Pretty pictures.


Something just put up on the Flickr stream with a whole bunch of other new shots.

Surprised?

I don’t think so.


“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference,” Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

Not a lot to say.

Generally, I’m in a position of not having a lot to say these days. Between that and the fact the blog doesn’t generate much in the way of traffic (do people read this thing?), I have been focusing my efforts elsewhere of late. Also, there’s the greater fallout from having to deal with the events of earlier this month which seem very far away even though less than a month has passed.

I’ve got a bunch of things cooking - good things, positive things, which I am happy about and I find myself trying to regain my momentum. I don’t do well when the cold weather comes around, I just don’t like it that much, never have really. Now, I find myself trying to keep moving forward even though I realize there have been some big things happening.

I have feelers out and have done preliminary work into exploring a new direction in terms of what it is I do but, until things come to fruition, better off not talking about it. Also, I spend a lot of time each and every day culling. There is a zen like place I want to arrive at, a place that is free from clutter. Sounds simple but, I don’t know if it is a consequence of age or not, it seems the older I get the more clutter amasses or the more attention needs to be given to keep it from amassing.

I spoke to an old friend the other day. This friend has a storage space where he keeps his prized collection of books. He doesn’t read them, but they’re there in case he wants to.

Think about that statement for a moment.

These are things which he pays to keep stored away, things he has access to, but instead of truly enjoying them they have become a burden to him. He pays for the comfort and security having these things brings him. He’s not the only person I know who lives life like that. There are a lot of people in and around cities who just don’t feel they have enough space and keep things in storage.

I’m like that too in a way. Thing is, I think the impulse arises out of being in a situation where I had very little and where I struggled enormously with just managing to get by in life. I’ve heard stories of people who lived through the depression and consequently were always fearful of losing everything. Because of this, they saved everything whether or not they truly had a use for it or needed it. Their fear ruled them.

I don’t want to live my life ruled by fear.

There are two ways to deal with clutter, one way is the wholesale toss. I’m not a big fan of the wholesale toss because there are some things which are treasures and which you should manage to hold onto. So, lately what I’ve been spending a lot of time doing is sorting through the clutter, getting my house in order so to speak and clearing the decks. I’m not there yet, it’s a big job but, it took around 20 years to amass all this crap, I figure if it take a year or two to get rid of it all, it’s worth it if it means living the next 20 years clutter free and without the lurking fear in the back of my mind.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!



If you look closely at the spinner rack in front of this store on Mulberry Street you will see a preponderance of Hollywood’s take on Italians. Hollywood has done a fairly good job of glorifying a ridiculously small segment of the population and consequently coloring many people’s view of Italians as a group.

What do I mean?

According to the United States census numbers, Italians are the 6th largest ethnic group in the US, clocking in with 15,638,348 Americans of Italian descent and according to the FBI website: The FBI estimates the size of the four IOC groups to be approximately 25,000 members and 250,000 affiliates worldwide. There are more than 3,000 members and affiliates in the United States.

3,000 as a percentage of 15,638,348 works out to .019%.

Yet strangely enough according to the Wikipedia entry on Italian Americans: To this day, Italian Americans are frequently associated with organized crime in the minds of most Americans, largely due to pervasive media stereotyping and a number of popular gangster movies (such as The Godfather and Goodfellas). A Zogby International survey revealed that 78 percent of teenagers 13 to 18 associated Italian Americans with either criminal activity or blue-collar work. A survey by the Response Analysis Corp. reported that 74 percent of adult Americans believe most Italian Americans have “some connection” to organized crime.[2]

Thanks Hollywood and thanks to idiots like the owner of this store who continue in perpetuating a myth.

FCB on a Saturday morning.'

A few weeks back, this was Anna pre haircut while we were experiencing mild, mild weather. Now, having just gotten past the coldest day in two years I have to wonder if I am not the subject of some Kitty Kursing.

I know.

Yankees sending delegation to China.

Understand as I was reading this today, I couldn’t help but think there is a grossly politically incorrect, terribly funny joke in here - any help that can be provided would be appreciated.

The Amish couple and the saddle.

I got a call from my good friend Sarah last night (not to be confused with Madame X) who relayed an interesting tale of a meandering drive through snow covered hills which took her, her son and her mother into a world which has existed right on their doorstep but which they never stepped into. It was a reminder in some ways of the magical wonder which is all around us if we but open ourselves up to the possibilities the world presents us with.

