or the Times, just the title. The cops took the artist in for questioning, then released him. The Times points out that the subject of assassination has come up in many cultural works, but--you know what's coming next--"in the post-9/11 context, recent comments touching on assassination during this political season — including references by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — have hit a nerve, and have been followed by apologies."

Both candidates are protected by the Secret Service, and Obama has had Secret Service coverage for over a year, which is apparently the earliest that any candidate has been given protection.

Slate offers a few political theories today, largely about the intersection of politics and pop culture:

• First one: part of the reason Sex and the City did so well this weekend is because its main fan base, white ladies, could no longer deny that their favorite political candidate has lost the nomination. According to this theory, both Hillary Clinton's campaign and the movie (which had the highest grossing opening weekend ever for a romantic-comedy) represent a "weirdly conflicted feminism": the SATC ladies are successful and independent, but their lives revolve around status, money, and the men in their lives, while Hillary arguably got as far as she did because she's married to her own Mr. Big. So much for the feminist revolution.
• Next is another theory about Hillary: since she keeps winning primaries, especially in big states, why doesn't she have more superdelegates supporting her? Theory: the superdelegates have learned from history that a party that fights with itself through the convention will lose in November. If she were running in the free-wheeling '70's or '80's when the news was only on for a half an hour a day, she might still have a chance. As it is, the political big shots who serve as superdelegates are trying (and failing) to minimize negative press and keep their party from looking like a chaotic bunch of squabblers.
• And finally, an insinuated conspiracy theory: 90 year-old West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd was mysteriously hospitalized hours after criticizing Dick Cheney's "contempt and astounding ignorance toward his own countrymen" when Cheney made a cheap incest joke about West Virginia.

Yesterday's Times story about "flavor tripping", a newly popular recreational activity involving a magical berry that makes everything you eat taste sweet, is still at the top of the paper's most emailed list.

While the fruit, called a miracle berry, produces an effect that isn't really psychotropic or mood altering, it has a sensory effect that the article describes like it's Ecstasy for people with oral fixations--"tasting under the influence". Clearly, Times readers want that disco berry-biscuit:

Sure, they're natural, safe, legal, non-narcotic berries, but the Times sure makes them sound like really fun drugs! Expect to see a lot of these berries at Bushwick loft parties all summer, in between rounds of fire-spinning. Added bonus for party hosts: you can buy super cheap booze and it will all taste like heaven to your berry-eating guests.

Over the past six years, you may have heard about successful and deranged R&B singer R. Kelly and how he was charged with having sex with (and maybe also peeing on) a teenage girl/girls, and taping himself doing so. Finally, the judge, the lawyers, and Kelly himself all showed up at the same time, a jury was selected, and opening statements are happening today.

Even though the judge in R. Kelly's case has forbidden access to sealed documents and closed hearings, there are so many weird details about this case, including all the other instances in which R. Kelly has had sex with underage girls, that the media is still finding plenty to talk about.

The Chicago Sun-Times published a long story in 2000 about R. Kelly having sex with teenage girls, and two years later, the incriminating videotape was sent anonymously to one of the authors of that story. The paper's website has has an incredibly thorough special section dedicated to the case. Recent headlines include "R. Kelly angrily hurls basketball at reporter at rec center" and "Potential juror: R. Kelly's 'not very smart'".

They also have a blog about the case, with a recent post suggesting that Kelly's brother might testify against him with evidence that R. Kelly tried to bribe him to say it was him in the infamous video. In an earlier interview, the paper quoted Carey "Killa" Kelly as saying, "And I say to America, the criminal justice system: If you let that n***** off, he's going to do it again, trust me. I bet my life on it."

The Sun-Times has owned this story from the beginning, but the NY Times has a good background article today, too. They interview some media and culture scholars about the case, with a few interesting conclusions. One of them thinks that since 2002, we've all gotten so used to sexed-up teenagers that this dirty video case seems like less of a big deal than it might have at the time.

