Politics as Usual

Politics As Usual

2008-06-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

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Daily News : February 29, 2008

2008-02-29T08:57:00.000-08:00

The Economist is becoming increasingly popular in America, taking market share from TIME and Newsweek thanks to its intelligent celebritard-free journalism.
Market Watch

Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news, according to a new survey.
Reuters

Lucky Soilders wins a million
ABC

A man who planned to walk from Bristol to India without any money has quit, after getting as far as Calais, France.
BBC

Turkey withdraws troop from Northern Iraq
New York Times

Obama has small lead in Texas, close in Ohio
Reuters

Vacationing attorney plays slot machine in Virgin Islands, hits $5.15 million jackpot. Casino manager unplugs machine, tells attorney "It's an obvious malfunction." Guess what the American attorney did next?
KSDK

A brief history on the Leap Year
Some Guy

Campaigns flush with $
New York Times

BBC changed the look of their homepage, loves it!
BBC

Fashion's New Patron's Struggle for the right fit
Wall Street Journal

Stop Stealing Your Fashion, Liquor, And Life Choices From Mobb Deep
Gawker

Olsen twins asked to pose for Playboy
The Superficial

Slates Delegate Calculator
Slate

Just for fun
New Yorker

The Guggenheim : Cai Guo-Qiang

2008-02-28T11:42:00.000-08:00

This show looks insane, horrifying and fantastic. See the links below.

Bio in brief: Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. The son of a historian and painter, Cai was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and his work has, since the outset, been scholarly and often politically charged. Having accomplished himself across a variety of media, Cai initially began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront the suppression that he felt from the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China at the time. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, Cai explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that eventually led to his experimentation with explosives on a massive scale, and the development of his signature explosion events, exemplified in his series, Projects for Extraterrestrials. These explosion projects, both wildly poetic and ambitious at their core, aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe around them.

http://www.caiguoqiang.com/
Some images from the show

Daily Show : Full Caffeine Eclipse

2008-02-28T09:58:00.001-08:00

Daily News : February 28, 2008

2008-02-28T08:43:00.000-08:00

Colette Displays Luxury Logos Made From Cocaine
NY Mag
New York Times Blog

Iran "number one power in the world' Ahmadinejad. This guy scares me.
Breibart

Civil rights leader John Lewis dropped his support for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid Wednesday in favor of Barack Obama.
AP

Exchange student says he was denied adequate food
"McCullum says he was denied sufficient food while staying with a family of Coptic Christians, who fast for more than 200 days a year, a regimen unmatched by other Christians."
Boston Globe

Bush is in denial
AP

House Democrats abruptly pulled an ethics reform proposal from consideration yesterday after widespread opposition surfaced from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle a day before a scheduled vote on the plan.

The proposal, months in the making, would create a new Office of Congressional Ethics run by a bipartisan group of six non-lawmakers with the power to review ethics complaints against members and staff, and forward them to the existing Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. The fate of the plan is now unclear, though Democrats vowed they would revisit the issue soon.
Washington Post

Bloomberg not running for President
Huffington Post

Amtrak Repairing NE Corridor Rail Ties
Boston Globe

Asked about her tax returns, Clinton said told Russert: “I will do it as others have done it: upon becoming the nominee, or even earlier, Tim, because I have been as open as I can be.”
Politico

Cuties
Daily Mail UK

18 Best Real Estate sites
MSNBC
Best local information: Terabitz
Best site to price comparable properties: Trulia
To find out what your neighbor’s house is worth: Zillow
Buy a house without a broker: For Sale by Owner
Get Zagat-like reviews of a particular street: Street Advisor

Those sassy teenagers
CBS

New Y-3 store
New York Times

Many American's fear they'll outlive their money
Gallup Poll

Inflation even effects a New York Bagel
NY Post

The £1,800 fashion sensation: the amazing high heels that don't have a heel
Daily Mail UK

Some Obama facts (thanks Amy)

In Illinois, he sponsored over 800 bills.

On the federal level, in his short time, he passed a decent amount of legistlation, in a bi-partisan manner>. His first year in the U.S. Senate, he authored 152 bills and co-sponsored another 427. Mind you, not many passed with that idiot Republican and limpy Demcratic Senate in his way, but that's a lot of bills. The big ones are:

the Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006 (became law)
The Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act,(became law)
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, passed the Senate
The 2007 Government Ethics Bill,(became law)
The Protection Against Excessive Executive Compensation Bill,(In committee

More about his record can be found here, here, here, and here.

Finally, to learn details of his entire plan for the country should he become president you can go to his website. You can also download his Blueprint for Change here (WARNING: Large substantial 64 page PDF).

Daily News : February 27, 2008

2008-02-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

Rare criticism in Iran of Ahmadinejad rhetoric on Israel
Rowhani warned starkly: "If the international community thinks that a country wants to play troublemaker and eliminate others, it will not let the country do this and will confront it.

"We must act in such a way that the world understands that we are ready for more flexibility and more dialogue."
AFP

Our economy is fucked! Euro Soars to Record High $1.5057
I was just in the Caribbean and the dollar isn't worth a damn.
AP

India missile test to start arms race: Pakistan
Reuters

Russia may support Iran sanctions
BBC

Cubans weary of Raul Castros hints of change
New York Times

Kofi Annan has decided to suspend the talks process in Kenya.
BBC

Most Muslims 'desire democracy'
BBC

Could peace break out in the Koreas?
BBC

Congress asks companies to do more on food safety
Reuters

A hedge made out of marijuana
Gold Coast

Counterfeit Crackdown: New York Police Shutter Canal Street Buildings
WWD

The most spied upon people in Europe
BBC

Man tries to rob store using finger as pretend gun -- outside of his jacket
Local 6

Secret Cure for cramps?
ABC

Philharmonic plays in North Korea
New York Times

Leno is the worst
New York Times

Starbucks promises a perfect cup of coffee or they'll do it again.
I saw this promise as I walked into Starbucks this morning. I reluctantly drink their swill every morning. When will a Coffee Bean open on the east coast! Now there is an excellent cup of coffee.
Yahoo

Pet Sterilization Becomes Law in LA
AP

Special red DUI license plates proposed for MD drunk drivers. TN stays old school with 24 hours of roadside cleanup while wearing orange vests emblazoned with the phrase, "I am a Drunk Driver."
FOX DC

Zac Posen designs a line for Target, in Austrailia?!? What American's aren't sophisiticated enough for him?
Sassy Bella

Balenciaga 2008 Collection
WWD

Clinton needs to stop rocking YELLOW

2008-02-27T09:50:00.000-08:00

Yellow is not a happy color when you look ugly in it.
Just in the month of February only she has worn this ugly yellow suit or the one with out the black trim 9x. Yes, nine times. Please, Clinton, stop wearing yellow!

Daily News : February 25, 2008

2008-02-25T08:52:00.000-08:00

Obama slams smear photo.
Politico
Drudge Report

"Venezuela is Cuba's biggest benefactor and sends the Caribbean nation millions of barrels of favorably priced oil each year. In return, Cuba has sent about 30,000 doctors to work in the OPEC nation."
Chavez jokes with new Cuban leader.
Reuters

First biofuel flight.
Reuters

Trial starts fro Detectives in Bell shooting.
New York Times

NY Police trial for groom's death.
BBC

Hillary should get out now.
Newsweek

Who will tell Hillary?
The Washington Post

Ralph Nader in the race. why?
New York Times

Nader run could open an avenue for Bloomberg.
NY Sun

Obesity more dangerous than terrorism?
Breibart

Co-Pilot dies during a flight.
BBC

Fewrer youths jump behind the wheel at 16.
New York Times

Full list of Academy Award Winners
Perez Hilton

Must see movie! Won for best Foreign Film: The Counterfieters
Trailer

Oscar Fashion.
Jezebel

More Fashion
Hollywood Tuna

Man dies in cake-eating contest.
BBC

Retailers crack down on serial returns. I hate these people.
Boston Globe

Where do you find peace in NY?
New York Times

Travel information : The Carribbean : Which I just came back from, and miss so very much.
New York Times

World Food without leaving the neighborhood.
New York Times

Kanye West : Flashing Lights

2008-02-15T13:28:00.001-08:00

Daily News : February 15, 2008

2008-02-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

Michelle Obama
New York Times

Hezbolla Cheif Threatens Israel
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has warned that the militant group is ready for "open war" with Israel, after the killing of one of its leaders in Syria.

"Israel has rejected Hezbollah's claims that it is responsible for Mughniyeh's assassination, but nonetheless has put its embassies and other missions around the world on high alert and boosted troop deployments on the Lebanese border."
BBC
BBC
JPost

Iran's President to visit Iraq in March
Breibart

Rice sent to Kenya
Ms. Rice will be accompanying President Bush on his trip to the African states of Tanzania, Rwanda, Benin, Ghana and Liberia, which begins on Saturday.
BBC

Venezuela breaks its ties with Exxon
BBC

Joanne Borgella
American Idol

Huckabee
The Washington Post

McCain rolls on, takes aim at Obama
Politico

Bloomberg rips government over failing economy
CBS

Daily Show: Late Night Triangle

2008-02-15T12:42:00.000-08:00

Late Night Triangle

Moment of Zen

Daily News : January 15th, 2008

2008-01-15T14:08:00.001-08:00

Oprah Winfrey gets her own Cable Network!
Variety

MacBook Air; pretty amazing
Info Sync
Mac World

Cloned meat? sick.
CNN

The GOP loves McCain
New York Times

Race and Gender seem to be the main issues for the Democrats; It shouldn't be an issue at all.
New York Times
The Washington Post

Closing GITMO; Guantanamo Bay Prison
USA Today

Obama releases his economic stimulus plan
Newsday

Kucinich; fyi his wife is pretty hot.
AP

I've been travelling to Dallas a lot, the have awesome libraries
Chron

Spears, really?!?
Perez Hilton

Money and a great stylist/hairdress/spray tanner will get you this look. LOVES IT
Perez Hilton

Why do US pickets walk in Circles?
BBC

Daily News : January 10th, 2008

2008-01-15T14:07:00.000-08:00

Do you know anything about the primaries? The candidates? Why this election is so important?

Candidates

What issues are important to them

2008 Primary and Caucus Calendar

Why polls in NH were off
SF Gate
Newsday

Iraq death toll .. not a joke.
Newsday

Won't testify without immunity
New York Times

Bush predicts completion of Mid-East peace treaty
New York Times
The Washington Post

How most of the mid-east really feel about the U.S.
Aljazeera

Sexiest newscasters .. they don't have my picture yet.
NBC

Dail;y News : January 7th, 2008

2008-01-15T14:05:00.000-08:00

The Cafferty File

To live or die in New Hampshire
AP News

You can still register to VOTE in New York!! YOU BETTER!!!
Register to Vote

Huckabee, the evangelical rises again
The Washington Post

Iran
Breibart

More assholes.. This woman takes the cake, literally
CNN

Obama win's Iowa Democratic Caucus!
Opinion Journal
The Washington Post

Golden Globes Cancelled
Hollywood Daily

Scary
Xinhuan

108 inches of LCD
Reuters

If you watch the Hills...
Perez Hilton

Oh, Brittney
AP News

Dr.Phil on Britteny
Perez Hilton

What an Asshole!
Dallas News

This seems to happen WAY too often
K Fox TV

Daily News : December 21, 2007

2008-01-15T14:02:00.000-08:00

House approves $70 billion more for war funding
AP News

Subway Hike
New York Times

Pakistan suicide blast kills 50
BBC

Do you know your local Bodega cat?
New York Times

Sacha Baron Cohen: Killing off Borat
Telegraph UK

Ms.Puerto Rico's clothes were found to be muy caliente!
Breibart

Vladimir Putin named Time's Man of the Year
Time

Jamie Lynn Spears... pregnant, not even funny.
Perez Hilton

And the Ladies of the View want to talk about it.
Defamer

Woaa... an Apple store in my neighborhood. I just finally stopepd drooling over the Best Buy that opened up.
NY Post

Love the Drudge report
Variety

World Orgasm day?!
Some Blog

Monkey's like to do "it"
Live Science

Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks? I prefer Dunkin Donuts.
USA Today

Not a jolly good time in London
Reuters

"Don't tase me, bro!"
Reuters

Youporn, kinda like youtube but different.
Portfolio

Daily News : December 5th, 2007

2007-12-05T11:10:00.000-08:00

Some serious shizah: Millions of missing white house emails
http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/27607
http://crn.com/government/204400457?queryText=crew

Congress has a better work schedule then a school teacher, only problem is they NEED to be at work more.
"In the proposed 2008 schedule, the House will meet 248 days in the 110th Congress, compared with 211 days in the last Republican-led Congress, according to figures maintained by the majority leader's office."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7162.html

Bill Mahr
http://www.maximonline.com/contests/hbocomedy/maher.aspx

Don't be a good Samaritan
http://www.wnbc.com/news/14778322/detail.html

La Cosa Nostra: Italy mob moss swallowed secrets before dying
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0523414220071205?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

"The target for 10 of OPEC's 13 members will remain at 27.253 million barrels a day. The group's newest members, Angola and Ecuador, were given daily production quotas for the first time, of 1.9 million barrels and 520,000 barrels, respectively. That brings the combined target for 12 members to 29.673 million barrels a day. Iraq has no quota."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a7g5HD3XZPdc&refer=worldwide

HIV Positive Navy Priest Accused of Sexual Misconduct
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/12/marine_chaplain_hiv_071204w/

Who's a cutie!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071205/ap_on_re_eu/germany_polar_bear_1

A football feel good piece
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/sports/othersports/05parish.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

He shouldn't even get a second chance, Imus.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2007/12/05/2007-12-05_don_imus_simulcast_turns_into_simulcrash.html

Tanker Explodes
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/12/05/tanker_explodes_engulfing_nearby_buildings_in_everett/

Health Pros and Cons of Drinking
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/12/04/healthmag.alcohol/index.html

Spanx, love 'em.
http://www.observer.com/2007/spanx-me-baby

Hillary's Hard hitting Hipster
http://www.observer.com/2007/hillary-s-hard-hitting-hipster

TopShop is coming to the States! Ladies. Rejoice!
http://www.observer.com/2007/kate-moss-welcome-topshop-stateside

Iran, Conversation Anyone?