While it was a fascinating journey for each of the participants, it can perhaps be best summed up by the observations of a disaffected five year old who, when asked if he had noticed anything different about the people who had been given a ride (the Amish couple), observed that the man wore a hat.

Strategies for the new millennium.

Just was reading this column in New York Magazine by Kurt Andersen which I thought I would share, click through to read it in its entirety. Makes a couple very salient points which hopefully the right people will pick up on:

The Great Society programs of the mid-sixties—Food Stamps, Head Start, Medicaid, Medicare—were the final flowering of a social-welfare era that began with FDR’s New Deal 30 years earlier. The countervailing rightward pendulum swing—deregulation and tax cuts under Reagan, welfare reform under Clinton, still more tax cuts under Bush—has dominated our political economy for nearly the past 30 years.

In other words, the time seems to be ripening for a transformative surge of new passion and policy and political traction around the idea of economic fairness. Blaming illegal Mexican immigrants and dollar-an-hour Chinese workers for our troubles is an easy way to vent, but Lou Dobbs’s other regular targets are pretty much on the mark: corporate greedheads and their craven enablers in the political class.

For more than a generation, the Republicans have pitched themselves as the good-old-days party, appealing to the nostalgic hunger for the wholesome, coherent society and culture of mid-century, before life went crazy around 1968. What the Democrats can do now is the same thing, only different—that is, appeal to the nostalgic hunger for the sense of basic economic security and fairness that prevailed before life went crazy around 1986.

Why do I feel there is a certain irony in this?

Today, which is the anniversary of the Roe V. Wade decision, the President made the following comments:

President Bush marked the 34th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision Monday, telling thousands of abortion foes he shares their goal of seeing “the day when every child is welcomed in life and protected into law.” Bush also signaled his unchanged opposition to a key goal of the Democrats who now control Congress: broadening embryonic stem-cell research.

Contrasted against this:

This is an ongoing human security project which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention by the USA and its allies. The count includes civilian deaths caused by coalition military action and by military or paramilitary responses to the coalition presence (e.g. insurgent and terrorist attacks). It also includes excess civilian deaths caused by criminal action resulting from the breakdown in law and order which followed the coalition invasion.

Admittedly these are both issues I have mixed feelings about but, why do I get the sense, somewhere, someone is having a good laugh at our expense?

Food, glorious food!

I am driven by my stomach, what can I say. There are few things in life which can exceed the satisfaction and delight of a good meal. To that end I am always on the lookout for new places with which to test my dining chops and to expand my repertoire of dining locales. Perhaps the only advantage I really take out of living around such a large city is exploring and discovering new dining treasures.

To that end a few things caught my eye this week which I thought I would share.

First off, I can’t say why, maybe I saw something on the Food Network or the History Channel about automats but it got me to thinking about them and doing a bit of idle surfing on the topic. I remember the old Automat which was on 42nd and 3rd (now a GAP I think) but, I can’t really say it was a place I frequented with any regularity. I do remember a Horn and Hardart restaurant that was located in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers. I remember it in that I can definitely recall eating there as a kid but, again it left little impact on me as far as the actual food itself went.

Well, it appears there’s a new automat which opened a few months back and I want to check out (of course if anyone has checked it out I’d be curious as to their thoughts on the place)

Conceived by Robert Kwak, David Leong, and a designer known as “Nobu,” Bamn will serve finger foods, like grilled cheese and pizza dumplings, with an occasional Asian kick. It’s the first restaurant venture by Mr. Kwak, an entrepreneur who launched the first Asian basketball league in Manhattan. Items will cost between $1.50 and $2.50, and diners should either bring quarters or silver dollars or use the store's change machine to get them.

Second, for the next two weeks New Yorkers are fortunate to experience Restaurant Week (why it’s called Week when it is two weeks escapes me but, there you have it). What’s great about restaurant week is that you have the opportunity to try a lot of great restaurants that would otherwise be out of the range of the pocketbook. Granted, you have to stick to a predesignated menu but, you do get the chance to really appreciate some of the fine restaurants in the city.