The Times quotes a professor of black culture at Duke, Mark Neal, who notes that since the indictment, R. Kelly has continued to write songs about having threesomes and called himself the "Pied Piper of R&B", implying that he seduces children with his music. "Either he’s absolutely demonic or stupid or crazy."

Yep, probably. Or, as R. Kelly once attempted to explain the messes he's gotten himself into: "In life, you have people that love to party. That’s me. People that love God. That’s me. People that love sex. That’s me. People that love people. That’s me. And people that make mistakes. That’s me also."

Mm-hmm. Well, he also said at the time of his indictment that "Osama bin Laden is the only one who knows exactly what I'm going through."

I think I'm going to stick with demonic, stupid, or crazy.

This ad for a new luxury high-rise in Williamsburg has been floating around the local press for a while. This week it's in the Onion. It's the most egregious rip-off of New Hampshire's aggressively libertarian state motto I've ever seen, and it definitely makes me want to withhold my tax dollars that are probably subsidizing this steel and glass hunk of hideousness.

In an attempt to discourage the Williamsburg Edge developers from taking a hard-core, no-bullshit motto like "Live Free or Die" and using it as some kind of nonsensical hyperbole to promote their latest yuppie compound, might I suggest a few other state mottos they might use instead:

Paraphrase Ohio's motto: With Trust Funds, All Things Are Possible.

Or update the New Jersey state motto: Liberty and Prosperity (thanks, Dad!)

Better yet, use the original motto of the Republic of Texas: Remember Galapagos!

It's been interesting watching the Disney reaction to the flap over Vanity Fair's tamely sexualized photograph of Disney star Miley Cyrus. Even though Miley willingly removed her shirt while posing for magazine pictures, she says she's "embarrassed" to have those pictures out there in the world for everybody on the planet to see. Who knows, maybe she reconsidered and really is embarrassed. Or maybe the producers of her show are trying (in vain) to maintain her squeaky-clean image.

Whatever change of heart Miley may or may not have had, Disney's response to the photos is totally clear: they blame Vanity Fair for exploiting their young star. Spokesperson Patti McTeague said, "A situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines."

It's like Disney is just begging for someone to track down an instance of the company using sexualized images of young girls to promote their own products.

Slate contributor Daniel Brook is happy to oblige.

Brook dug out a photograph he took a few months ago in Beijing of a billboard ad for, of all things, a Disney bra-and-panties set intended for 12 year-olds. I have discreetly covered the potentially shocking areas of the ad with an emblem of unblemished virginal intactness (though the scaffolding in front of the billboard adds a disturbing, girl-in-cage kind of aspect) but you can click on the pic for the original version.

Embarrassing!

Asked about how this ad manipulates a pre-teen girl in order to sell Mickey-themed underwear, another Disney spokesperson has been trying to rationalize. Yes, they approved the image, which was created by a Chinese licensee of their brand. And in Disney's defense, the spokesperson says that in China these kinds of images are "not unusual at all" (like they are over here...?)

This photo is from last night's premiere of Baby Mama--Tina Fey and her husband Jeff Richmond.

They met while they were both working at Second City and have been married since 2001. I would bet cash money that he is a wonderful and funny guy. Incredibly, Fey says that before she met him she "could not get a date."

But I have to hand it to Tina Fey for staying with this guy instead of doing what other celebrities who suddenly find their public value rocketing to super-fame levels would do, such as divorcing him to trade up for someone more famous like Naveen Andrews or John Stamos (or even her agent.) She's a real movie star now; in terms of media measurement of her fame, she's progressed from being on the cover of Bust to being on the covers of magazines at the checkout at Rite Aid.

How many TV/movie stars under 40 at a Tina Fey-level of fame can you think of who are married to a someone who a) you've never heard of, and b) also isn't conventionally attractive (i.e. not a former model)? Anyone?

The two long-time Hell's Kitchen residents who wheeled their dead friend to a 9th Avenue Pay-O-Matic [above] in January and tried to cash his social security check were cleared of forgery and larceny charges yesterday. There was no proof that the dead guy, Virgilio Cintron, was actually dead at the time they brought him out of the apartment, so the case was thrown out.