2007-12-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

BUSH: Nuke-less Iran remains dangerous
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/04/iran.nuclear/index.html

Some Comments Posted today from this article:

I am far from a liberal and to be honest I did vote for Bush in the last election, but with yet another embarrassing defeat of our intelligence I can't helped but feel ashamed. This is the second time people that we have allowed ourselves to washed in lies from our government regarding foreign nations and their weapons capabilities. I do not feel as though we should totally discredit Iran as a threat, but I also cannot stand for us ruining our world imagine by sticking our foot in our mouth yet again. We look like complete jackasses over the past 5 years, we have declared victory in Iraq after one week and are still there, sworn now that not one but two countries had nukes, and have tarnished Americans great reputation of being a fair and intelligent government. I just hope that the liberal and conservative bashing can stop long enough for us to examine our problems and repair this country, because we need some serious transformations in foreign policy, economy, and homeland security.

Oh yeah, the US should still invade Iran. They may not have nukes, but I heard there's this one guy in their military that can throw rocks really far. If he stands on a hill, look out. Probably can get pretty close to Israel from what I hear. Beware the rock throwing Iranians! I hear they bite too!

"What the president said makes good sense to me. Iran is developing weapons grade materials that could be used in a nuclear bomb. They have sworn to eradicate Israel and do whatever they can to wipe out the US and other Christian countries. Ironically, Iran is also a threat to its Arab neighbors in the middle east. We shouldn't stick our heads in the sand because of our political positions. We need to work together to see that Iran does not get a bomb or the means to deliver it."

"Hmmm... I'm no Constitutional scholar but... isn't there a provision in our Constitution regarding not being able to force a President to turn over office during a time of war? So, what happens if Bush manages to get an official war declaration before his term ends and then manages to prolong it indefinitely? Wouldn't the only means of removing him be a vote of impeachment? Just considering the possibility that this may be a hidden (Or not so hidden) agenda..."

This is also another good article to read:
The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417fa_fact

Daily News : December 4th, 2007

2007-12-04T10:20:00.001-08:00

Bad Kissers
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/personal/12/03/bad.kissers/index.html?iref=newssearch

Jay-Z Drama
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/11/former_jayz_associate_dehaven.html?imw=Y

The story of Pinkberry's success is really about the chain's image as a design brand. "In my stores, I serve you a $5 dessert, and I let you sit in $500 chairs," says Lee of the Philippe Starck Victoria Ghost chairs in every Pinkberry outlet. "People can tell the difference." They're eating it up right now, but will they still if Pinkberry becomes as ubiquitous as, say, Starbucks?
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/121/berry-berry-ambitious.html

Romeny: "I want to make sure that we maintain our religious heritage in this country, not a particular of faith, if you will, not of a particular sect or denomination, but rather the great moral heritage that we have that's so critical to the future of this country," Romney said. "So, I'll be talking about faith in America -- not my own faith in America -- and of course I'll answer the obligatory questions, as he did."
http://wbztv.com/local/local_story_336200118.html

Randomly Drug Testing Students in FL
"Drug related deaths for both oxycodone and hydrocodone in Florida exceed those for heroin."
http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=69077

France takes ebay to court
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071204/france_ebay.html?.v=4

Shameful
http://www.kwch.com/global/story.asp?s=7446220

Facebook
http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1724.html

Woooaaahhh, Bad Facelift
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=499391&in_page_id=1773&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=picbox&ct=5

Bush, ehh.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/world/middleeast/05webreact.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Don't let your friends borrow your car, you may wind up serving a life sentence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/us/04felony.html?hp

Racial Profiling an official of the ACLU, laughable.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/12/04/specialist_on_profiling_says_he_was_a_victim/

Brad Pitt doing his part in NOLA
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7126350.stm

Sex Trade in Iraq
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7119473.stm

Ban on Sex Toys
http://www.al.com/news/press-register/index.ssf?/base/news/1196763571281990.xml&coll=3

Lamborghini
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/11/05/video-lamborghini-reventon-from-behind-the-wheel/

Daily News : December 3rd, 2007

2007-12-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

The Daily News.. Back in effect.
Have you missed my updates? If so don't fret they will be passed on to you as I ingest them daily. While I don't have time to post the articles in my blog daily, I will be sending out emails to keep you informed of what's happening in the world. In the absence of my updates I've been turning my hobby into my career and now actually work for CNN as a news assistant for the Situation Room. Dream come true! Tune in daily from 4pm-7pm to catch all the action, hey you may just see me in the newsroom. http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/situation.room/

And the days news....

TO: Senator Barack Obama
FROM: Karl Rove
SUBJECT: How to Beat Hillary
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dee0a6e8-a109-11dc-9f34-0000779fd2ac.html

Banning Junk Food in Public Schools
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/us/02school.html?ref=fitnessandnutrition

No Charges in Myspace Suicide Case
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8TA3O800&show_article=1
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Internet-Suicide.html

AP reformatting
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/business/media/03apee.html?ei=5065&en=401d36c5dc11efa8&ex=1197349200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

Romney Ready to Address Mormanism
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/12/03/romney-to-give-mormon-speech/
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/03/romney.religion/index.html

Sean Taylor: Suspects charged with Murder
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/01/sean.taylor/

Don Imus Returns to Radio
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/business/media/03cnd-imus.html?hp

Who's Afraid of Barak Obama?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/opinion/02rich.html?em&ex=1196830800&en=5ead4c3bdc272622&ei=5087%0A

The end of Spam?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/technology/03kirsch.html?8dpc

International Reputation for the Sudanese Government
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7125514.stm

Iran ( you should know about what's happening here)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7125701.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/middleeast/03cnd-iran.html?hp

Vanity License Plates
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2007/12/03/2smrt4u/

Nothing you didn't already suspect, but chimpanzees discovered to be smarter than average American college students
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=3945775

For the Child who doesn't have it ALL, yet.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/03/porsches-kinderbob-sled-far-more-luxury-than-your-child-needs/

Chicago Train Crash
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TRAIN_COLLISION?SITE=OHCOL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Rebuilding LL.Cool J's neighborhood
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/11/21/heroes.llcoolj.flake/index.html

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Visits NY; Upsets a few

2007-09-25T18:21:00.000-07:00

CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/25/un.iran/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/20/ahmadinejad.ground.zero/index.html?iref=newssearch
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/24/ahmadinejad.candidates/index.html#cnnSTCText

CNN's Christiane Amanpour goes one-on-one with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on "AC 360." Wednesday at 10pm.

Associated Press
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jaTR37ZRhA7Q06i3l7feFzoJqmcw

BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7011938.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7010962.stm
Profile on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4107270.stm

New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/us/25protest.html?ref=world

His speech at Coumbia University

Myanmar : 1,500 Monks March

2007-09-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/09/25/myanmar.protest.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/09/19/myanmar.monks.ap/index.html

BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7011655.stm

New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/world/asia/25myanmar.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Water Parks

2007-07-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

Global Guide to Water Parks : http://www.waterparks.com/

Splish Spalsh in Long Island
http://www.splishsplashlongisland.com/

Tuff Gong

2007-07-17T08:52:00.000-07:00

I am obsessed with all things Marley these days... specifically Stephen and Damian.. I can't get enough! This talented family is in heavy rotation on my ipod and in the car. Check it out if you've been sleeping.

Traffic Jam

Stephen Marley
http://web.stephenmarleymusic.com/index.jsp

Damian Marley
http://www.damianmarleymusic.com/index.php

The Proust Questionnaire

2007-07-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

Do you read Vanity Fair? Great Mag, you should. On the back page they ask a number of questions to a specifc celebrity. It's one of my favorite parts of the magazine. Have you ever wondered where they came up with these questions or why they ask the specific ones they do? Here are some answers..

The Infamous Proust Questionnaire

In the back pages of Vanity Fair each month, readers find The Proust Questionnaire, a series of questions posed to famous subjects about their lives, thoughts, values and experience. A regular reference to Proust in such a major publication struck me as remarkable, and it was only until I'd read Andre Maurois's Proust: Portrait of a Genius that I understood what this was all about.

The young Marcel was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book, and here's what he said:

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Where would you like to live?
What is your idea of earthly happiness?
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Who are your favorite characters in history?
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Your favorite painter?
Your favorite musician?
The quality you most admire in a man?
The quality you most admire in a woman?
Your favorite virtue?
Your favorite occupation?
Who would you have liked to be?

This questionnaire tells us much about two things, the character of petiit Marcel, and the amusement of the young in the Belle Epoque. We see Marcel as a sweet and dreamy Mama's boy, brainy, aesthetic, a young citizen of the world with much sympathy for the feminine. What he sees in Pliny the Younger, famous only for speaking and writing letters, is hard to grasp.

What is fascinating about this questionnaire is that it was considered so great an amusement to very young people in Proust's time. It is hard to imagine a party of 13-year-olds in these times being quizzed about their favorite virtues, painters or characters of fiction and history. If the questionnaire were not to smack of exam, it would have to ask "what's your favorite TV show?" or "what's your favorite band?"

Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20:

Your most marked characteristic?
The quality you most like in a man?
The quality you most like in a woman?
What do you most value in your friends?
What is your principle defect?
What is your favorite occupation?
What is your dream of happiness?
What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
What would you like to be?
In what country would you like to live?
What is your favorite color?
What is your favorite flower?
What is your favorite bird?
Who are your favorite prose writers?
Who are your favoite poets?
Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Who are your favorite composers?
Who are your favorite painters?
Who are your heroes in real life?
Who are your favorite heroines of history?
What are your favorite names?
What is it you most dislike?
What historical figures do you most despise?
What event in military history do you most admire?
What reform do you most admire?
What natural gift would you most like to possess?
How would you like to die?
What is your present state of mind?
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
What is your motto?

The second set of questions and answers give us Proust as a young man, mad for conquest, drawn to love crossing conventional sexual lines, still fixated on Mama. His aesthetic sensibilities have grown more serious (I, however, would not give up Mozart for Schumann, with all his interminable faux endings.) In these responses are early threads of character found in the narrator of Remembrance.

The Vanity Fair Story...

When the editors of Vanity Fair gathered to discuss a regular interview format for coming issues, one staff member suggested creating a "Vanity Fair Questionnaire." The magazine's London editor, Henry Porter, and Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter, brought up the idea of the Proust Questionnaire, which met with the hearty approval of the numerous Proust afficianados on the staff. Senior Editor Aimee Bell , a fan herself, took on the task of researching and producing this feature, with the assistance of the University of Kansas professor Theodore Johnson, a noted authority on Proust. Since July of 1993, a major celebrity has responded to a version of the questionnaire, found in the back pages of each issue.

I mentioned to Ms. Bell that I had not dared to contact Professor Johnson, or any of the other university Proustians, because my own work was so unacademic. "Why?" she said, "Proust would have liked it."

Daily News : July 16th, 2007

2007-07-16T08:13:00.001-07:00

Scores Killed in Iraq
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSYAT71336220070716?src=071607_0817_TOPSTORY_scores_killed_in_iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/world/middleeast/16cnd-Iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

North Korea's Reactor Shut Down
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSP1037320070716?src=071607_0817_TOPSTORY_scores_killed_in_iraq

Earthquake in Japan
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUST14801720070716?src=071607_1032_DOUBLEFEATURE_poverty_in_america

Libya Host's Darfur Crisis Talks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6899323.stm

Forbidden City Starbucks Closes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6898629.stm

IHOP is buying Applebees
http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/16/news/companies/ihop_applebees/index.htm?cnn=yes

Edwards Starts Poverty Tour
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1430431820070716?src=071607_1032_DOUBLEFEATURE_poverty_in_america

"Too Sexy for my Bus"
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL161097420070716

I Love it, It's Perfect, Now it Changes
http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/i-love-it-its-perfect-now-it-changes/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/fashion/15discontinued.html

Dame Dash
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/fashion/15POSS.html?ref=style

Grapefruit a Link to Breast Cancer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6900482.stm

Some people throw rice at weddings. This bride and groom threw each other, and then had a "celebratory brawl" with 100 guests. Surprisingly, no booze was involved
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.wedding15jul15,0,2728722.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Drink in the Open Air.. Great Outdoor Spots in NYC
http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2007/33996/

Christian Louboutin
http://video.nymag.com/?fr_story=ba1cff21e39e15e75f6781e3229e013c85907af7&rf=bm

Worse than Uggs.. the CROC
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/magazine/15wwln-consumed-t.html

Nude Photos Haunt Lindsay Lohan
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07162007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm

Sour Patch Kids

2007-07-15T15:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.soursweetgone.com/

Lily Allen & Mark Ronsen : Oh My God

2007-07-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

Hey Paula

2007-07-12T07:02:00.001-07:00

Have you seen this hot mess? Every time I watch I laugh, then feel bad, then laugh again. She truly needs to fire her whole staff. What exactly are the doing to better her career? She getting ratings via us clowning her. sad.
http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collections/F2007CTR/runwayshows/index.html

Paris Couture Fashion Week

2007-07-12T06:41:00.000-07:00

Elie Saab Dress
http://nymag.com/fashion/fashionshows/
http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collections/F2007CTR/runwayshows/index.html

Daily News : July 12th 2007

2007-07-12T06:25:00.000-07:00

Bush to Declare Gains on Some Fronts in Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/world/middleeast/12surge.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Iraq Progress Mixed
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1034793420070712?src=071207_0858_TOPSTORY_iraq_progress_mixed

What?!
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1127787520070712
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/11/nuke.sting/index.html

3rd Suspect Arrested in Shooting of NY Officers
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/nyregion/12cnd-cops.html?hp

Katrina, oh yea.. remember that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/nationalspecial/12exile.html?hp

A Nuclear Ruse Uncovers Holes in US Security
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/12nuke.html?ref=washington

The World's Best Candy Bars
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/dining/11cand.html?ref=style

Addict Snatches Bouncy Castle
http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=161818&command=displayContent&sourceNode=161644&contentPK=17811376&folderPk=88499&pNodeId=161375

Britains Biggest Dog
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/11/ndog111.xml

Magnolia Bakery Shut Down by Health Officials... Noooooo.. I LOVE cupcakes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN1126314920070711

Ms. New Jersey in Trouble : This is an ongoing theme.. keep your online profiles CLEAN. People have lost their jobs over their online profiles and now possibly crowns.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288922,00.html

The Aahhh ace or the Ohhhh Face
http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_5750

Armani's Vision to tower over Tokyo
http://wwd.com/notavailable/dotcom?target=/issue/article/117280&articleId=117280&articleType=A&industryKw=issue&industryKw2=issuearticle

Spider Pig

2007-07-11T18:18:00.001-07:00

http://www.7-eleven.com/kem.asp

Daily News : July 11th 2007

2007-07-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

US Teenagers Have Little Interest in News: Study
http://uk.reuters.com/article/email/idUKN1036737320070710?rpc=92