I’ve taken advantage of Restaurant Week over the summer and all I can say was that it wound up being a half good (Lupa)/half bad (Mesa Grill) experience. If you haven’t heard of or checked out a restaurant during Restaurant Week, well it is well worth it and you are sure to find something to your taste!

Where it went wrong.

Everytime I think about where Harrison Ford went wrong in his career, I look back at Air Force One. There was something almost cartoony about that movie. Besides the laughability of the premise of President as action hero, it was around this time Harrison was getting a little long in the tooth for roles like these.

I keep thinking of Clint Eastwood and how he managed to make a great career for himself even as he aged. Even Burt Reynolds has done a few great turns through the years by choosing to step away from the kind of roles which he was best known for (take a look at Burt’s guesting on the X-Files or his turn in Boogie Nights).

Even Bruce Willis has done a somewhat interesting job of taking his career and deciding to be more of a character actor than a leading man a lot of the time, even when he does take on the role of action hero, it’s less over the top than what he used to do - contrast any of the Die Hard movies with Unbreakable.

I know there has been talk about another Indiana Jones movie but, if Harrison Ford is running around in that like he was in the others... well, let’s just say it might not come across the way the filmmakers are intending. Thing is, George Lucas always said there were supposed to be nine Star Wars movies, the first three being the middle three, the last batch being the first three and then there was supposed to be a trilogy that took place after Return of the Jedi. I kinda wouldn’t mind seeing those same actors (Hammill, Fisher and Ford) reprising those roles as older people in another trilogy.

Remind me.

If you live locally (the greater NYC area), tomorrow when you are running around in your short shorts and t-shirt, remind me how we’re experiencing Global Warming. That it took until the middle of January for the temperature to get this low is to me a blessing. Anyone who has to heat a home will tell you the same. The first significant snow (one that sticked) arrived last night, if that is all the snow we get this year, nothing would make me happier. Hopefully, since it’s already the 19th of January, it will be a brief time we have to spend bundled up against the elements.

Really interesting article,

which I came across by way of the Monster blog. Definitely worth a read and something which resonated within me given my recent post.

From the Harvard School of Business.

The Trap of Overwhelming Demands

Fortunately, most managers can overcome their habitual fire fighting. To do so, however, they must first clear the most difficult hurdle: the belief that they are indispensable. Managers who complain about having too little time often thrive on the sense of importance that their busyness generates. They enjoy being at the center of frantic activity where people continually ask them for help, information, or advice. If they were honest, then they would really not want more time—especially time to reflect!

Has this happened to anyone else?

In the midst of everything that was going on last week I noticed something going on with my phone (and I noticed this the first day all the craziness began). Basically, even though the thing was hooked up and had been charged, it was dying out fairly fast and no longer seemed to be getting decent reception. I’ve had the stupid thing for something like two years now but, as with all my technology purchases, I tend to squeeze every last bit of usefulness out of the life of any gadget I buy. Whether it’s phones, computers, TVs, etc. - I long ago stopped being seduced by the allure of the latest and the greatest. When I do finally plunk down some samolians to get something though, I am genuinely pleased because it entails a big leap forward (LOL).

So, the phone, over the last few days has been acting strangely. No reception, no ringing, thing runs out of juice much faster than I can remember it ever doing and I’m thinking it’s time to get a new battery. Anyone else have this kind of thing happening? This of course is presupposing people hold onto a phone long enough for the battery to go bad (which seems like a rarity these days).

Only.

29 days until pitchers and catchers report, I can’t wait. Up until today it wasn’t even really that cold. Hooray!

The gap.

There is a gap in my life between the person I am and the person I would like to be. Most of my days are spent trying to figure out ways to bridge that gap. I haven’t been able to make the leap yet but, I keep trying.

Today, I got a nasty email. Well, maybe I should qualify that statement. I got an email that was derisive and chiding in tone. Under the circumstances of the last week I have to admit my patience with such things is fairly thin. My first impulse was to respond in kind, a lot of that has to do with feeling rubbed raw over the last few days but, I caught myself.

In the past I wouldn’t have done that, I would have just acted on first impulse and written something nasty back. In this instance, it was a signal. The signal was that the time had come to end an association which had long ago outlived any usefulness. Nowadays, there is a very strange dynamic which seems to occur in the workplace - I think of it as battered employee syndrome. Battered employee syndrome is the lose/lose scenario where no matter what an employee (contractor, vendor) does, they’re wrong. I find it is emblematic of poor management.