And so, after a brief moment in the spotlight, this reminder of what the neighborhood (and a lot of the city) was like decades ago recedes to the background. The neighborhood is increasingly made up of $15/glass wine bars and posh baby-clothes stores, but those exist right next door to the check cashing places that serve the surprisingly resilient non-yuppie segment of the Hell's Kitchen population.

During their period of fame, the two defendants, James O’Hare and David Daloia, shared a lot about their lives with the press. Back at the apartment yesterday, O'Hare said that at the time of Cintron's death, his landlord was trying to evict him. "Maybe I feel like I should have done more," he said. "I could have done more to help him with the medication. I loved the guy. I miss him."

Daloia said, "If the medical examiner couldn’t tell his time of death, and they are the professionals, then how could we?," which doesn't make much sense, considering that they were actually there with the body, tried (unsuccessfully) to pull some pants up onto him, and carried him downstairs onto the street where a crowd immediately noticed that the man in the computer chair was dead.

Daloia and O'Hare have also expressed their surprise at all the media attention. From the Daily News: "Daloia said he was still amazed by all the attention generated by their arrests. 'I thought Britney Spears took her pants down again,' he said outside court."

From Newsday: "Daloia can't understand all the fuss. 'I robbed banks that got less coverage than this.'"

The Smoking Gun totally busted the LA Times today over last week's story about the Tupac shooting that implicated Puff Daddy. Turns out the FBI documents that formed the basis of the story were fabricated.

And here's the best part: the guy who forged the FBI documents is James Sabatino (above), a known con man and rap fan who has been trying for years to, as the Smoking Gun puts it, "insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur's shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G." In the forged documents he created, Sabatino actually named himself as one of the New York hip-hop figures who lured Tupac to the site of the shooting.

I love it.

This isn't the first time Sabatino has made up connections to famous rappers. According to the Smoking Gun, he had "created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs's trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion "Suge" Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud." He's currently in federal prison for some other crime.

Wired has good coverage of the many misspellings, typos, and other inaccuracies littered all over the fake FBI documents. And the NY Times is continuously updating their story, providing lots of details about LA Times journalist Chuck Philips (Pulitzer Prize winner!) and excerpts from interviews he's given since the article came out last week in which he gushes about how exciting it was for him to get such fabulous FBI reports--"like frosting on the cake." Philips notes that he had mysteriously never heard of James Sabatino in all the paper's years of reporting on the Tupac case, but insists, "he definitely knew these guys."

The LA Times has started to investigate their gigantic screw-up.

At the time the article came out, Puffy called the allegations "beyond ridiculous", which still seems to be true.

Another great bit from the Smoking Gun piece about Sabatino's other attempts to pass himself off as a hip-hop bigshot:

Eager to join the already crowded joke-news arena, along with "The Daily Show", "Colbert", VH1's "Best Week Ever", Weekend Update on "SNL", and Fox News' "1/2 Hour News Hour", CNN Headline News is launching its own comedy show, "Not Just Another Cable News Show", a title that defines failed irony.

It's also a reference to HBO's "Not Necessarily the News", which was itself a remake of the UK sketch comedy show "Not the Nine O'Clock News", a show that featured a young Rowan Atkinson and Clive Anderson. But maybe CNN is assuming that the trend-setting 16 year-old market that watches Headline News for hours on end won't know those old shows.

"Not Just Another Cable News Show" will feature commentary by Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar, Ana Marie Cox (who recently defined her current not-as-funny journalistic role with Time.com as "the more feature-y, bloggy, scene-driven stuff"--ugh) and self-effacing, sometimes funny LA Times columnist Joel Stein.

Seth Stevenson over at Slate has done a good analysis of the new Cheetos ads that feature a newly sinister Chester the Cheetah, voiced by someone who sounds just like Peter O'Toole, urging Cheetos snackers to use their food as mischief implements.

