Memo from NYC

Why is Dick Cheney such a giant, raging prick?

When our beloved former VP isn't busy having heart attacks or shooting people in the face, he's out there kvetching about the brand new Obama administration, criticizing its every move. As was Cheney's vice-presidency unprecedented in its power and secrecy, so now is his former VEEPiness unprecedented in its utter lack of class.

According to custom and unwritten rules of decorum, when Presidents and Vice-Presidents leave office, they clear out of DC and stay out of the news for about a year or so. Even if they do pop up in the media every now and then, at least for the first couple of years, they don't criticize their successors. They shut the hell up and let the new people do their job.

Bill Clinton and Al Gore extended Bush and Cheney this courtesy in 2001. Bush Sr. and Dan Quayle did so as well to Clinton and Gore in 1993. And to his credit, Bush Jr. has thus far been quite respectful of Obama and Biden.

Not Cheney.

Oh no.

This creep, just weeks out of office, was giving interviews saying that Obama was weakening America. Oh yes, according to his Dickiness, Obama is making us vulnerable to terrorist attacks and dragging us on the road to serfdom. We're in a lot of trouble! (so cries Dick).

Why? Because apparently Barack Obama doesn't think we should run the country and influence the world the same way Dick Cheney would. Obama thinks that the Bush/Cheney years were a miserable failure and America should go in a less reactionary, more progressive direction. And apparently, as the last election showed and the current polls show, THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICANS AGREE!

But what's really gotten Dick mad, what's really gotten him all angry, is that President Obama doesn't think the USA should torture people. Obama has this crazy notion that torture is morally wrong, illegal, degrades America's image in the world, and undermines our great moral authority. Not only that but experts agree that torture doesn't really work in getting info from prisoners that helps protect America. Actually, torture makes it more difficult to get good information because you can't rely on the info tortured prisoners give!

Try telling Dick that. He thinks we should torture early and often. Torture really gets Dick hard.

I have a new name for Vice-President Cheney: Torture Boy.

What a miserable, bitter, rejected, pitiable man Torture Boy is. Approaching seventy, after forty years in public life, he can't accept that America has rejected him, his party, and his worldview. Obviously it's driving him crazy and so now he's just venting, "warning" us. Consider ourselves warned Dick. Now go away.

I seriously think Dick Cheney -- out of time, out of power, out of step with America -- actually wants there to be another terrorist attack on America. I'm sure that deep down in his artificial heart, he probably prays every night that we'll get hit again. "That'll show 'em that I'm right!"

Egads.

Of course, this is a free country (despite Dick Cheney's best efforts) and our former VP has the right to say whatever the hell he wants to whoever cares to listen. After all, it's his freedom along with more than 300 million Americans that Obama works every day to secure -- even if Dick Cheney doesn't believe it.

But, as I mentioned before, he's still violating previously held rules of decorum that take place after transitions of power. Like the whiny, petulant child that he is, Cheney is showing no respect, meddling where he's doesn't belong. And like he did to our laws on torture and the office of the Vice-Presidency, it looks like Torture Boy is re-writing these other old rules as well.

Mayor Bloomberg gets uppity during gay marriage press conference

Little delayed in posting this but it is funny.

Why Is this Man Smiling?

Pirate Suspect, Now in New York, Charged as Adult

Wonder if he'll be housed next to Bernie Madoff?

Seriously, if you think about it, even though he'll be in jail, this pirate probably never thought he'd go to NYC in his life -- thus the smile. Hope he got a good view of the city from the airplane because he ain't exactly gonna be taken on a tour. Maybe his cell will have a window but I doubt it.

Djerdan

Balkan cuisine isn't something I've ever tried before but recently I went to Djerdan on West 38th street and had a really great meal. They have wonderful dishes like goulash and stuffed peppers and cabbage but their star attraction are the bureks. Bureks are phyllo dough pies stuffed with things like cheese, spinach, and ground beef. They are served, usually, with cups of a delicious yogurt that you can pour over the bureks but also drink. They're really, really good.

Considering that there aren't that many good restaurants in the Garment district, Djerdan is a real find. It's not too expensive or crowded so it's not too hard to get a table.

But don't just take my word for it. See what New York magazine had to say.

Where (some) New Yorkers fear to tread ...

One of the stranger places you can go in NYC isn't on any street -- it's online.

The New York Times has an long feature story today about the subterranean world of people looking for casual sex on Craigslist. This isn't online dating exactly -- where people look at profiles with pictures and lots of information and have to register credit card info and stuff like that -- this is all anonymous, stealthy, and secretive behavior -- a very 21st century Last Tango in Paris kinda thing.

Obviously lots of people do this and nothing bad ever happens (like you don't hear in the news about all of the planes that don't crash) but there have been a few stories (like the tragic death of WABC newsman George Weber) where people thought they were meeting for casual sex and things went very, very wrong. Either that, or they thought they were meeting a hottie and instead met a ... nottie.

On the one hand it's easy to think that folks who do this are weird and desperate but there for but the grace of God goes any of us. On the other hand, in this exhausting super fast-paced, time is money, gotta run society, people have precious time to do anything for very long so penciling in some NSA nookie isn't that surprising. In fact, one might ask, why aren't more New Yorkers doing this?

Being ever prurient, Mr NYC would love know if any of his readers have ever done this. What happened? Were you scared?

Letterman on Texas Succesion: "Sounds good to us!"

Bolt Bus

Recently I had to go to Philly for the day and was directed to take a Bolt Bus there. I hadn't heard about this company before but was surprised and pleased. It is NOT, repeat NOT one of those scary Chinatown buses nor does it force you to brave the hell that is the Port Authority.