Four Jailed for Botched 7/21 Bomb Plot
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL1179745020070711

Lybian Court Upholds HIV Death Sentence
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL1028348020070711

Time Limit on Iraq Troop Deployments Fails in Senate
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11cnd-cong.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

House Backs Big Changes in Student Aid Programs
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/education/12cnd-loan.html?hp

NY Traffic Plan
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/nyregion/11bloomberg.html?ref=nyregion

Bush Instructs His Ex-Counsel Not to Appear at Hearing
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11cnd-attorneys.html?ref=washington

Al-Quaeda Issues Pakistan Threat
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6293914.stm

Zawahiri Mocks US Bill
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6630421.stm

Soldiers Killed in Algerian Bomb
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6291232.stm

Brown Downplays Iraq Terror Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6290882.stm

Springfield, Vermont : Voted Simpsons Town
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6287064.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6252856.stm

Super Casino in Manchester
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6291764.stm

Military Files Left Unprotected Online
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/ap_on_hi_te/military_online_insecurity;_ylt=AsLDYW26aYoPGUcaztqWYVvMWM0F

Fake cop tries to pull over real cop who then busts fake cop for pretending to be a real cop
http://wcbstv.com/local/local_story_192084908.html

Sony to Launch Slimmer PSP
http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKN1122813620070711

Giant Squid Washed up on Beach
http://uk.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=59998

Chinese Roll Up for a Condom Fashion Show
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKPEK7797820070711

Check out W Magazine for the Beckhams

2007-07-11T17:48:00.001-07:00

Wild Style 25th Anniversary Reunion

2007-07-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

Wild Style 25th Anniversary Reunion
The Chief Rocker Busy Bee
The Cold Crush Brothers
GrandMaster Caz
DJ GrandWizzard Theodore
Fab 5 Freddy + special guests
Film screening of Wild Style

Sunday, July 29, 2007
From 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Central Park SummerStage

Before all the hits and headlines, before the bling and bullets, hip-hop was a comparatively naïve scene centered in New York’s South Bronx. Aside from the records themselves, nothing evokes these fantastically vital early years as well as Wild Style. The 1982 film by Charles Ahearn tracks the fortunes of a young graffiti writer as he makes his way from street artist to gallery attraction. This 25th reunion event will include a screening of Wild Style, plus live performances from legendary figures that appeared in the film, such as The Cold Crush Brothers, Grandmaster Caz, Theodore and Busy Bee. There will also be new works of graffiti art created live onstage and special surprise guests.

Daily News : June 27th, 2007

2007-06-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

Tony Blair Steps Down
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/27/nblair127.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6243558.stm

Brown is UK's new PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6245682.stm

New Poll Finds that Young Americans Are leaning Left
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/washington/27poll.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Iran, Fuel Rations Spark Violence
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6243644.stm

Girls feet cut off at the ankle on a ride at 6 Flags Kentucky
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/26/six.flags.accident.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Wrestler in US, Murder Suicide
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6242806.stm

Demand For Nike Pushes up Profit
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6243718.stm

Curried Trees
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/26/indonesia.marijuana.ap/index.html

The Yakuza
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2112374,00.html

In Food Safety Crackdown, Chine Closes 180 Plants
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/world/asia/27cnd-China.html?hp

Lily Allen in NYC
http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2007/33972/

Beat the Heat! Public Pools in NYC

2007-06-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2007/34002/
http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_things_to_do/facilities/af_pools.html#top
http://gonyc.about.com/od/summer/a/swimming_pools.htm
http://manhattan.about.com/od/governmentandpolitics/a/swimmingpools.htm

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple Chapter 7 : New York's Best Food Carts

2007-06-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

New York Magazine : New York’s twenty best food carts ranked, in order.

By Robin Raisfeld & Rob Patronite

1. THE AREPA LADY
Roosevelt Ave. nr. 78th St., Jackson Heights
Maria Piedad Cano might be New York’s most revered street vendor. She’s a Chowhound cult favorite, a former lawyer and judge, she says, and, most telling, the subject of a MySpace page that forecasts the likelihood that she’ll be appearing at her regular spot each weekend. Her presence is iffy and weather-dependent; she winters in her native Colombia and reassumes her curbside position in spring, but only on Friday and Saturday nights and generally after ten o’clock. And for a former officer of the court, the once-permit-challenged corn-cake specialist hasn’t always been a stickler for the letter of the law: When asked by Chow.com why she works the graveyard shift, she replied, “Because there are fewer police walking around.” Still, faithful fans make the pilgrimage for her specialty: two types of ethereal Colombian arepas, brushed with margarine and griddled until brown and crispy. The arepa de queso is thicker and smaller, its soft insides infiltrated with melted cheese. The flatter, wider one, arepa de choclo, is made with a different corn batter and folded over salty grated cheese. There are skewered sausages and denser, smaller arepitas, too, but they’re not what’s earned the mild-mannered sidewalk chef her infatuated following, or the nickname “Sainted Arepa Lady.”

2. ANTOJITOS MEXICANOS
Roosevelt Ave. nr. 61st St., Woodside
You don’t expect to find culinary bliss amid the cacophony of this Woodside hub, where the LIRR and the elevated 7 train crisscross and every three minutes or so a jet thunders overhead on its descent into La Guardia. Yet there it is, ensconced below the tracks—an unassuming bastion of Mexican tamales worthy of an interborough expedition or a pit stop en route to anywhere else. Like a gift, the Oaxaqueño tamale comes wrapped with string: Peel open the banana leaves to reveal a hot, steamy mass of fluffy corn masa riddled with hefty chunks of ineluctably fatty pork and dripping with enough greasy red-chile oil to make a magnificent mess. More portable are the smaller corn-husk-wrapped varieties, in which morsels of chicken are dispersed sparingly, like condiments. Another version combines stringy melted cheese enlivened with red and green peppers. But it’s the masa that haunts you, with its moist, springy texture, toasty corn aroma, and earthy, mouth-filling flavor.

3. SAMMY’S HALAL
73rd St. at Broadway, Jackson Heights
“Money doesn’t really matter to me,” says former taxi driver Samiul Haque Noor of Sammy’s Halal. “I love to serve.” What he serves is mainly marinated dark-meat chicken, chopped up on the griddle and plopped down over a pile of fragrant Afghan-style long-grain rice with a side salad, for $3.99. Order it with the works, in this case a trio of sauces—one hot (red), one mild (white), and one somewhere deliciously in between (green). The red and white are toothsome, but some say that Sammy’s isn’t Sammy’s without the green sauce. If you persist, Sammy will tell you the green sauce is a mixture of garlic, cilantro, lemon, a little jalapeño, some yogurt, and, of course, various secret spices. That Sammy yields to no one in the spice-procurement department is a point of pride: “I go far, far away to get my spices; if it’s not right, I go farther; even if I have to go to Jersey, I go to Jersey,” he says. Sammy’s is so popular that the business has grown in six years from the Jackson Heights flagship to a five-cart mini-empire, with three downtown, one in Astoria, and plans to invade midtown any day now.

4. KHAN’S
73rd St. at Broadway, Jackson Heights
If you ever thought that the chicken-and-rice platter at this unassuming cart parked next door to the wildly popular Sammy’s Halal tasted suspiciously similar to its neighbor’s, you would be correct. As it turns out, Sammy himself has taken Khan’s owner Parvez Zaman under his wing, and you might as well consider Khan’s the sixth branch of Sammy’s. Not only does Sammy share his suppliers and secret spice mix with Khan’s, but he occasionally drops by for a friendly chat. The proof, however, is in the platter, and a side-by-side chicken-and-rice taste test showed the two to be virtually indistinguishable: Sammy’s had more cilantro in the salad and perhaps a surplus of onion, but Khan’s was a tad more fiery overall. Nor did Khan’s splatter us with furiously chopped chicken parts while we waited in line. But as far as the chicken-and-rices go, call it a tie.

5. TACOS GUICHO
Roosevelt Ave. at Gleane St., Jackson Heights
It’s a party every night at this popular stand, where Alejandra Gonzalez and Pilar Juarez feed what seems to be half the neighborhood—some making quick taco pit stops, others pulling up a folding chair and settling in for a spell. Even though tacos of chorizo and carnitas get the most local love, we recommend the carefully constructed tortas, or the sporadically available sopes, those thick rafts of masa flour piled high with beans, lettuce, crema, salsa, cotija, and the meat of your choice. For a meatless repast, two dollars buys a luscious quadruple-decker chalupa, each crispily griddled corn tortilla slicked with red or green salsa and garnished with diced onion, cotija, and crema. The combination sounds simple, but the cheesy, salty, crunchy whole far exceeds the sum of its seemingly humble parts.

6. HALLO BERLIN
54th St. nr. Fifth Ave.
For 24 years, Berlin-born Rolf Babiel has been slinging sausages from his just–off–Fifth-Avenue pushcart. That’s like 192 in street-cart years; factor in the Giuliani crackdown period, and call it 200. Five days a week, Babiel—or his brother Wolfgang—serves his super-snappy wursts on crusty rolls or sliced into bite-size pieces in a formidable contraption that looks like a cross between a paper cutter and a guillotine. Our favorite of about a dozen or so is called the Mercedes (bratwurst). Wolfgang’s favorite is the Skoda (alpenwurst). You can gulp down both in a Democracy Special combo—a choice of two wursts topped with a heap of fried potatoes, braised red cabbage, sauerkraut, and excellent homemade mustard and curry sauces, plus two meatballs for $9. In good weather, dine on one of the cart’s red-and-white-checked foldout trays and watch the Fifth Avenue world go by, while a Babiel brother lowers the sausage guillotine.

7. TONY “THE DRAGON” DRAGONAS
62nd St. nr. Madison Ave.
Even people who don’t eat street food eat Tony Dragonas’s street food. In a typical lunch-hour line, you’ll find an oddball assemblage of Bloomberg number-crunchers, fashionable Madison Avenue retail clerks, stout delivery guys, and traitorous cooks from nearby kitchens including Aureole, Amaranth, and Nello. Speaking of Nello, says Tony, “he wanted me to go into business with him.” He’s not the only one: “You’re the best! You’re the best!” barks a man wearing a black T-shirt, cargo shorts, and a mullet one recent afternoon. “I tell ya, Tony, I’m working on capital; we’re going to take this enterprise national.” What’s the reason for all the hoopla? Chicken breasts, shish kebab, burgers, sausage, steak, and an excellent prosciutto-mozzarella-and-basil sandwich. But the juicy char-grilled chicken is the thing, marinated overnight and available wrapped in a thick grilled pita or as a platter with yellow rice. A tinfoil container with a crisp romaine salad, all of it drizzled with homemade tsatsiki, it must weigh about five pounds and goes for $6, up from $5.50 the last time we checked. “Inflation,” Tony says resignedly.

8. CARNEGIE JOHN’S
56th St. nr. Seventh Ave.
To put it in SAT terms, Carnegie John’s is to Tony the Dragon’s as Mary’s Fish Camp is to Pearl Oyster Bar—the difference being that unlike those feuding fish ladies, should Tony and John meet up on the street, neither would attempt to scratch out the other’s eyeballs. Tony Dragonas, you see, taught his Greek compatriot John Antoniou the chicken-and-rice ropes, letting John run the show when he was away. When there was nothing more that Tony could teach John about grilled chicken breasts, Italian-sausage sandwiches, and combo platters, John, as straight-A students often do, struck out on his own—with Tony’s blessing, of course. What’s the most important lesson John learned from Tony? To start things off on the griddle, move them over to the charcoal grill, and then back to the griddle. “It seals in the juice and gives everything a nice flavor,” says John. Although the lines at John’s aren’t nearly as long as the lines at Tony’s, in a blind taste test, you’d be hard-pressed to tell John’s $5 chicken platter apart from his mentor’s. John also grills a mean $1.25 hot dog (Sabrett), which you’ll want to top with his terrific homemade onions. His pièce de résistance, though, is his $4 cheeseburger—a big fat-streaked patty of unknown provenance (“Maybe sirloin?”). Dare we say it’s better than the one you can get at the perpetually mobbed Parker Meridien Burger Joint right down the block? We do. And you won’t have to wait in line for a half hour either.

9. HUAN JI RICE NOODLES
Grand St. at Bowery
The cheung fun cart might be the hot-dog-and-pretzel stand of Chinatown, only cheaper and less tourist-friendly. The steamed rolled rice noodles, snipped with scissors, topped with your choice of spongy curried fish balls, soft, ultra-fatty pork skin, or tripe, and doused with a quartet of sweet and spicy sauces, is a popular sidewalk snack everywhere from Elizabeth Street to Pike Street. You won’t pay more than a buck or two, depending on serving size (a smaller Styrofoam container or larger plastic pint cup). The proprietress of this one has been manning her bustling cart just off Bowery for twenty years, and she’s done well enough to open a four-items-for-$3 joint on Eldridge Street, where the cheung fun is offered for breakfast. Besides the ever-popular rice noodles, the cart also dispenses mei fun and the string-tied, leaf-wrapped sticky rice packets called joong, all of which can be enjoyed alfresco at the Hester Street Playground down the block, where the handball games are fast and furious.

10. THE ESQUITES MAN
Fifth Ave. nr. 53rd St., Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Although ears of corn slathered with mayo, cheese, and lime are as ubiquitous these days as bagels at a Sunday brunch, you still have to amble over to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, for a good Styrofoam cupful of esquites. Literally translated, esquites means “toasted corn,” but more commonly refers to the irresistible Mexico City street snack of corn kernels sautéed in butter and lard or vegetable oil and flavored with fresh epazote, the pungent herb whose name roughly translated means “dirty skunk.” Nearly every other taco cart along Fifth Avenue from 45th to 55th Street does a sideline business in esquites, but our favorite is the version served with a flourish by Luis Garcia, who operates from a red shopping cart near 53rd Street: A quick scoop or two of esquites from a five-gallon Igloo thermos, a wooden spoonful of Hellmann’s scraped off onto the side of your cup like a cocktail twist, a sprinkling of sharp cotija cheese, a dusting of cayenne, a squirt of fresh lime juice, and, for $2, you’re on your way.