Some of them are funny, especially the cubicle menacer one, and those shots of Chester massaging the languid flight attendant's shoulders are really hilarious.

But here's something strange: what inspired Cheetos to launch this new adult-oriented ad campaign on cable channels is that they found out, to their surprise, that 60% of Cheetos eaters are adults. They had always assumed that kids eat more Cheetos, hence the cartoony Chester character and the elementary-level design of their website.

I'm surprised it's not MORE than 60%. Frito-Lay, who makes Cheetos, apparently forgot that most of the world is made up of adults, and we love our orange snack foods, too. Kids are more likely to focus on candy in their gas station shopping trips, I think, leaving us adults to make up most of the Cheeto, Combo, and Cheez-It salty/cheesy snack market.

A partner at the ad agency that created the ads says that adults who eat Cheetos are somehow transgressive: "You're supposed to be eating arugula dip, but you have a nonconforming desire" to eat junk food. Huh? Has he looked at the size of the butts populating America lately? Eating bags of Cheetos looks pretty mainstream to me. Also, "arugula dip"? Maybe he meant artichoke dip. Either way, Frito-Lay has been missing their primary demographic all along: grown-ups wallowing in extended adolescence, stoners, and Jared Leto.

Stevenson says that the ads are memorable enough to make him more likely to buy Cheetos in the future, "next time I'm drunk and in a convenience store."

After what feels like the fastest political scandal in history, David Patterson is getting sworn in as our new governor today, and will be taking on a state government full of corruption, ineptitude, and mutual partisan loathing. Plus we're in the midst of a tempestuous budget season and a recession.

Actually, Albany is like that pretty much all the time. We've gotten so used to corrupt politics in our state that having a competent, non-combative, upstanding guy in power feels like a radical new approach to government. If Patterson can just avoid swearing at/threatening Assembly members and stay out of any federal criminal investigations, he'll probably be heralded as a success.

A couple of interesting reports on how he's dealing with his new leadership position today. The Post reports that he's getting irritated with state officials, lobbyists, and fake Barack Obama assistants all claiming that they have special access to him. Patterson has just won the political lottery, so he should get ready to hear from a lot of long-lost friends coming out of the woodwork.

The Times says that Gov. Jodi Rell of Connecticut, another surprise governor who replaced an ousted criminal, sent Patterson a care package of Pepto-Bismol, Excedrin, and a Magic 8 ball. She says she wanted to "provide him with a few laughs" by suggesting that his new job will cause him physical pain--haha!

One last thing about the Spitzer scandal: I wonder if the Times checked out any other high-level politicians in the state when they first noticed that an FBI public corruption unit was involved in the prostitution ring investigation. I wonder who else they considered as the significant public figure before figuring out it was Spitzer?

Bloomberg? Ew! Would have been a much bigger shock, also would have dispelled rumors that he's gay that I don't think are based on anything but never seem to go away.

Schumer? He loves the media (As Bob Dole said: "The most dangerous place in Washington is between Charles Schumer and a camera") and is probably smart enough about his image to not commit such a salacious and easily traceable crime. He's also been impressively restrained in his comments about Spitzer, who he's never liked.

Cuomo? He was already involved in a sex scandal in which he was the one getting screwed over, so maybe political sex scandals are a lightning strikes once kind of thing. Unless you're Bill Clinton.

As it turned out, the Times journalists couldn't have written a tidier morality play. They're so pleased with their reporting in this area that the paper did a lengthy profile of three more expensive prostitutes in yesterday's paper. That's a lot of whores for the Times.

Today the Columbia Spectator reported that the professor who found a noose on her office door last fall has been cited for plagiarism. The professor, Madonna Constantine (best name in the Ivy League), allegedly used the work of one of her colleagues and of two students without attribution.

There's no clear connection between the noose incident and the plagiarism thing, but Times readers wasted no time in slamming Prof. Constantine in a textbook example of an ad hominem argument:

Ugh. You can look at other reader comments for some really disgusting references to "lowering of standards" at elite universities and openly racist remarks about Prof. Constantine's education at a historically black university in New Orleans.