Instead, you book your ticket online, print out your confirmation, and pick up the bus either on 34th street and 7th or 8th Avenues or downtown on 6th Avenue between Grand and Watts. If you have an "A" confirmation number, then you're guaranteed a seat. Anything after that is the equivalent of stand-by. The buses leave every half-hour or so.

The cost of a one way trip is $13 and round-trip is $26. Much, much cheaper than Amtrak and it only takes a little longer to get there.

After my trip on Bolt Bus I decided to dub it the "Yuppie Express." See, it only serves the big cities on the Eastern seaboard -- Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, and DC -- so you're out of luck if you want to go to places like Baltimore or Wilmington or Hartford or places like that. Also, the buses have Wi-Fi service and nearly half the people on the bus were firing up their laptops. Most of all, you have to get your tickets online, you can't buy them at the bus stop so it requires all its passengers to be Internet users.

However, if you're reading this then you're probably a pretty regular Internet user already -- and if you need to get around the Northeast, this is a great find.

Welcome Archbishop Dolan

A Grand Entrance at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

Today Catholics in NYC have a new leader as Archbishop Timothy Dolan officially took over the Archdiocese of New York. A little less stiff than Cardinal Egan, Dolan is something of a kidder. The former head of the Milwaukee church, Dolan said in his first homily, “My Spanish is lousy and my English not much better. I’m still angry at New York for taking Favre and Sabathia from us in Wisconsin. The Yankees and Mets over the Cardinals and Brewers? Forget it!”

Good luck Archbishop.

Grey Gardens

What if Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, or Nancy Reagan had crazy cousins who lived in squalor in a rundown, over-sized house?

Such was the case for perhaps our most glamorous First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Her cousin Edie Bouvier Beale and Edie's mother Edith were the grand dames of Long Island society in the 1940s but, by the early 1970s, they were literally living in their own filth in a giant dilapidated Southhampton home, acting strangely. The decaying estate that housed these decaying souls was called Grey Gardens, and it was the name of the groundbreaking 1975 documentary that featured these two eccentric, fascinating ladies.

Long before reality TV, Grey Gardens showed that truth was WAY stranger than fiction and it something that had to be seen to be believed. It's a story about mothers and daughters, mental illness, and regretting what might have been. Rumor has it that, in the early 1940s, Edie was briefly engaged to Joseph Kennedy Jr., JFK's older brother. Rumor also has it that Edie's mother caused Joe Jr. to break off the engagement, leaving Edie heartbroken and dependent on her mother. Then, of course, Joe Jr. died heroically in World War II. (Again, this is all rumor but in the musical this engagement and its sudden end is treated as fact). Of course, Edie's younger cousin Jackie went on to marry Joe Jr.'s younger brother and the rest is ... Had the engagement not been broken, and had Joe Jr. lived, and had he fulfilled his father's dream of becoming president (which then fell on JFK's shoulder), then believe it or not Edie Beale would have ended up as First Lady of the United States!

Fate doth have a sense of humor.

Grey Gardens was turned into a wonderful Broadway musical in 2006 and, in one of my first blog entries for Mr NYC, I gave it a short rave back in 2007.

Now it has been turned into a feature film starring Jessica Lange as Edith and Drew Barrymore as Little Edie. I can't wait to see this movie, it looks great. As this clip shows, they had great source material to work with.

Review: "The Works: Anatomy of a City"

A city is not only a collection of buildings, streets, parks, and people, it really is a body – a network of interrelated functions that keep it alive. Hence, the subtitle of Kate Ascher’s wonderful book about New York City infrastructure The Works: Anatomy of a City.

Anatomy is right. If you could dissect NYC with a scalpel, you’d find a whole other city pulsating within it. Right inside our streets and structures, there are literally thousands and thousands and thousands of miles of tubes, tunnels, sewers, electrical cords, pipes – and so much more! We all know that our city’s infrastructure “exists” (how could we not?) but few of us I’m sure know how it actually works. So The Works give us the inside scoop on how our infrastructure affects New Yorkers lives everyday.

After all, we New Yorkers could not literally live unless we got our electricity and drinking water everyday, got our garbage and waste removed, were able to go to the supermarket and find food in the friggin’ thing, use the phone, use the Internet, turn on the TV and radio, communicate with the outside world, and be protected from criminals and the world’s natural elements. It’s easy to assume that these things just … happen … that they exist in nature … that all of the city’s vital functions and services are magically supplied to us. But they’re not – oh no, it’s an exact and complex science, and The Works gives you all the dirty details on how NYC survives and thrives.

Reading this book you’ll learn, amongst many other things:

• How the city manages the flow of street and pedestrian traffic – and if any of those darn buttons you still see at some crosswalks still work.
• How the postal system in this city functions - do you know how many of our more notable buildings have their own zip codes?
• What types of trees you’ll find in NYC parks.
• How freight moves in and out of the city – did you know that the ocean floor below New York Harbor is still being dredged and lowered to this day?
• Where our electricity comes from.
• How cell phones have transformed NYC communications.
• Why are our drinking water stays so clean.
• Stuff about our airports – did you know that JFK is the same size as Manhattan from below Central Park to the South Ferry?
• What does the future of NYC infrastructure hold?

I won’t give away anything more but, needless to say, this book educates you about NYC as few can. It also has lots of beautiful pictures and graphics so reading this book is not only informative but also a visual delight for the eyes. If you love NYC and want to unlock more of its mysteries, The Works is a must read.