11. DOGMATIC DOGS
Bleecker Street Park, Bleecker St. at Hudson St.
Over the past few years, so-called fine-dining chefs have made incursions into the gritty street-cart world, a trend we heartily endorse. While Mario Batali’s GelOtto ice-cream cart and Adam Perry Lang’s Daisy May’s chili and barbecue carts seem to have become mired in bureaucratic red tape, Jeremy Spector’s haute hot-dog cart has returned to the West Village plaza where it debuted last summer. The Employees Only chef is the co-creator of the “dogmatic gourmet sausage system,” a concept that utilizes a spiked gizmo to pierce and toast the insides of Pain D’Avignon baguettes, into which gourmet sausages are inserted, along with a choice of zesty condiments. The slender, spicy beef, turkey, and pork franks ($5) all have the finest credentials, coming from contented animals that have been pastured at Sullivan County’s Violet Hill Farm. They can be had, if tradition requires, with ketchup and mustard, but much more enticing are the creamy jalapeño-Cheddar, feta-and-sun-dried-tomato, and truffle-Gruyère. An asparagus-stuffed baguette makes a nifty vegetarian option, and the homemade ginger and strawberry sodas ($3) are flavored with vanilla bean, allspice, cinnamon, clove, and cardamom.

The Jamaican Dutchy cart.

(Photo: Ben Stechschulte)

12. THE JAMAICAN DUTCHY
51st St. nr. Seventh Ave.
“I’m running low on plantains” aren’t words you want to hear when you’ve waited a good twenty minutes on a line that waddles so slowly down 51st Street you start thinking Le Bernardin would have been quicker. But at least the chef at this midtown newcomer, bless his soul, rations his plantains instead of taking a pushy paralegal up on her offer to pay extra for more. Although Wall Streeters have long had access to grab-and-go Jamaican at Nio’s truck, this gleaming new satellite-dish-equipped stand is an anomaly in midtown, and an affordable lifesaver for the West Indian expats (executives, secretaries, FedEx guys) who work there. There is a certain liberty taken with the Styrofoam platters, which never seem to contain all the sides the menu promises (boiled dumpling, white rice, rice and peas, plantain, yellow yam, vegetables). But what is there is choice, and—except for those plantains—plentiful: a quarter of a spicy, herb-rubbed jerk chicken, hacked with a cleaver on a cutting board; a flavorful if not fiery serving of tender goat curry on the bone.

13. XINJIANG KEBABS
Division St. at Forsyth St.
No best-street-cart list is complete without some meat-on-a-stick, the irresistible scent of which can trigger a primordial drooling reaction in even the most abstemious vegan. Although its schedule fluctuates, the excellent cart that operates near the Manhattan Bridge, just past the bargain-bus brigade, is hard to beat. If you get lost, look for smoke and then a yellow sign that reads lamb, chicken, beef, chicken kidney, chicken heart, grill fish ball, grill corn, and more. The key is that it’s all imbued with the fire-licked flavor of hardwood charcoal, and, since every stick goes for a dollar a pop, you can linger about ordering sticks o’ meat as if you were at an alfresco tapas bar—albeit a rather gritty one. Our surprise favorite meat stick: the hot dog carved up like a street-cart mango, painted with a sweetish barbecue sauce, and sprinkled with cumin powder.

14. KWIK MEAL
45th St. nr. Sixth Ave.
Sixth Avenue in the mid-Forties is a hub of Manhattan street meat, with competing chicken-lamb-and-rice carts occupying each corner. But only one cart is operated by a chef’s-jacketed, floppy-toqued veteran of the Russian Tea Room. Mohammed Rahman runs his gleaming silver box like a mini-restaurant, expediting orders to his busy crew and chatting up customers. The Bangladeshi immigrant’s claim to fame is his marinated lamb, a succulent triumph of cumin, coriander, yogurt, and green papaya that’s actual lamb meat, not compressed gyro, rolled up with yogurty white sauce in a puffy pita or served over basmati rice. His falafel is idiosyncratic and more Greek than Middle Eastern, what with tsatsiki subbing for tahini and the kind of pita you’re likelier to find at Greek gyro stands than Israeli falafel joints. Regardless, it’s a tasty, rich sandwich, and, along with his distinctive jalapeño hot sauce, part of the winning repertoire that’s enabled the sidewalk chef to branch out with two more midtown carts.

15. CALEXICO
Wooster St. nr. Prince St.
There’s no such thing as a cheap lunch in Soho, you say? Then you haven’t been to this yearling cart, the joint venture of three brothers from Southern California. Most weekdays, hungry hipsters lean against the side of a nearby building, waiting patiently for tacos, burritos, and Mexican-style grilled corn. Come early or risk missing out on some of the more popular items—the chipotle pulled pork, say, or the medium-hot salsa verde. But Calexico’s raison d’etre is the marinated skirt steak called carne asada, a carefully cooked, well-spiced piece of meat cut into manageable chunks and piled into overstuffed $7 burritos or $3 soft-corn-tortilla tacos, properly garnished with cabbage, cilantro, and onion. The marinade recipe is a closely guarded secret, of course, but we thought we detected a subtle undercurrent of A1.

16. NY DOSAS
Washington Sq. S. at Sullivan St.
In a carnivorous cartosphere, NY Dosas is a beacon in the street-meat wilderness, attracting cash-strapped NYU students, spice-craving South Asian natives, and vegetarians of all socioeconomic stripes to the southern edge of Washington Square Park, where Thiru Kumar’s parked his popular cart for the past five years. The lanky and aggressively mustachioed Sri Lankan native once worked at Flushing’s Dosa Hutt, where he perfected the art of the lentil-and-rice crêpes that he griddles and stuffs with spiced potatoes and vegetables and serves with the traditional accompaniments of lentil soup and coconut chutney. The Special Pondicherry Masala might be Kumar’s best seller, but it’s the diaphanous Special Rava Masala Dosa, a lacy wisp of red-raw-rice-and-cream-of-wheat batter dabbed with chile paste and griddled to the quintessence of crispness, that could make you consider giving up meat.

17. HALAL CHICKEN AND GYRO
53rd St. nr. Sixth Ave.
These days, there may be more halal carts than hot-dog stands, but you will recognize this one by its never-ending line. You will also know it by its signature bright-yellow plastic bags and employees’ T-shirts, which proclaim, in no uncertain terms, we are different. tasty. delicious. This opinion is echoed on a fan-based Website (53rdand6th.com), in a Young Muslims of North America chat room, and especially by the polyglot mixture of cabbies and bridge-and-tunnel pleasure seekers who crowd the corner every night, turning it into an impromptu alfresco cookout. The stand has even made it onto Wikipedia, under the name “Chicken and Rice,” and gained a more tragic form of notoriety last fall, when one customer stabbed another to death after a line-cutting scuffle. While no $6 lamb-and-chicken-combo platter is worth dying for, this one benefits from the constant turnover and the harmonic convergence of a hot red-chile sauce and a mysterious white one, the contents of which the Halal Chicken and Gyro crew cannot be sweet talked into revealing. An even bigger secret than the white-sauce recipe is the fact that HC and G operates a second cart across Sixth Avenue, on the southeast corner of 53rd Street, and even though it’s parked there until 2 a.m., it’s never cultivated the same devout following—proof, perhaps, of the herd mentality: The longer the line, the better it must be.

18. KIM’S AUNT
46th St. nr. Sixth Ave.
Not everything at this pushcart, tattooed with the slogan food is love and parked next door to Moshe’s Falafel in midtown, is great. But what’s good is very good, especially the fried-fish sandwich (choice of whiting, $3.50, or flounder, $4.50) served on Wonder bread (white or, for health nuts, whole wheat). The fish is nicely deep-fried to a crisp golden brown and finished with tartar and hot sauces. The next best thing to the fish sandwich is the Korean dish, bulgogi ($6), highly seasoned, thinly sliced beef, served over rice with a sad sack of a side salad. As for who or where Kim or his or her aunt is, no one around here seems to know, least of all Moshe.

19. ALAN’S FALAFEL
Cedar St. nr. Broadway
Every weekday, in broad daylight, a tahini-splattered falafel war is waged in Liberty Plaza Park, Wall Street’s great outdoors lunchroom. To the west, weighing in at eleven falafel balls, alongside hummus, baba ghannouj, fried eggplant strips, a stodgy grape leaf, and a cold pita, is the $5 platter at Sam’s, one of the beloved Liberty Plaza carts that was displaced after 9/11 and greeted joyfully by regulars upon its eventual return. Five yards to the east, weighing in at a belly-busting thirteen balls, is the similarly stocked platter of its arch-rival Alan’s, a cart with virtually identical signage and product. But as the constantly shifting lines at each pushcart demonstrate, there are enough famished tourists and office workers to go around. A falafel face-off determined that besides being more generous with its balls, Alan’s excelled in texture (perceptibly crisper and a tad lighter) and flavor. It could have been just that particular batch, and we might have been swayed by sheer volume, but all’s fair in love and lunch-cart war.

20. ALL NATURAL HOT MINI CAKES
Grand St. nr. Bowery
How to end a tour of the city’s best street carts? With dessert, of course. You need no more incentive than the stop-you-in-your-tracks aroma emanating from the mini-cake carts of Chinatown, where the going rate for twenty sweet puffy confections is one smackeroo. Half the fun of eating them is watching their production, especially at this tidy little stand where septuagenarian Shao Chen blasts classical music on the world’s smallest boom box. Forearms protected with elasticized pull-on shirt sleeves that make him look a little like a riverboat gambler, Chen has honed his technique into a carefully orchestrated rhythm: Brush the lingering bits out of a multi-holed waffle-iron contraption, pour the flour-sugar-and-egg batter from a metal teapot, bake for just over a minute, scoop out the sweet, spongy balls, and separate them with a spoon. For the street-cart connoisseur, they’re the closest thing to Proust’s madeleines.

New Subway Cars

2007-06-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/06/magical_new_subway_cars_arrive.html

Wind Farms

2007-06-20T15:30:00.001-07:00

Our future energy source?
American Wind Energy Association
http://www.awea.org/

Wind Turbines
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/wind_how.html

Getting Wind Farms off the Ground : From the Economist

IF IT ever seems windy where you live, be thankful you do not live 10km up in the air. At that height, the jet-stream winds blow stronger and more constantly than ground level winds, carrying up to a hundred times more energy.

So, just as oil companies are drilling deeper and in more remote locations in search of new reserves, pioneer wind-power engineers are looking higher in the sky for new sources of energy. Conventional turbines will not take them there—the highest to date is just over 200 metres tall. So they are trying to invent a whole new technology for harvesting wind: electricity generators that fly.

One of the most ambitious ideas has been developed by Sky WindPower, a company based in San Diego and led by Dave Shepard. Mr Shepard began his career cracking Japanese military codes during the Second World War, then developed machines for reading written text. His work led to the squared-off numbers still seen on bank cards today.

Mr Shepard’s flying generator looks like a cross between a kite and a helicopter. It has four rotors at the points of an H-shaped frame that is tethered to the ground by a long cable. The rotors act like the surface of a kite, providing the lift needed to keep the platform in the air. As they do so, they also turn dynamos that generate electricity. This power is transmitted to the ground through aluminium cables. Should there be a lull in the wind, the dynamos can be used in reverse as electric motors, to keep the generator airborne.

Mr Shepard estimates these rigs could produce power for as little as two cents a kilowatt hour. That is cheaper than the three to five cents conventional energy generation costs. It is an attractive idea, but a flying generator is difficult thing to build—and there is a limit to how helpful existing helicopter technology will be. Aircraft require maintenance after a few days of operation, if not sooner. To operate cost-effectively, wind turbines will need to keep turning for many months without upkeep.

Mr Shepard, however, thinks he has a way out. Stabilising and directing a conventional helicopter requires that the pitch of the individual blades be adjusted with every rotation—up to a thousand times a minute. That puts massive stress on the turning mechanism and wears it out rapidly. On a four-rotor arrangement, you can achieve the same effect by changing the pitch of one or two whole rotors, rather than adjusting the pitch of individual blades. Mr Shepard reckons that this will make a big difference, and will increase the periods between maintenance enough to make the project viable.

Exploiting the jet stream represents the zenith (both literally and figuratively) of aerial wind-engineers’ ambitions. Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution who has worked with Sky WindPower, estimates that harvesting just 1% of its energy would produce enough power for the whole of civilisation. But even at lower altitudes, the winds are stronger than they are at the surface, and that has attracted the attention of other inventors.

In Canada a company called Magenn Power has developed a proposal for a wind generator filled with helium. It turns around a horizontal axis, rather like a water mill, and could fly at an altitude of up to 1km. The firm sees its system as an alternative to diesel generators in remote locations where ground-level wind is insufficient for a normal windmill.

Meanwhile, Wubbo Ockels of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has been developing another approach to airborne wind generation at lower altitude, with backing from Royal Dutch Shell and Nederlandse Gasunie, a natural-gas company. Dr Ockels’s idea is that a kite (without rotor blades) be launched from a ground station, turning a generator as it rises to an altitude of several hundred metres. When it reaches its full height, it alters its shape to catch less wind, and can thus be reeled back in using much less power than it produced when it was being paid out.

An arrangement of two or more of these kites could act together to produce a steady supply of power. When one kite was being released, part of the electricity produced would reel the other kite back in, and vice versa. The whole system would thus remain in surplus, and if well designed could deliver a constant current. This system has the advantage that it requires only simple parts—generators, kites and cables—and should thus be much cheaper to build than a conventional turbine.

Controlling it, however, would be a different matter. Dr Ockels is working on kites with wings and rudders, which look much more like a plane than anything you might see flying in the park. The wings and rudders themselves would be under computer control—a technology already well established for flying aircraft without too much interference from a human pilot.

To test the idea, Dr Ockels’s team is building a 100kW prototype. He hopes to start testing a full-scale device, which would generate 10MW, within five years. That would be large enough to power around 10,000 homes. He believes the system should be capable of generating electricity at a cost of just 1 cent a kilowatt hour.

Any promise of such cheap energy has to be treated with scepticism, and all these projects are still a long way from the full-scale test rigs needed to prove they will succeed. No-one denies that it will be hard to build a flying generator that can make money. However, the political impetus behind renewable energy is growing and space is limited at ground level. Perhaps it is time for the wind power industry to reach for the sky.

Daily News : June 20th, 2007

2007-06-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

Abbas Accuses Hamas of Coup Plot
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6223388.stm
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2082467220070620

US, Israel to support Abbas
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6766551.stm

U.S. Presses Blair to become Mideast Envoy
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/washington/20cnd-diplo.html?hp

This was kinda entertaining
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/us/politics/20netwatch.html?ref=politics

Bush Veto's Stem Cell Bill
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/washington/20cnd-stem.html?ref=washington

Bloomberg no longer Republican?!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/us/politics/20mayor.html?ref=nyregion
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1927608620070620?src=062007_1713_TOPSTORY_bloomberg_party_switch_fuels_talk

Erasing Tattoos
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/us/17tattoo.html?ref=style

Missing: Large Lake in Southern Chile
http://africa.reuters.com/odd/news/usnN20287754.html

Sierra Leone court delivers first war crimes verdicts
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN057952.html

Millions Vote for New 7 Wonders of the World
http://africa.reuters.com/country/EG/news/usnL1982159.html

China and Co2
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL2080219120070620

Freebase.com from Metaweb

2007-06-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

No, no this isn't some drug related search engine for the 21st century. It is actually the wave of the future for data online. It is an open shared database of the world's knowledge. The economist explains it much better than I ever could... read below.