You know the whole employer/employee relationship is a bit of a contract - people are hired to come in and perform certain functions - this would be known as ‘the job description.’ Hence when an employee is hired for a particular position, there are certain parameters of experience and expertise which must be met if the employee is to fill the position and perform their duties in a competent and timely manner.

One of the hallmarks of a dysfunctional company is when a manager asks a subordinate to write their own job description. Whenever I have heard of this happening the first thing I usually advise the person to do is to look for another job. Think of it this way, ‘We hired you, we pay you but, we really don’t know what it is you do.’ That’s comforting, wouldn’t you say?

Well, I digress. In this instance the ‘entity’ in question has repeatedly demonstrated absolutely no loyalty to their employees through the years. The same problems crop up in a place year after year and while the focus continues to be in one specific area the cause, and source of the problem never gets addressed. So, we wind up in battered employee syndrome.

It’s like a game of what have you done for me lately? So, if the only thing you can get out of a place is money, no career advancement, no job satisfaction, no reward or recognition for good work, does it make sense to stay in a place? If the only good thing you can say about your job is that it is bearable, isn’t it incumbent on you to seek out ways to make the situation better and failing that seek out a better situation?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s called work for a reason, in the memorable words of Red Forman: If it wasn’t “work,” they wouldn’t call it work. They’d call it “super-wonderful, crazy-fun time!” Or “Skippedydoo!” So, in regard to this one particular place, we’re not talking the land of Skippedydoo but, if the door doesn’t swing both ways, well what’s left?

Then, as more time passes I lose the ability to even be annoyed about it - life is too short for such stupidity.

Well, that wasn’t fun.

So, the funeral was Saturday and as fate would have it, it wasn’t all too cold and the rain had let up by the time we got to the cemetery so the service itself wasn’t a totally drenching one. People showed up to the wake which was nice of them and they showed up for the funeral which was nicer still. You would think after the last 15 months, I would be ready for this but, I guess we’re never ready for the moment when death arrives in our lives.

It will take me awhile to truly believe it, to accept it and absorb it. Everything about the prospect of Pop not being around just seems so unreal and final.

Over the last four days, I have found myself constantly tired. This is mainly the result of sleeping at night in a way where I lie down for a bit, wake up two hours later, am up for a few hours and then fall asleep for another few hours again.

I am never good at these things. I admit it. Honestly, I just don’t know how to deal with death or people who are mourning. A big part of that is because I don’t want to say the wrong thing and without saying something meaningful to someone, something which will truly provide them with comfort, I feel whatever I do say will wind up sounding hollow or phony. My biggest concern over the last few days was choreographing a ceremony and process which would be both dignified and respectful. That it was so important sounds like an odd thing but, having taken care of the man for as long as I did, it was very important to me not to screw it up at the end.

And I was soooo tired. To tell the truth after going to the hospital and seeing him there after he died the first night, there is nothing more I wanted to do than to crawl into bed and just sleep for days, really. I just wanted to wind up in bed and then wake up on a nice warm and sunny day where I could get out and just enjoy the weather and the warmth of the sun on my skin.

Still, it wasn’t to be and there was lots to do over the next 72 hours - phone-calls had to be made, arrangements had to be finalized, there was a question of being dressed properly for the occasion and then there was the matter of being front and center in everything.

I never did write an obituary as I had intended. I just let the funeral home take care of that because after everything else I found it hard to organize my thoughts to put something on paper which I felt was appropriate. I wrote something of a eulogy but, I wound up missing the correct moment to read it and consequently fumbled through some words at the graveside which in retrospect I am not even sure whether or not I was coherent. As it was I kept things short, fighting my own nerves and trying to contain my own desire to wail away. I can’t even remember what I said as it seemed the world was spinning standing there beside an open grave on muddy earth with all these faces pointed at me.

Ouch.

The funeral mass was much nicer than I anticipated it would be, the church was beautiful and the thoughts delivered by the father in attendance would have been hard to follow anyway because it was a fitting and thoughtful sermon. I also think I ate the mother of all communion wafers - the thing the jumbo size communion wafer and considering how long it had been since I had gone for any kind of communion I wonder if the priest didn’t know something I didn’t - I mean seriously it was like a horse pill or something. My cousin’s youngest rode with me in the car which actually was really nice just to have her company.