Plagiarism is a serious offense for an academic, but it has nothing to do with the noose situation, or race, or anything other than plagiarism.

Unfortunately, as soon as the allegations were made, Prof. Constantine started in with the crazy logic herself. She called the inquiry into her writings, which has been going on for a year and a half, a "witch hunt", and wrote to faculty and students:

What?! You're not helping yourself, Professor. Even if Columbia doesn't put much value in diversity in its faculty, that has nothing to do with whether or not you stole other people's work.

First, Columbia and NYPD should try harder to figure out who put the noose on her door--the investigation is still going on, apparently. Then if there is substantial evidence that the professor plagiarized others' work, she should get fired.

Ironically, Constantine's work focuses on how race influences people in educational and counseling settings.

There are loads of examples of plagiarism in academia, literature, and politics: Stephen Ambrose, Joe Biden, Martin Luther King, Jr, Mike Barnicle, Harvard undergrads.

When The Sopranos was on the air, the Sons of Italy protested its unflattering negative stereotypes of the Italian-American community--specifically, they claimed Italian characters on the show were mostly mobsters, criminals, murderers and, in their words, "low-class, dim-witted hoodlums." David Chase said the show was "about America" and wasn't meant to generalize about Italian-Americans, but the Sons of Italy stayed mad.

Now that the show's over, the Sons of Italy are protesting a cheap, unfunny rip-off of The Sopranos produced by the NY State Lottery for one of their scratch games, Ba-Da Bling. Here's the TV ad for Ba-Da Bling that caused the problem:

You'll note that some of the four ganster-type guys in the ad look almost exactly like Sopranos characters, and that they have really schlocky fake Brooklyn accents. And that the name of the scratch game is obviously taken from the strip club where the guys all hung out on the show.

Stella Grillo from the local Sons of Italy chapter says about the protest, "I know a lot of people are saying you are overly sensitive. But Americans have become more sensitive to most racial groups, and it should apply to Italian-Americans."

I don't know where she's seeing all this sensitivity--if you look at this one cruddy state-sponsored lottery ad, you'll also notice young black men with lots of jewelry, big cars, and puffy jackets rapping about money. And a group of girls in tiny hideous outfits enthusiastically shaking their asses all over everything.

If anything, I'm impressed that the lottery could reference gangsters, rappers, strippers, one of the best TV series of our time, and loud obnoxious jewelry all in one 30-second ad for a program that mostly exists to fund public education.

Almost half of the $2.3 billion that the state generates for education through the lottery every year goes to NYC schools. So you can feel good about perpetuating a whole rainbow of stereotypes for a good cause.

The Times has a great Reuters photo of Romney and friends meeting with the Bennetts of Long Beach, CA.

"Now just pretend we're not even here, Bennett family! Just act natural. And the consultants say if you can throw a 'Ronald Reagan' or two into your questions and comments, that would be great."

WARNING: Some spoilers.

Imagine you're watching TV and a rerun of "Felicity" comes on. It's an episode you haven't seen before, but it seems to be about the usual pretty but sort of bland characters going on about their realistic but sort of bland problems and interpersonal relationship dramas, and they're all hanging out and talking a lot in the nicest dorm room/loft in New York.

Then a monster attacks the city and shit starts blowing up and all the characters start running around screaming and getting eaten and otherwise horribly killed.

You'd watch that, right? You'd say, "Fuckin' yeah! This is the best damn "Felicity" episode I've ever seen!" Of course you would.

The first big movie controversy of 2008 seems to be over the J.J. Abrams-produced, cleverly marketed, and overly scrutinized Cloverfield. Specifically, is it a cool action movie in which Manhattan gets spectacularly destroyed, or is it worthless garbage with nothing intelligent to say about our contemporary consumerist culture and the effects of a 24-hour news media on how we experience real life?

This is a dumb controversy.