Sharing what matters

Jun 7th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Software: A computing maverick hopes to upgrade the web, transforming it from a document collection into a data commons

Belle Mellor

MOST people find it difficult to keep up with Danny Hillis's imaginative leaps. In the 1980s he dreamt of building intelligent computers and co-founded Thinking Machines, a firm with a mission to make machines “that will be proud of us”, as he used to put it—with tongue only half in cheek. That did not quite happen, but Mr Hillis did, in the process, pioneer the field of massively parallel supercomputing. After a stint at Disney, where he proposed building a theme-park full of free-roaming robot dinosaurs, he turned his attention to building a mechanical clock that will run for 10,000 years, a task that arguably requires genius in its justification as well as its execution. Now this maverick of the technology industry has a new idea that could have a big impact rather sooner than that.

It concerns the web, a creation that, though impressive, is pedestrian compared with what Mr Hillis has in mind. Today's web allows easy and universal sharing of documents. Before the web, internet users could share documents only by making bilateral arrangements—requesting a document from someone else by e-mail, for example—which incurred transactional “friction”, so that relatively few people did so. The web eliminated that friction. Today it is obvious that this was world-changing, but Mr Hillis still remembers “how hard it was to explain” before it happened.

Déjà vu. The next step, he says, is to let the web do for data what it has already done for documents. Just as there used to be lots of people with interesting but unshared documents, today there are innumerable people and organisations with useful but locked-up databases. These range from topics of life-and-death importance—the World Health Organisation's data on bird-flu outbreaks, say—to things that are deceptively banal but potentially useful—a foodie's private spreadsheet listing the best wines at his local restaurants, say. For data to change the world as documents have changed it, the web must again eliminate all friction involved in sharing.

Metaweb Technologies, a firm set up by Mr Hillis and his co-founders, Robert Cook and John Giannandrea, aims to do exactly that with Freebase, a website that sits on top of a new kind of database. The name is not a pun on cocaine but a contraction of “free” and “database”, since the database shares the spirit of Wikipedia, the free and collaborative encyclopedia. (Mr Hillis is on the advisory board of Wikipedia's parent organisation.) Just as Wikipedia lets people contribute information to its articles, Freebase, which is in a test phase, will let anybody contribute, correct or recombine data. The difference is that information on Wikipedia tends to be “unstructured”—ie, buried in text—whereas on Freebase it will be structured, so that each item can be re-used in any context.

It is an open question whether enough people will contribute their data to generate the momentum of Wikipedia, but Mr Hillis is optimistic. “Most people with data want others to have and use it,” he reckons. A boffin who collects data on butterflies, say, might want to upload it so that others with the same fascination can add their own information. Another researcher might then add data on lizards, and yet others might then combine the data on butterflies and lizards with existing geographical data to create maps or analyse patterns. The fact that users will not know in advance how their data might be used is precisely the point.

This requires a new level of flexibility in the database. When building most databases today, programmers decide in advance what sort of questions users might wish to ask of the data, by defining what are known as the “schema”—the types of records in the database and the relationships between them. Metaweb's 35 programmers, by contrast, have built a new sort of database, based on a more flexible structure known to programmers as a “graph”, which allows users to contribute and use not just data, but schemas as well. They can, in short, ask any sort of question of the database.

Metaweb is thus very different from commercial database software, such as that made by Oracle, and from Google Base, which might superficially appear similar because it too allows anybody to upload data. Google Base, says Mr Cook, consists of many independent data sets that are stored in a coherent way. This means that many records are duplicates—if several people upload the details of the same digital camera, say—and may even contradict one another. Metaweb, by contrast, reconciles conflicting data and ensures that each object exists only once in the database. But each object can be tied to every other object, so that the resulting web of associations looks rather like the neural networks in a brain.

There is one similarity to Google, however. The search giant's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, initially concentrated on perfecting a technology (search) that could change the world, without worrying about a business model, which came much later (in the form of advertising). Mr Hillis plans to do the same. For now, he is much too excited about the technology to worry about the money. “Everything else I've worked on, if it succeeds, only helps one thing,” he says. “This has the potential to make everything better.”

www.freebase.com
www.metaweb.com

Roberto Cavalli for H&M

2007-06-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

Why H&M Is Teaming With Roberto Cavalli from BRANDWEEK

June 20, 2007

By Eric Newman

NEW YORK -- Move over Madge. For its latest design collaboration, H&M clothing is moving from pop-star designers such as Madonna to classic, Italianate know-how for its newest design partnership with Roberto Cavalli.

The Swedish cheap and chic fashion retailer announced today that it will debut the “Roberto Cavalli at H&M” collection—to consist of 20 men’s wear pieces, 25 women’s wear pieces and various accessories and lingerie styles—at 200 stores starting Nov. 8. The company currently operates 1,420 stores worldwide.

The latest in a series of successful, headline-grabbing partnerships including recent design collaborations with the aforementioned Madonna, designers Viktor & Rolf, Karl Lagerfeld and Stella McCartney, the Cavalli news comes on the heels of a 31% rise in profits for the second quarter, bringing in about $745 million at average exchange rates.

Sales for the period leapt to $2.91 billion overall, an 18% boost from last year, although the company noted that sales for the month of May had slipped 2% at comparable stores.

While the company was mum on marketing details for the Cavalli project, past efforts for similar collaborations have included outdoor and print ads in the U.S. market, with select TV spots in international markets.

The company spent $17 million in advertising for 2006, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus, and has already shelled out $8 million in ad and marketing initiatives through April 2007.

article in Vogue: http://www.vogue.co.uk/vogue_daily/story/story.asp?stid=45513

Kids and Money a Film By Lauren Greenfield

2007-06-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

A film about teenagers and money in Los Angeles, by the award-winning filmmaker and photographer Lauren Greenfield.
http://nytimesshorts.feedroom.com/?fr_chl=5ffba501e74c858c758a3b94dfc38a4d706d9777

Daily News : June 15th, 2007

2007-06-15T07:54:00.001-07:00

Political Moves As Calm Settles Over Gaza
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/world/middleeast/15cnd-gaza.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Abbas Appoints a new Palestinian PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6756079.stm

Sri Lanka's Scars Trace Lines of War Without End
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/world/asia/15lanka.html?hp

Clinton's Liquidate Holdings
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/us/politics/15clintons.html?hp

Senate Leaders Agree to Revive Immigration Bill
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/washington/15immig.html?ref=washington Ear Splitting Symphony, With the Maestro in Blue
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/nyregion/15sirens.html?ref=nyregion

Zimbabwe's Buggin Bill Condemned
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6755753.stm

Bad: Get pulled over by the fuzz. Worse: get caught trying to eat your weed so the cop doesn't see it. Fark: nearly choke to death trying to swallow your stash
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/14/ap/strange/main2932337.shtml

News anchor fired for laughing about assassination of member of Lebanese parliament, and urging the killing of another when she thought her microphone was off. I for one welcome our new dumbass overlords
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/14/lebanon.anchor/

Gossip
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/06/the_dirty_pig.html

Funny
http://gawker.com/news/gaga-over-gaza/post-knows-exactly-how-stupid-its-readers-are-269110.php

Britney looks super cute!
http://perezhilton.com/topics/britney_spears/fill_in_the_blank_20070615.php

Lily Allen kinda sucks these days
http://perezhilton.com/topics/lily_allen/i_dont_want_to_be_a_celebrity_20070614.php

Just Blaze .. super producer and blog writer
http://themegatrondon2.com/2007/06/14/strictly-business/

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple : Chapter Six

2007-06-15T07:36:00.000-07:00

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple: This weeks installment... Italian
Morandi
211 Waverly Place
Phone: 212-627-7575
The meatballs, the fried artichokes, omg.. everything!

Patsy’s
61 W 74th St, New York 10023
Btwn CPW & Columbus Ave
Phone: 212-579-3000
I can only speak for this location and you should ask for John. The pizza and salads are soo delicious and they can make me amazing pizza with no cheese and you won't miss it.

Due
1396 3rd Ave, New York 10021
Btwn 79th & 80th St
Phone: 212-772-3331
An upper east side staple!

Basta Pasta
37 W 17th St, New York 10011
Btwn 5th & 6th Ave
Phone: 212-366-0888

Max
51 Avenue B, New York 10009
Btwn 3rd & 4th St
Phone: 212-539-0111
Best lasagna in the city.

La Locanda
737 9th Ave, New York 10019
Btwn 49th & 50th St
Phone: 212-258-2900

Lil Frankies Pizza
19 First Avenue
Btwn 1 st & 2 nd street
Phone: 212-420-4900

La Vela
373 Amsterdam Ave, New York 10024
Btwn 77th St & 78th St
Phone: 212-877-7818
Bueno upper west side neighborhood spot, consistently good.

Apocalypto

2007-06-15T07:14:00.001-07:00

Ok. Let me start out by saying I believe that Mel Gibson is an anti-semetic bigot and I am not wiling to financially contribute to his creative endeavors. Yet, I am more than happy to watch his films at your house.

I had the pleasure of seeing Apocalypto for the first time this past weekend. Simply stated it was amazing. The story, the imagery, wardrobe, everything. The film had it all love, brotherhood, heartache, fear, pride, longing, fantasy and fights. Netflix this film and let me know what you think. It's all about Jaguar Paw! It doesn't hurt that the lead Rudy Youngblood is gorgeous.

You can see the trailer here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/touchstone/apocalypto/

Michael Moore's Sicko

2007-06-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

Opening June 29th
http://www.michaelmoore.com/

2007-06-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

What's with these Jennifer Anisten Smart Water ads?
http://www.derekhail.com/2007/06/13/jennifer-aniston-smart-water-ads-are-a-complete-joke/

Daily News : June 14th, 2007

2007-06-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

Hamas Seizes Key Fahtah Insillation
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/world/middleeast/14cnd-mideast.html?ref=world

Lawmaker Walid Eido prominent anti-Syrian legislator killed by a car bomb in Lebanon
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Lebanon-Violence.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/world/middleeast/14lebanon.html

Hamas has taken control of most of the Gaza Strip
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6751079.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6748811.stm

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has won the Man Booker International Prize in honour of his literary career.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6745609.stm

Out Levi-ing Levi Strauss
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/fashion/14tokyo.html

Chase Bank set to build tower near ground zero
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/nyregion/14rebuild.html?ref=nyregion

Art Basel
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/arts/design/14fair.html?ref=arts

Vanity Fair : Africa Issue

2007-06-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

If you haven't had a chance to pick up the July 2007 issue of Vanity Fair please do. There are a number of intriguing articles profiling the spirit and plight of the 53 countries that make up Africa. It's a good read and will only cost you $4.50.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/africa

Summer Stage Concerts

2007-06-05T14:05:00.001-07:00

http://www.summerstage.org/

The Best Rooftop and Outdoor Bars

2007-06-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

The Best Rooftops and Outdoor Bars
230 Fifth
230 Fifth Ave., twentieth fl., between 26th and 27th Sts.; 212-725-4300
The Hours: Daily, 4 p.m. to 4 a.m.

A60
60 Thompson, 60 Thompson St., between Spring and Broome Sts.; 877-431-0400
The Hours: Daily, 5 p.m. to midnight through Labor Day

AVA Penthouse at the Dream Hotel
210 W 55th St; (212) 956-7020

Bar 13
35 E. 13th St., at University Pl.; 212-979-6677
The Hours: Mon., 7 p.m. to midnight; Tue., 6 p.m. to 3 a.m.; Wed. to Fri., 5 p.m. to 4 a.m.; Sat., 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.; Sun, 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

B-Bar & Grill
40 E 4th St , New York , NY , 10003-7004

Bed New York
530 W. 27th St., between Tenth and Eleventh Aves.; 212-594-4109
The Hours: Mon., 7 p.m. to midnight; Tue. to Wed., 7 p.m. to midnight; Thurs., 7 p.m. to 1 a.m.; Fri. to Sat, 7 p.m. to 4 a.m.; Sun, 2 p.m. to 8 p.m

Boat Basin Cafe
W 79th St , New York , NY , 10024
Seasonal outdoor dining spot where the views and the pub-grub eats just don't get any better.

Bohemian Hall Beer Garden
29-19 24th Ave , Astoria , NY , 11102
The last of its kind, this old Astoria landmark beer garden soldiers on.

Bookmarks
Library Hotel, 299 Madison Ave., at 41st St.; 212-983-4500
The Hours: Mon. to Sat., 4 p.m. to midnight; Sun., closed

Cabana or La Bottega at the Maritime Hotel
Maritime Hotel, 363 W. 16th St., nr. Ninth Ave.; 212-242-4300
The Hours: Tue. to Thurs., 7 p.m. to 1 a.m.; Fri. to Sat., 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.; Sun. to Mon., closed

The Delancey
168 Delancey St., at Clinton St.; 212-254-9920
The Hours: Daily, 4 p.m. to 4 a.m.

The Heights Bar & Grill
2867 Broadway, between 111th and 112th Sts.; 212-866-7035
The Hours: Mon. to Wed., 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., Thu. to Sun., 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Hotel Metro Rooftop Bar
Hotel Metro, 45 W. 35th St., between Fifth and Sixth Aves.; 212-279-3535
The Hours: Mon. to Sat., 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Sun, closed

Hudson Sky Terrace
The Hudson Hotel, 356 W. 58th St., between Eighth and Ninth Aves.; 212-554-6303
The Hours: Daily, noon to 10 p.m. through October

The Garden of Ono
Between Little West 12th Street and 13th Street

The Park
118 Tenth Ave., between 17th and 18th Sts.; 212-352-3313
The Hours: Fri-Sat, 11pm-4am; Mon-Thu, Sun, closed

The Pen-Top Bar & Terrace
The Peninsula Hotel, 700 Fifth Ave., at 55th St.; 212-903-3097
The Hours: Fri. to Sat., 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.; Mon. to Thurs., 4 p.m. to midnight through September 30

Plunge
Hotel Gansevoort, 18 Ninth Ave., at 13th St.; 877-426-7386
The Hours: Daily, 11am-4am

Rare View
Shelburne Murray Hill, 303 Lexington Ave., at 37th St.; 212-481-1999
Rare Bar & Grill, the popular hamburger eatery inside the Shelburne, has taken charge of the

Daily News : June 5th 2007

2007-06-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

Bush Addresses Russia on Missile Defense
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/world/europe/05cnd-bush.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Eric Alterman Says CNN lies
http://gawker.com/news/real-life-altercations/eric-alterman-says-cnn-lies-265552.php

Question Celebrity
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/29/AR2007052902239.html

Larry David newly SINGLE!
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06052007/gossip/pagesix/newly_single_pagesix_.htm

Lohan Knife pix were with Vanessa Minnillo
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06052007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm

Court Rebuffs F.C.C on fines for indecency BLEEP!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/media/05decency.html?hp

Lebanese Army Keeps Up Pressure on Islamists
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-lebanon-fighting.html

Terror Arrests Puzzle Many in Queens
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/nyregion/05guyanese.html?ref=nyregion

97 year old woman honored for saving 2500 children during Holocaust. She rocks!
http://www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=Holocaust_Celebrity_AP

ask.com the algorithm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/technology/05ask.html?ref=technology

Cheated of a Future Iraq Graduates want to Flee
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/world/middleeast/05college.html?ref=world

The Democratic Debates in New Hampshire
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/live-blogging-the-new-hampshire-debate/

Laos Coup Plot Uncovered in US
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6721313.stm

G8 Protests .. madness
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6720291.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6715209.stm

Game arrested on Gun Charges
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6721513.stm

Hilton in Jail
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6721547.stm

Music Videos Boom in Jamaica
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6660531.stm

CFDA Awards : Council of Fashion Designers of America
This is the Oscar's of fashion!
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/06/an_accessories_grudge_match_at_cfda_awards.html
http://www.mercurynews.com/celebrities/ci_6062344
http://www.cfda.com/

LES is Under a Groove
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/fashion/03misrahi.html?ref=fashion

You should use your machete if you're hiking through the wild jungles of Borneo. You should not use your machete if you're angry that your pizza is late
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_6059136

Wow.. Akon
http://perezhilton.com/topics/icky_icky_poo/akon_is_an_ahole_20070604.php

Awww Cuties
http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/articles/2007/06/04/news/local_news/newsstory4.txt

25 Things that have Disappeared in the Past 25 years
http://www.usatoday.com/news/top25-disappear.htm

A Star Wars Wedding.. awww geek love
http://knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_5568216,00.html

Jay-Z and Beyonce Engaged?
http://socialitelife.com/2007/06/04/beyonce_and_jayz_engaged.php

The blog is on vacations and so am I .. Find me below.

2007-05-23T16:45:00.001-07:00

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple : Chapter V

2007-05-21T15:48:00.000-07:00

This weeks installment is... Diner Food & 3am Feedings

7A
109 Avenue A, New York 10009
At 7th St
Phone: 212-475-9001

Westway
614 9th Ave, New York 10036
Btwn 43rd & 44th St
Phone: 212-582-7661

Viand Original
673 Madison Ave, New York 10021
At 61st St
Phone: 212-751-6622

Viand Cafe
2130 Broadway, New York 10023
At 75th St
Phone: 212-877-2888

What Used to be Diner 24
102 Eighth Avenue
At 16 Street

Cafeteria
119 7th Ave, New York 10011
At 17th St
Phone: 212-414-1717

Pop Burger
58-60 9th Ave, New York 10011
Btwn 14th & 15th St
Phone: 212-414-8686

Pizza Bar
48-50 9th Ave, New York 10011
At 14th St
Phone: 212-924-0941

Corner Bistro
331 W 4th St, New York 10014
At Jane St & 8th Ave
Phone: 212-242-9502

Gray’s Papaya
2090 Broadway
At 72 Street

The Waverly Inn
16 Bank St , New York 10014
At Waverly Pl
Phone: 212-243-7900

Veselka
144 2nd Ave, New York 10003
At 9th St
Phone: 212-228-9682

Daily News : May 21st, 20007

2007-05-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

HA! The New York Times.. reviewed my 96th street taco truck pick for best Mexican. Never doubt my suggestions.
http://events.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/dining/reviews/16unde.html?ref=dining

Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplace of Hip-Hop?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/nyregion/21citywide.html?ex=1180411200&en=9cdba1a96603d673&ei=5070&emc=eta1

For Strippers an Indecent Proposal
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/nyregion/thecity/20stri.html?ref=thecity

Dozens Slain as Lebanese Army Fights Islamists
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/world/middleeast/21cnd-lebanon.html?ref=world
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6676291.stm

The Hottest Billionaire Heiresses
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18703552/

Senate Begins immigration Debate
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6676581.stm

Stella McCartney Debuts in Asia
http://wwd.com/issue/article/116000

Watch out JetBlue here comes Air Chanel
http://wwd.com/related/photospread/115959

Jimmy Carter : Big News Day!

2007-05-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/washington/21carter.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fC%2fCarter%2c%20Jimmy&oref=slogin

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6675557.stm

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/s1928717.htm

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1820288.ece

The Survivor Monologues: New York Magazine

2007-05-21T13:05:00.000-07:00

Please check out the link and pick up the magazine my friend Michelle Baetiong (on the right in this pic) is a survivor and featured in this issue. She is a great example of someone who fought the beast and survived. I love Michelle and you will too.
http://nymag.com/news/features/2007/cancer/

Daily News : May 16th, 2007

2007-05-16T16:07:00.000-07:00

Thompson adds Reuters in $17 Billion Bid to Be Giant
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/business/media/16thomson.html?ref=media

Gaza Erupts in Renewed Violence
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6663141.stm

Fatah and Hamas Fighting in Gaza
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6660977.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6166362.stm

What? a Box for unwanted newborns??!?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/05/16/baby.drop.ap/index.html

Indian Train Driver asks Passengers to get out and Push
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKDEL8709820070516?feedType=RSS&rpc=92

Look ma no gas
http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=b26a4a24-78a6-4250-8979-f3f3d7c646a0

World Bank Leader Resigning
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/washington/16cnd-wolfowitz.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Billions of Dollars Pledged to Cut Urban Energy Use
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/science/16cnd-climate.html?ref=science

New Motorola Phones Aim at High-End Market
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/technology/16motorola.html?ref=technology

New York Port Authority .. Proposes Cashless Tolls
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/nyregion/16cash.html?ref=nyregion

China Defends its role in Africa
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6660341.stm

Cannes Film Festival
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6646919.stm

$72.8 Million for this?
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/05/rothko.html

Oh Britney, please dissapear for 6 months.. THEN and only THEN try and make your comeback
http://dlisted.com/node/10047
http://britneyspears.com/

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple : Chapter IV

2007-05-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple Chapter Four:
This weeks Installment is... Asian Cuisine
Japanese
Ono 18 9th Ave, New York 10014
At Gansevoort St
Phone: 212-660-6766

Tenzan
285 Columbus Ave,
New York 10023
Btwn 73rd & 74th St
Phone: 212-580-7300

Sushi Yasuda
204 E 43rd St,
New York 10017
Btwn 2nd & 3rd Ave
Phone: 212-972-1001

Blue Ribbon Sushi
119 Sullivan St,
New York 10012
Btwn Prince & Spring St
Phone: 212-343-0404

Sushi Samba
87 Seventh
Avenue South Cross Bleeker Street
Phone: 212-691-7885

Okinawa
496 Laguardia Pl,
New York 10012
Btwn Bleecker & Houston St
Phone: 212-253-8886

Chinese
Shun Lee Café 43 W 65th St,
New York 10023
Btwn Columbus Ave & CPW
Phone: 212-595-8895

House of Vegetarian
68 Mott Street
Btwn Canal and Bayard
Phone: 212-226-6572

New Green Bo
66 Bayard St,
New York 10013
Btwn Mott & Elizabeth St
Phone: 212-625-2359

Vietnamese
Omai
158 9th Ave,
New York 10011
Btwn 19th & 20th St
Phone: 212-633-0550

Siagon Grill
91 University Pl,
New York 10003
Btwn 11th & 12th St
Phone: 212-982-3691

Malaysian
Penang 240
Columbus Ave,
New York 10023 At 71st St
Phone: 212-769-8889

Pan-Asian
Buddakan 75 9th Ave,
New York 10011
Btwn 15th & 16th St
Phone: 212-989-6699

Fatty Crab
643 Hudson St,
New York 10014
Btwn Horatio & Gansevoort St
Phone: 212-352-3590

Republic
37 Union Sq W,
New York 10003
Btwn 16th & 17th St
Phone: 212-627-7172

Ruby Foo’s
2182 Broadway,
New York 10024
Btwn 77th & 78th St
Phone: 212-724-6700

Korean
Woo Lae Oak
148 Mercer St,
New York 10012
Btwn Prince & Houston St
Phone: 212-925-8200

Thai
Wondee Siam II
813 9th Ave,
New York 10019
Btwn 53rd & 54th St
Phone: 917-286-1726

Takashi Murakami

2007-05-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

Art Director for Kanye West's new album, due out this summer.

Daily News : May 15th, 2007

2007-05-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

A Giant takes on Physics biggest question
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/science/15cern.html

Rev. Jerry Falwell dies at 73
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Jerry-Falwell.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

In study, college prep classes left many unready
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/education/15cnd-report.html?hp

I scream, you scream we all scream for FREE ice cream!
http://www.haagen-dazs.com/newflavorday/

Oral Sex Linked to Throat Cancer ; get checked for HPV!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6639461.stm

Prosthetic Party Girl
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/fashion/13disabled.html?ref=style

Goya o Boya now found at Yankee Stadium
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/nyregion/11food.html?ref=dining

British man invents new milk container
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2007/05/15/british_man_invents_new_milk_container/1614/

Pizza Beer? ewww
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/local_story_134181507.html

Texas Man Charged in a Skittles Heist
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070515/ap_on_fe_st/odd_stolen_skittles

Daily News May 11th, 2007

2007-05-11T06:52:00.000-07:00

Fires Rage in California
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/05/11/socal.fire.ap/index.html

Tony Blair Steppin down as head of the Labor Party
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/europe/11cnd-blair.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Cheney talking about the war
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?ref=middleeast

Guiliani to outline abortion views
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/10/giulinai.abortion/index.html

Cheap and Chic
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/fashion/10FOREVER.html?ref=style

The 5 Second Rule Explored
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09curi.html?ref=dining

Iraqi Jihad TV
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6644103.stm

Drew Barrymore is now working with the United Nations, lobbying congress in D.C. and on Thursday she appeared on CNN's Situation Room to talk about World Hunger.
http://perezhilton.com/topics/drew_barrymore/drew_barrymore_in_a_new_light_20070511.php

OMG.. Morris Brother's is leaving the UWS.. this place was a staple of my youth. If any of you actually grew up in NYC like I did then you know all about this spot. Summer Camp Heaven.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/05/morris_brothers_no_more.html

Lohan and her skiing problem
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/05/the_fug_girls_gaze_into_lindsa.html

Lil Mamma .. the song is irritating, the video is cute.
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0719,breihan,76567,22.html

Hip Hop Appreciation Week in ATL
http://allhiphop.com/hiphopnews/?ID=7038

NYC Cabbies not sold on touch screens; I HATE these things
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/05/10/taxi.technology.ap/index.html

New Union Store in NYC
http://www.hypebeast.com/2007/05/new-union-store-in-nyc/

Petelshot : The Experience

2007-05-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

Check out Petelshot : I endorse this band
The PETELSHOT sound is a myriad of styles, with influences varying from gritty street corner rhymes, to rocked out grooves mixed with the pure emotional strings of classical violin. Even with such broad influences, PS still manages to seamlessly blend together all these elements to create an epic sound.

You can hear them here : http://www.myspace.com/petelshot
You can buy the album here : http://www.petelshot.com/

Kate Moss Top FLOP...

2007-05-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

What a bloody f'in waste of my time. This sassy British hoe had me out
at 9:30am on B'way and 75th waiting on line for this fab white dress
that has been advertised all over the place. Once the doors open and the mad rush of young
women flock in they all swarm to one rack, one rack filled with crap. 1ugly flower dress, 1 overpriced black jacket and some horrible $40t-shirts.

For fucks sake I waited for this?

Then I'm informed that the 17th street location will be carrying my highly coveted white dress.
I zip downtown to find another small line of fahiony women waiting for the
doors to open at 11am. I'm at the back of this line and hear a murmuring
behind me, it happens to be the manager of that barney's co-op. Waisting
no time I ask her if they are going to be carrying said white dress. She
says, no its back ordered until June.

JUNE?!!!

Kate Moss Top Flop ... a fucking waste of my Wednesday morning, i did get a pair of jeans although, I think I'm having shoppers remorse.

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple : Chapter Three

2007-05-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple : Chapter Three
This weeks installment is... Spanish.. Caribbean.. Mexican Food

Mexican
La Esquina
106 Kenmare St, New York 10012
At Lafayette St
Phone: 646-613-1333
try: lamb chops, shrimp, the corn, the everything.

Mama Mexico
2672 Broadway, New York 10025
At 102nd St
Phone: 212-864-2323
try: the guacamole.. they make it for you fresh at the table

The Taco Truck, yes it is a truck.
on 96th street west of Broadway
try: it all, super tasty, don't fear the truck.

Mexicana Mama
525 Hudson St, New York 10014
At 10th St
Phone: 212-924-4119

Bonita
338 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn 11211
Btwn S 2nd & S 3rd St
Phone: 718-384-9500

El Sombrero aka the Hat
108 Stanton corner of Ludlow
try: frozen margaritas in the summer.. $5 and a buzz

Spanish / Caribbean
Malecon
4141 Broadway, New York 10033
At 175th St
Phone: 212-927-3812
try: roasted chicken, best in the city. ONLY they one on 175th

Café Fuego
9 Saint Marks Pl , New York 10003
Btwn 2nd & 3rd Ave
Phone: 212-677-7300

Havana Central Union Square
22 E 17th St, New York 10003
Btwn Bway & 5th Ave
Phone: 212-414-4999

Flor de Mayo
484 Amsterdam Ave, New York 10024
Btwn 83rd & 84th St
Phone: 212-787-3388
try: peruvian chicken and plantains.