Manohla Dargis wrote a surprisingly out-of-touch review in which she mostly complains that Cloverfield lacks "Freudian complexity or political critique" (a phrase the Times readers are having a lot of fun tearing to shreds over at the readers' reviews.) She makes reference to September 11 (twice!) in order to demonstrate that the horrors of Cloverfield pale in comparison to the actual terrorist attacks that happened in real life. No kidding!

She usually knows how to review a movie on its own terms, and since she went into raptures of praise for the remarkably similar The Host last year, I was really surprised at her negative review. The characters in The Host were similarly broad, often caricatures, and the dialogue was no more inventive or witty. Maybe the not-so-subtle anti-pollution, anti-military message of The Host bumped it up in her estimation? Personally, I was relieved not to have any valuable city-obliteration time wasted on meaningless pseudo-science about where the monster came from, why it wants to kill us, what form of ionic gas cloud might neutralize it, blah dee blah.

In Cloverfield, all we know is there's a gigantic really scary monster out there that will totally kill you in a number of terrible and surprising ways. And sure, there were some contrived plot devices and relationship melodramas, but they're all in service of the action. Whatever it takes to get characters into interesting and scary situations in which they will almost definitely get killed, I'm all for it.

There were a few kinder reviews that judge Cloverfield on its own terms. Roger Ebert (3 stars!) notes that it sticks to its structural premise perfectly through the whole movie, and "never breaks the illusion that it is all happening as we see it."

The Boston Globe review says the movie lives up to the hype (which I don't totally agree with--the only problem I have with the movie is how out of control the endless, boring blog speculation got, but that's not really the movie's fault.) The reviewer also points out how suspenseful and agonizingly drawn out a lot of scariest parts were--there's some top-notch audience manipulation in there. David Edelstein in New York Magazine says it's shallow, sure, but still admits he was "blown sideways by it."

Meanwhile, Manohla Dargis goes on about the characters' and the movies' "incomprehensible stupidity", a claim which even for a movie like this doesn't hold much water. Just look at that shot above. It's funny and smart and somebody who knows what they're doing put it together. If you go see this movie, what you're going to get is a relatively unsentimental action movie about a big monster pounding the crap out of New York. It's a tidy 80 minutes, and for what it is, it's good.

Speaking of all the endless internet speculation about different aspects of the movie that mostly just made people sick of it before it even opened, IMDb lists all the fake working titles the movie went through: 1-18-08 (of course), Cheese, Clover, the Spanish Monstruoso, and my favorite, Slusho.

Someone over at the A.V. Club had the brilliant idea of getting Patton Oswalt to actually eat a KFC Famous Bowl™, the fast food metaphor for a world that has totally given up: "America has spoken - pile my food in a fucking bowl."

This is akin to getting TLC to go on a date with a scrub, or having Amy Winehouse spend a week in rehab.

So he wrote about it, and it's funny.

First, some photographic documentation. KFC's assertion as to what its Famous Bowl™ looks like:

Patton Oswalt's actual Famous Bowl™:

And a few descriptions of his experience eating it:

If you haven't ever seen his KFC Famous Bowl™ bit, you can watch it here:

OK, whatever, mom.

Sure, not slugging your girlfriend is probably the right thing to do, but it's such a drag!

Even teenage boys know that hitting girls is wrong and disrespectful, and illegal, but this approach makes domestic violence sound like something sort of fun and illicit, like filling up on Cheetos before dinner and blowing off Chemistry lab.

The TV ad for New York State's new domestic violence prevention ad campaign looks better.

[download ads or read scripts]

The TV ad uses the same logic as those animated anti-pot smoking ads from earlier this year in which a stoner's girlfriend gets bored with him and goes off with a cute alien. Social scare tactics--that your friends and girls will think you're lame--are probably much more effective deterrents than moralistic scolding of "eat your vegetables" or "do your homework" or "dude, that weed is gonna blow your mind".