El Castillo de Jagua
113 Rivington St, New York 10002
Corner of Essex St
Phone: 212-982-6412
try: pernil or cubano

Negril
362 W 23rd St, New York 10011
Btwn 8th & 9th Ave
Phone: 212-807-6411

Daily News : May 8th, 2007

2007-05-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

Takashi Murakami
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/arts/design/07mura.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=arts
http://www.takashimurakami.com/

Political Progress in Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/world/middleeast/08iraqcnd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

The (Not So) Eagerly Modern Saudi
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/weekinreview/06slack.html?ref=middleeast

Lost and Found
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/nyregion/08found.html?ref=nyregion

Arrests over US Army Base : Fort Dix Terror Plot
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6635669.stm

KLM Acussed of helping Nazis Flee
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6635677.stm

Olmert Beats No Confidence Vote
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6633515.stm

NY Social Status
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/05/socialite_rank_saga_contd_are.html

Clothing-Line Fueled Pop-Band? huh...
http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/31543/?ftr-promo

Fight Night

2007-05-07T15:59:00.000-07:00

Fight Night is a night I look forward too, I expect to see blood, sweat
and tears. This is a match of men trained to take a punch and deliver
blows. Egos are of the line and each man wants to come out of top. Its
not only a test of skills its a matter of pride. In what was supposed to
be a massacre last Saturday was more like dancing with the stars.

In one corner we've got Pretty boy Floyd in full Mexican colors, leather
robe and an iced out sombrero. Paying homage to his uncle or dissing his father?

In the opposite corner we have the Golden Boy Oscar De la Hoya. Cool,calm, collected.

Both are great fighters. Where was the massacre, The bloodshed, The upset?!?!!

De La Hoya lead the fight throwing lefts, jabs, body shots landing next
to nothing just exhausting himself. All the while Mayweather laughing
taking the hits and actually landing some blows.

They danced around the ring for 11 rounds then actually fought a little
in the last 12 seconds of the 12th round. If I wanted to watch dancing
with the stars I would put on abc. This was a $55 HBO PPV title fight, I
don't know what it was not what I signed up for.

All in all, yes, it was a decent fight went 12 rounds but in the end the pretty boys were still well, pretty.

In other Daily News: May 2nd, 2007

2007-05-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

Kate Moss : TopShop dropped in Europe!
http://www.fashionwiredaily.com/first_word/news/article.weml?id=1121
http://showbiz.sky.com/showbiz/article/0,,50001-1263539,00.html

Pete Wentz opened a bar in the Eat Village? ehh

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05012007/gossip/pagesix/loser_joint__bathroom_sex_pagesix_.htm

MisShapes DJ a building opening.. the buiding is cool casue Philippe Stark designed it.

http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Posh_on_23rd_Street/8317.html
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/04/jvanka_more_than_friends.html

http://gawker.com/news/gramercy/

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2007/03/06/philippe_starcks_insanity_coming_to_gramercy.php

Daily News : May 2nd, 2007

2007-05-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

30 Years after Studio 54 opened its door the people who made it happen re-hash all the dirt that made 54 hot! My mom likes to tell me stories of how fly she was when she went to studio.
http://nymag.com/news/features/31276/

Citarella in Harlem now takes food stamps. I didn't even know there was a Citarella in Harlem.
http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/31281/

The Highline.. no you can't smoke it. But you can move in soon.. oh my, Frank Ghery will be designing more buildings.
http://nymag.com/news/features/31273/

Israel's Foreign Minister says Olmert should Resign... yea, read this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/world/middleeast/02cnd-israel.html?hp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6616429.stm

Q&A Turkey Crisis
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6615627.stm

Bush to Meet Congress Over Iraq
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6616361.stm

Has the US Ditched Mid-East Reform?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6615481.stm

Darfur Arrest Warrants
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6614903.stm

Q&A Darfur Conflict
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3496731.stm

Jet Blue Drama
http://www.wnbc.com/news/13237614/detail.html?dl=headlineclick

Mmmm Mexican Food
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/dining/02chef.html?_r=1&oref=login

Ask a Mexican
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070501/od_nm/usa_mexico_columnist_dc_6

Marion Berry suggests putting toll gates around D.C. and charging entry fees.
http://www.nbc4.com/news/13240865/detail.html?rss=dc&psp=news

High Tech Hooker Shoes

2007-04-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, Ok .. so i'm reading WWD that's women's wear daily, for those not in the "know". I get to the last page and come across the "Aphrodite Project". What is this Aphrodite Project you ask? It is only the latest in high tech hooker wear brought to you straight from the mean streets from Brooklyn. Now the hoes on Hunt's Point can protect themselves with 6" silver leather platforms which come fully equipt with a GPS technology that connects said hoe to emergency services and an online community. All jokes aside it's nice that someone cares about the saftey of the working girl but do these women read WWD or surf the web to find such safe gaurds, i'm just sayin. Check it out for yourself.
www.theaphroditeproject.tv

Daily News : April 27th, 2007

2007-04-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

War Bill Passes House, Requiring an Iraq Pull Out
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/washington/26cong.html

Bush Eases Tone on Iraq Spending Bill
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/washington/27cnd-veto.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Saudis Arrest 172 in Anti-Terror Sweep
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/world/middleeast/27cnd-Saudi.html?hp

US Holds 'senior al-Qaeda figure'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6600751.stm

Europe Approves More Sanctions Against Iran
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/world/europe/24nukes.html

Crackdown in Iran over Dress Code .. silly ..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6596933.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6213854.stm

A Concrete Plan to Speed Up Buses in Traffic
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/nyregion/27bus.html?ref=nyregion

Antlers are the new Black
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/fashion/26ANTLERS.html?ref=style

46th International Furniture Fair outside Milan
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/garden/26milanIntro.html?ref=style

Did you see this Richard Gere nonsense?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6600839.stm

Hillshire Farms Commercials : These always make me laugh

2007-04-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

GO MEAT!

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple : Chapter Two

2007-04-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

This Weeks Installment is... Date Spot

Meat Packing
One Little West 12th
1 Little West 12th St, New York 10014
At 9th Ave
Phone: 212-255-9717

Spice Market
403 W 13th St, New York 10014
At 9th Ave
Phone: 212-675-2322
*The atmosphere is incredible. Its worth checking out if even just for a drink.

Chelsea
Buddakan
75 9th Ave, New York 10011
Btwn 15th & 16th St
Phone: 212-989-6699
*Love this place and I want to move into the grand dining room.
Try: Wasabi Dumplings & General Tso's Dumplings

Matsuri
369 W 16th St, New York 10011
At 9th Ave
Phone: 212-243-6400

Upper West Side
Nice Matin
201 W 79th St, New York 10024
At Amsterdam Ave
Phone: 212-873-6423
Try: Everything is delicious. I could eat the asparagas buschetta daily.

La Vela
373 Amsterdam Ave, New York 10024
Btwn 77th St & 78th St
Phone: 212-877-7818
*Neighborhood spot
Try: Scaloppine Alla Milannaise, Polo Ripleno and all the pastas.

Mama Mexico
2672 Broadway, New York 10025
At 102nd St
Phone: 212-864-2323
*Very festive Mexican restaurant
Try: The Gucamole they make it for you at the table, mmmm.

Ocean Grill
384 Columbus Ave, New York 10024
Btwn 78th & 79th St
Phone: 212-579-2300

Upper East Side / Midtown
TAO
42 E 58th St, New York 10022
Btwn Park & Madison Ave
Phone: 212-888-2288

Sushi Yasuda
204 E 43rd St, New York 10017
Btwn 2nd & 3rd Ave
Phone: 212-972-1001

West Village
Il Buco
47 Bond St, New York 10012
Btwn Lafayette St & Bowery
Phone: 212-533-1932

Corio
337 W Broadway, New York 10013
At Grand St
Phone: 212-966-3901

Blue Ribbon
97 Sullivan St, New York 10012
Btwn Prince & Spring St
Phone: 212-274-0404

Red Bamboo
140 W 4th St, New York 10012
Btwn 6th Ave & MacDougal St
Phone: 212-260-7049

Soho / Nolita
La Esquina
106 Kenmare St, New York 10012
At Lafayette St
Phone: 646-613-1333

Balthazar
80 Spring St, New York 10012
Btwn Bway & Crosby St
Phone: 212-965-1414
*Love
Try: The fresh seafood & Oysters.

Freeman’s
End of Freeman Alley, New York 10002
Off Rivington Btwn Bowery & Chrystie
Phone: 212-420-0012
*Beware of the taxidermy on the walls not appetizing.
Try: Hot Artichoke Dip, 3 Cheese Macaroni and Grilled Cheddar Toasts.

Lower East Side / East Village
Casimir
103 Avenue B, New York 10009
Btwn 6th & 7th St
Phone: 212-358-9683
*Romantic and Reasonably Priced
Try: Fish or Steak. They also have a great wine selection.

Nomad
78 2nd Ave, New York 10003
Btwn 4th & 5th St
Phone: 212-253-5410

Esperanto
145 Avenue C, New York 10009
At 9th St
Phone: 212-505-6559

Brooklyn
SEA
114 N 6th St, Brooklyn 11211
Btwn Berry St & Wythe Ave
Phone: 718-384-8850

DuMont
432 Union Ave, Brooklyn 11206
Btwn Metropolitan Ave & Devoe St
Phone: 718-486-7717

9/11 First Responders : Suffering Five Years Later

2007-04-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/first_responders/

Kate Moss x TopShop : For Sale at Barney's

2007-04-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

May 9th
http://www.starmagazine.com/kate_moss_clothesbarneys_new_york/celebrity_news_gossip/entertainment/11784
http://tv.yahoo.com/news/article/urn:newsml:starmagazine.com:20070417:tv-1042811784__ER:1

Fudgie the Whale

2007-04-26T12:59:00.001-07:00

The Golden Hanger

2007-04-26T05:58:00.000-07:00

The Golden Hanger: Pop up Shop :
featuring bijules lifestyle jewelry, rojas mens and womens, pretty shitty as imba, sir hayes babywear, still life hats, glad news womens, and christopher bevans menswear...
This saturday and sunday 12-7

20 clinton south of houston
credit cards will be accepted
drinks provided by carlo rossi

See my homegirl Renee and check out her first season of Secta Life.. Teasers Below.

Secta featured in WWD Fast Mag today..
www.sectalife.com
Bordeaux Jacket..

Human Giant

2007-04-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this?
You need to.
Amazing Sketch Comedy
Thursdays at 10:30pm on MTV

Illusionators

http://azizisbored.com/
http://www.thehumangiant.com/

Just Another Friday Night

2007-04-21T05:54:00.000-07:00

For the first time in a long time, I went out last night. I celebrated my friend Bevy's Birthday at this very exclusive super fabulous spot at a location I won't disclose. This spot was so "hip" it hadn't even registered on my radar until well, I was brought there. Shit, I thought I still was a step ahead of the game.

We arrive and it's' this sort of speak easy/coke den'esque kind of vibe with 15 year old models and those "beautiful" people who don't feel the need to shower and love, love buddy holly glasses and flannel shirts paired with a $1200 pair of louis vuitton loafers, fantastic. The downstairs has low ceilings and a west village kind of vibe while the upstairs was the epitome of a coke den.

On this night in we came in at the tail end of Editor in Chief Anna Wintours daughters birthday party. Hence the 15 yearolds at that hour.
We find ourselves in the back corner at a fab table, parked on the red leather couch watching the girls dancing in short voluminous dresses (all the rage this season) and the gay men that love them, awaiting the bottles of champagne to officially start off the birthday festivities.

Corks popped, glasses ching ching'in I start taking note the the faces I actually recognize from my fashion magazines. For fucks sake I see Zac Posen, I nearly teeter and topple over my 4inch patent leather heels. I send a woosh of whispers around our table regarding my discovery.
I'm now plotting and pondering how in the world can I;
A. Get him to realize I'm his next big muse
B. Get a discount, a bag, a leftover fabric swatch
C. a job.
..then I noticed Jessica Stam and distracted myself and continued to drink and party with my friends. Someone then asks me to come with them to the bar, I reluctantly go cause its so crowded and I feared getting singed by one of the thousands of flaming cigarettes ablaze in this small room. AS we make our way through the crowd who winds up directly in front of me... who .. who you ask?
ZAC mother fucking POSEN.. I'm like open your big mouth Sam. Say something this man is genius!
And naturally, I do. I said to him in that sultry way I do.
SH: "I don't know if this is inappropriate to say in this environment but I absolutely love your clothing and I think your a fucking genius."
ZP: "Thank you so much, it's certainly not inappropriate, I really appreciate that"
SH: *gushing* "I said please continue to make women look beautiful"
ZP: "My goal is to bring out a women's character and confidence. The clothing is such that it will bring it out even if they don't know it's in there."
SH: "That's quite inspirational"
ZP: "It's meant to be"
And then the fashion love of my life disappeared into the smokey sea.

More was said, but who can recall all the details. I would like to thank Bevy for having a birthday, for having fabulous friends because I had a blast and think I found a new hairdresser and job. And I would especially like to thank Ralph for forcing me to walk to the bar.

I came home smelling like a Marlboro factory, needing a shower and some food. All in all it was a great night!

www.zacposen.com

Jessica Stam: Go open every magazine in your house. She is in more add campaigns then Kate Moss. Vera Wang, Dolce & Gabbana, Anna Sui, BCBG, and Valentino. She became the face of Armani, Sonia Rykiel and Rochas.

Patrick Robinson for Target, Summer 2007

2007-04-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

Patrick Robinson for Target, Summer 2007
I'm so excited for this!

Excerpt from the Article:

Mr. Robinson began working with Target last May, when he sketched out a collection of about 150 pieces -- dresses, skirts, tops, pants, bathing suits, evening dress and handbags and scarves. Inspired by ancient Greek goddesses and the "essence of summer," he had all kinds of ideas for signature prints, with faded medallions and gold coin embellishments. He combed through Target's library of fabrics, and when he didn't find the fabrics he wanted, Target came through three days later with suitable alternatives from its extensive sourcing network in Asia. One cotton eyelet fabric from China, in particular, he says was "as good as what I would get in Italy."

http://www.fashionista.com/2007/04/mass_hysteria.php#more

Teaser: http://pressroom.target.com/pr/news/fashion/go-international/album.aspx?id=4504

Daily News : April 18th, 2007

2007-04-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

New Orleans..oh, yea remember the flood n stuff. cool.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/us/18levee.html?pagewanted=1

Darfur
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/world/africa/18sudan.html?ref=todayspaper

Op-Ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/opinion/18weds1.html

Mondrian - Chinatown
http://gawker.com/news/hotels/boutique-hotels-on-lafayette-mondrian-highgate-253039.php

Nike just looooves a good story to sell their products
http://adage.com/article?article_id=116145

Freezer is slavation for your ipod
http://brooklynseahag.blogspot.com/2007/04/confused-but-ultimately-relieved-face.html

Street Peeper
http://www.streetpeeper.com/

Blackberry Drama
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/14208

Ian Reid : Sex, Hood, Skate and Videotape .........oh yea and he's one of my favorite people!

2007-04-17T17:53:00.000-07:00

Click on the 1st pic to take you to his full interview on Inquiringmind Magazine...

Year of the Pig Dunks : Can you help me find these?

2007-04-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Highlight on Design: Masamichi Katayama

2007-04-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

Highlight on Design: Masamichi Katayama
http://www.wonder-wall.com/profile/
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2518

--excerpt from Metropolis Mag --
The 40-year-old head of Tokyo firm Wonderwall has created furniture, lighting, bars, and offices, and has even collaborated on the studio set for a BBC program about design, but it’s fashion boutiques—from an elegant space for Marc Jacobs to a hip series of A Bathing Ape T-shirt and sneaker outlets—that have made him famous.

A whimsical presentation of apparel is often the centerpiece of Katayama’s designs. “He has redefined the term showman by focusing on product concepts and the lifestyle of the brands rather than on any personal design style of his own,” says John C. Jay, who oversees American ad agency Weiden + Kennedy’s Tokyo offices. For a 1999 Bape Exclusive shop, Katayama packaged T-shirts like canned goods in a refrigerator. Foot Soldier, a 2001 A Bathing Ape shoe store, features a giant glass-enclosed stainless-steel conveyor belt carrying sneakers that loops over a colorful checkerboard carpet. At Beams T (2002), T-shirts rotate through the space on the kind of carousel used by dry cleaners. “The first thing I do is narrow my use of design elements,” Katayama says. “Once I’ve cut out every unnecessary detail, I add a touch of playfulness that may seem needless in terms of usability. But ultimately I want interior design to be magical. The key in this process is to make sure that the products effectively intertwine with the space and exist as the shop’s protagonist.”

This is in now way promoting bape/kaws.. I think the design of the shops is brilliant.

BAPEXCLUSIVE AOYAMA, JAPAN

ORIGINAL FAKEL: AOYAMA, JAPAN

BAPE KIDS : HARAJUKU, TOKYO

White on White Chocolate AF1s

2007-04-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

+41 are bringing in the Air Force 25th Anniversary in a different way via these mini Air Force 1 white chocolates. Originally this product was only available to certain individuals within the Nike corporation but this product has now become available to the general public. 30 € (approximately $40 USD) will yield you 3 pack of chocolates that are sure to give any white on white AF1’s a run for their money.

http://www.plus41.ch/

Daily News : April 17th, 2007

2007-04-17T08:05:00.000-07:00

Sudan Drops Objections to U.N. Aid in Darfur:
"President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has repeatedly defied United Nations requests and pressure from governments elsewhere in Africa and around the world to permit international intervention in Darfur, saying such action would violate his country's sovereignty." .. what an idiot..
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/world/africa/17nations.html?ref=africa

Militia Talks Could Reshape Conflict in Darfur
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/world/africa/15darfur.html

U.S Consulate Closes in Morocco Over Security Concerns

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/world/africa/16morocco.html

Two brothers.. committed the suicide bombings in Morocco

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/world/africa/15casablanca.html

Blasts by Qaeda Unit Are Deadliest Attack in Algiers in Years

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/africa/12algeria.html

Macao Bank Challenges U.S. Ban as Politically Based
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/world/asia/17macao.html?ref=asia

Britain: Journalists Vote to Boycott Israeli Goods = Reason... Alan Johnston a BBC journalist has been held over a month in Gaza. A Palestinian group claims to have killed him this past Sunday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/world/europe/17briefs-britain.html

2007 Pulitzer Prizes
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/arts/pulitzer2007.html?ref=arts

New French Concert Hall; Designed by Jean Nouvel (looks like he sweat Frank Ghery)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/arts/design/14hall.htm

Britney Fires Larry Rudolph
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04172007/gossip/pagesix/comeback_try_pagesix_.htm

Beyonce Soon to be in Negotiations with Sony
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04172007/gossip/pagesix/contract_crush_for_knowles_pagesix_.htm
David Bekham Naked, yes naked (NSW)
http://perezhilton.com/topics/david_beckham/real_or_fake_you_decide_20070417.php

Virgina Tech

2007-04-17T06:12:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine getting up for your 9am class, groggy from the late night you spent studying, drinking, finishing a paper hocked up on caffeine. To arrive at your 1st class settling in your seat to absorb this mornings lecture and all of a sudden chaos breaks out.
This could have been any campus USA.
This lunatic at Virgina Tech has taken the lives of 32 people. He was a student at Virgina Tech, Chi Seung-Hui, 23 a senior from South Korea. People who didn't deserve to die and had no way of fighting back. The fear and imagery that these students will live with is too much to bear. I can't even imagine how the families are handling the grief. One student said, the gunman was calm and focused. "The gunman in Norris Hall was described as a young Asian man with two pistols who calmly entered classrooms and shot professors and students. He peeked into the German class in Room 207, witnesses said, then pushed his way in. (nyt)" Laying out round after round into these unsuspecting students and teachers. Students even had to jump from the second story classroom to reach safety. This story gives me chills and makes me sick to my stomach. My condolences go out the families affected by this tragedy. Any one of us could have been one of these students, just getting to their first class of the day.

Articles:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VIRGINIA_TECH_SHOOTING?SITE=KVUE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17scene.html?hp

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=2906111015aea9ff4b3a62eaa27bc25e1df065f2

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17virginia.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6563565.stm

Crazed Gunman at Virgina Tech

2007-04-16T12:33:00.001-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html

My Mom the Author

2007-04-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

Check out Oprah's Magazine "O" May Issue.. featured on page 263 is my mom's newest addition to her coffee table book collection. If you didn't know my mom was an author, well now you do. Check out here three titles; The Wedding Album, The Blue Jean and the White T. Each book is a photo essay of the subject matter married with historical text to take you through the iconography of the white t and the blue jean. While the Wedding Album takes you through a visual journey of wedding culture and tradition all around the world.

Daily News : April 16th, 2007

2007-04-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

Sadr Minister Quit Iraqi Cabinet;
Last week, tens of thousands of people attended a rally in the Shia city of Najaf organised by Mr Sadr to protest against the continued presence of US-led troops in Iraq
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6558405.stm

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, met in Jerusalem on Sunday, resulting in some mixed messages regarding a resumption of their long-dormant peace efforts.

Mr. Olmert told the Israeli cabinet that Israel would make “every effort to find a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Israeli officials have also indicated that Israel would be willing to discuss an Arab peace initiative with a working committee of the Arab League, if invited.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/world/middleeast/16mideast.html?ref=middleeast

Who is Ehud Olmert?
Ehud Olmert is the 12th Israeli to serve as Prime Minister and probably the best politician of them all. Ariel Sharon, his immediate predecessor, was a professional hero. Olmert, 60, is a lawyer, a deal maker, an inside man. His Israel is a modern, democratic society, not a biblical re-enactment. Olmert was Sharon's consigliere on the decision to leave Gaza. He calculated that Israel couldn't rule the Palestinians there and remain a democracy; he had no trouble deciding which was more important. Olmert helped Sharon see the arithmetic and the political equation. It was a gutsy thing for a lifelong Likudnik to do, and it won Olmert enough respect to get him nominated and elected.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187200,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4135680.stm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/olmert.html

Who is Mahmoud Abbas?
Abbas is considered a moderate, one of the Palestinian Arabs interested in a peaceful solution to the conflict with Israel. He advocated negotiations with Israelis and initiated a dialogue with Jewish and pacifist movements in the 1970s. He led negotiations with Matiyahu Peled that resulted in the announcement of "principles of peace" based on a two-state-solution in January 1977. He also coordinated the negotiation process during the 1991 Madrid Conference. His long contacts with Israeli leftists won him a reputation as a PLO dove and he headed the Palestinian negotiating team to the secret Oslo talks. Abbas therefore played a key role in the Oslo Peace process during the 1990s. As Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee, Abbas was signatory of the 1993 Declaration of Principles that launched the Oslo peace process. Two years later, in 1995, Abbas signed the Interim Peace Agreement with Israel.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1933453.stm

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_current_mahmoud_abbas.php

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Abbas.html

Britain to stop using the phrase "the war on terror"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070416/ap_on_re_eu/britain_war_on_terror;_ylt=AtZSf6DXnJQRAFH_n1gGweFbbBAF

The Designer who liked models is now facing rape charges
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/fashion/15anand.html?_r=1&ref=fashion&oref=slogin

Iran Says It Wants Bidders for 2 More Nuclear Plants
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/world/middleeast/16iran.html

Oxfam Appeals for Aid for Darfur
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6559333.stm

Fake n Bake
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/style/tmagazine/15tsamurai.html?ref=tmagazine

Have Spatula Will Travel
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/travel/15cooking.html?ref=dining

This is just stupid
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/business/07soda.html?ex=1176868800&en=66bc8a3222010ec6&ei=5070

McDonald's Items from Around the World
http://www.fjetsam.com/index.php/features/mcmenu-madness-part-i-international.index.html

Olives that can cause Botulism
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-329recallolives,0,5994028.story?coll=sfla-business-headlines

Travel: Rajasthan, India's Playground
http://www.concierge.com/destination/rajasthan

Rajasthan; India's Playground

2007-04-16T07:05:00.000-07:00

Travel: Rajasthan, India's Playground
http://www.concierge.com/destination/rajasthan

New Hue in Polish

2007-04-16T07:04:00.000-07:00

Blue Polish.. Kinda feeling the navy blues...
1. Sephora nail polish in 56 electric blue, $4. At Sephora stores.
2. and 6. Color club polish in all in and in jewel tone blue, $5 each. At Ray Beauty Supply, 721 Eighth Avenue.
3. and 7. Essie polish in St. Barths blue and in aruba blue, $8 each. Go to www.essie.com.
4. Opi polish in Lincoln Park at Midnight, $7.50. Go to www.opi.com.
5. Orly manicure miniatures polish in blue collar, $3.50. Go to www.orlybeauty.com.

Daily News : April 13th, 2007

2007-04-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

**Sigh** I wish I was there....

Turmoil Grows For World Bank Chief
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/world/13cnd-wolfowitz.html?hp

World Bank and IMF meeting in DC this Weekend http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21297726~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html

Iraqi Lawmakers Meet After Blast http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/world/middleeast/13cnd-iraq.html_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Darfur
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/washington/13diplo.html?hp http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6551405.stm

Skipping Class to Master Chess http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/nyregion/13chess.html?ref=nyregion

2nd Avenue Subway
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/nyregion/13tunnel.html?ref=nyregion

2 People Held After Casablanca Blasts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6549295.stm

North Korea Sacks Prime Minister
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6546057.stm

Iraqi leaders say bombing will unite them http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070413/ts_nm/iraq_dc;_ylt=AqLSu_Cvz8dckIJD23bK4Mas0NUE

Turmoil Grows For World Bank Chief
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/world/13cnd-wolfowitz.html?hp

World Bank and IMF meeting in DC this Weekend http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21297726~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html

Iraqi Lawmakers Meet After Blast http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/world/middleeast/13cnd-iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple : Chapter One

2007-04-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

This is my first installment of, Eating your way through the Big Apple...
I'm a self-proclaimed foodie and I want to share with you mine and my peers favorite places.
Do you recall that survey I emailed you, you know the one you didn't respond to. Riiiight well I asked you all those questions to help compile a master list of "our" favorite places to dine. Living in New York City really allows you to explore the world through your taste buds and at any price range. I'm hoping to encourage you to try some of these places and hopefully suggest new ones I have yet to enjoy. These restaurants, at least the ones which I can vouch for are consistently superb. I don't f' with places that can't always get it right.

This weeks installment is... Brunch

Meat Packing
Pastis
9 9th Ave, New York 10014
At Little W 12th St
Phone: 212-929-4844
* This place is packed, the food is worth the wait and always consistent.
Try: Omlette aux Fines Herbes, Eggs Norwegian or any other tasty thing that grabs you.

Upper West Side
Good Enough to Eat
483 Amsterdam Ave,
New York 10024
Btwn 83rd & 84th St
Phone: 212-496-0163
*You will wait on line, you will not complain, you eill get attitude and you will thank me after. Inside it feels like you were transported to a country kitchen in Vermont and the food will taste like a farm is in the back. Coffee, eggs, homemade strawberry butter, biscuits, etc..
Try: The Special Scramble, the thick cut bacon and the Farmhouse

Sarabeth’s West
423 Amsterdam Ave,
New York 10024
At 80th St
Phone: 212-496-6280
*Sterile cookie cutter environment, amazing service and excellent breakfast!
Try: Any of the omlettes

Upper East Side
Norma;s @ Le Parker Meridian
118 West 57th Street
Phone: 212-245-5000
Try: Everything.. delicious.

Fred’s at Barney’s
660 Madison Ave,
New York 10021
At 61st St
Phone: 212-833-2200
*Make a reservation
Try:Marc's Madison Salad and the Belgium Cut Fries

E.A.T
1064 Madison Ave, New York 10028Btwn 80th & 81st St Phone: 212-772-0022
*Expensive
Try: The Bread Basket and all the Salads

West Village
Extra Virgin
259 W 4th St,
New York 10014Btwn
Charles & Perry St
Phone: 212-691-9359
*Never Been

Pink Tea Cup
42 Grove St,
New York 10014
Btwn Bedford & Bleeker St
Phone: 212-807-6755
* You will wait on line and you will be cramped inside. Great service
Try: The pancakes are outstanding!

Cornelia Street Café
29 Cornelia St,
New York 10014
Btwn Bleecker & W 4th St
Phone: 212-989-9319
*Never Been

Lower East Side
Clinton Street Baking Co.
4 Clinton St,
New York 10002
Btwn Stanton & Houston St
Phone: 646-602-6263
*never been

Stanton Social
99 Stanton St,
New York 10002
Btwn Orchard & Ludlow St
Phone: 212-995-0099
*expensive, never been for brunch

Orologio
162 Avenue A,
New York 10009
Btwn 10th & 11th St
Phone: 212-228-6900
*never been

Brooklyn
Egg
135 N 5th St,
Brooklyn 11211
At Bedford Ave
Phone: 718-302-5151

Park Luncheonette
334 Driggs Ave,
Brooklyn 11222
At Lorimer St
Phone: 718-383-3571

Night of the Cookers
767 Fulton St,
Brooklyn 11217
Btwn Greene Ave & S Oxford St
Phone: 718-797-1197