The first picket lines for the Writers Guild of America strike went up this morning at Rockefeller Center, where about 30 writers peacefully gathered near the skating rink with signs and the giant inflatable rat. Many of the writers out there probably work for some popular shows, but of course, I have no idea who they are or what they look like.

With the exception of Tina Fey.

The strike is the result of unsuccessful negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. So how does that work when one person is a writer but also an executive producer? Wouldn't that make someone like Tina Fey both union and management? Maybe. But she's a producer who's out there on the lines with the proletariat, because she's awesome.

The Times has a good piece on the vast disparities in income among the 12,000 WGA members. Almost half of the West coast members are unemployed, while writers for shows like "Grey's Anatomy" take home $5 million a year. The WGA site has a schedule of all the picket locations in the LA area.

A few articles from yesterday's Times Fashion & Style section that seem to provide some meta-commentary on the world we live in.

First there's a piece on socialite Tinsley Mortimer's husband. His name is Topper, he's an investment advisor and a fan of Caddyshack, and he offered many spectacularly clumsy quotes that I am very grateful to the Times for choosing not to clean up at all:

As awkward as his criticism is, Topper is clearly unhappy about his wife's pointless fame. Sure, he could have married someone who wasn't such a calculating publicity-hog, but he didn't know he would end up connected to the empty, self-serving elite social scene. He later compares Tinsley unfavorably to LeAnn Rimes, who also attended an event, because at least LeAnn "didn’t make her bones going to charity parties. She did something else." Preach it, Topper!

Next we've got a "What's Next for Lance Bass?" piece about his memoir, Out of Sync (a title I bet celebrity biographers have been dying to use for most of the last decade.) He says "it was very, I don’t know, like, therapeutic" to write the book, but as much as he hopes his former bandmates will read it (especially JT, who he slams for going solo) he's not sure they will. "It’ll take them a while because none of them like to read," he said.

It must have been hard for the Times to publish so many gems in one section, but later they indulge their editorial superiority with "Your Modifier Is Dangling", a tribute to hopeless cause supporters who rage against grammatical abuse. These people have started Facebook clubs like I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar and Grammar Freaks United in which they can vent their outrage at the world.

OK, I hate it when shampoo ads say their product "structurizes" your hair as much as the next girl, but check out this advice from business writing consultant Lynne Agress about what to do when somebody you're talking to makes a grammatical error:

Yuck! Gee, I think they might pick up on your totally unsubtle correction, there. I know, "their" is wrong. But many people who have a robust appreciation of grammar use "their" as a replacement for the clunkier "his or her" when speaking, knowing it's incorrect, to avoid using sexist language. The fact is, there is no polite or non-prickish way to correct someone's grammar unless you are a teacher, or unless someone specifically asks you to edit their writing. You're just going to have to bitch to your grammar vigilante Facebook group.

It is totally understandable for most Americans who live outside the NYC metropolitan area to think of Rudy Giuliani as a strong, no-nonsense leader who takes a tough stance on fighting terror and is experienced in managing complicated governments.

People who lived in NY while he was mayor know the truth: the guy is a belligerent, obnoxious jackass.

The NY Times has compiled a history of memorable moments on Giuliani's weekly radio call-in show, which is like a microcosm of his entire political career. For New Yorkers, it serves as a reminder of why Le Tigre called him "a fucking jerk", and as a wake-up call for everybody else.

A few choice excerpts:

You know, I totally dislike this guy and think he would make a terrible President, but these old anecdotes? They're pretty funny. I read these, and I'm sort of grudgingly amazed at how outspoken and ballsy (and crass and offensive) Giuliani could be, in public, over the airwaves, to his own constituents. It's still a mystery to me how he got elected, twice, but these stories demonstrate one quality that will always appeal to many New Yorkers--the guy has no problem telling people when he thinks they're full of shit.

And now the very qualities that he had no problem sharing with the world pre-9/11 are the same ones that he's successfully (so far) toned down while campaigning in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.

But it's only a matter of time before he shows his true colors and tells some elderly, ferret-owning voter that she's sick in the head and needs to get a life.