So, this is what I wrote and what I imagine I would have said if I had gotten the chance. As it was, the father in question would have been a very hard act to follow and while I was sitting in that first pew all kinds of thoughts were running through my head...

“How about the father there? Let’s have a big hand for him!”

No, I don’t think that would’ve worked. Like I said I fumbled through at least part of this at the graveside, it was a lot shorter because I just winged it and at that point I was thinking funerals are very much like awards shows in that they shouldn’t run overly long because you wind up losing the attention of the audience.

Last night, I was trying to think about what I would say to all of you here today. I was hoping to be able to provide something of great insight. However, it was just an overblown ego at work.

They say the only two things which are certain in the world are death and taxes. Today we find ourselves here, confronting just one of those sure things. It is inescapable for all of us. Look around you, no matter what your age, the one thing you can be assured of is one day you WILL die.

Each and every one of us have only a certain number of days on this planet even none of us knows in advance what that number will be. In pop’s case the number turned out to be 30,415 - he didn’t know it and neither did I.

Looking at it now, I am forced to wonder if I had known the exact number of days and we were so very close to the last few, would I have cherished those dwindling days more? And the truth is, I probably would have.

My father lived a full life by the standard with which we measure time, he laughed, he smiled, he had fun but at the end that life - he spoke often of his own unhappiness and regret. He looked back on his life and constantly questioned the decisions he had made.

They haunted him at times and when illness took away some of the awareness of time’s passage, it was a blessing because it freed him of his remorse and in a way took him back to his youth, back to a time when misdeeds and transgressions might be forgotten and he could live in the moment.

Maybe that sounds like a fool’s paradise to some but, if we measure our lives in the context of a finite number of days, we begin to realize how each and every day is such a precious gift. Every day dawns anew, full of promise and hope, challenging us to make of it what we will of it for good or for bad.

Thus, it falls to each of us to make the best possible use of the time we have. The more time we spend looking backwards at our own mistakes instead of leaving them behind us and moving forward to do good just squanders another day.

Pop was a lot of things but, he couldn’t see, never really understood the affect, he had on the world around him - the lives he touched, the good he did, the way he changed the world. I’m not pretending he was perfect but, he did some good while he was here - he touched the lives of the people he came in contact with and that influence spread outward as the people he touched, touched other lives in turn, the way a wave on the surface of a pond spreads outward.

When we come together at funerals, it is to mourn, it is in sadness but why? The truth is, none of us really die, our souls might escape the frail shell that carries them but we live on in others. We live on in the people we touched during our short time here on the planet. I am not saying I won’t miss my father because I will miss him terribly but, in me he will live on. Just as he will live in you whose lives he touched. There are others who have gone before him and who to this day hold a special place in my heart, those people who will never be forgotten.

While I will remember him as a flawed man, he will still in my heart be very much a beloved father and he will be missed. Thank you again for paying your respects here today, it would make him happy to see you all I know.

In any event, I at least think I did a good job with everything and it was the last time I could do anything for him so I wanted to get it right.

Bye, Pop.

My father passed Wednesday evening. The last 24 hours have been hectic if only because there is so much to do and I already started writing something about it. Suffice to say he will be missed. The main thing though is just to get through the today (Friday - the wake) and tomorrow (Saturday - the funeral and burial).

Screwing with the baristas.

I hate tip jars. The f**king things are everywhere these days. Next time I go to the proctologist, I half expect to see a tip jar lying around (and if anyone would deserve it, it’s a guy who spends his day sticking his finger up people’s asses). Somehow, over the last ten years, tip jars just saturated our society.

Now, I don’t know about you but, for me I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to these things. Waiters, waitresses, cab drivers, bell captains, redcaps, maitre-ds are all people who get my tips. If you’re working the counter in a Baskin Robbins, a 7-11, a dry cleaner, etc. well... you’re just s*it out of luck in my book. It’s not up to me to make up for the fact you’re getting paid sh*tty wages. Hell, I worked a ton of sh*tty jobs myself in my time, suck it up.

You don’t tip the checkout person in a supermarket, you don’t tip a receptionist in a doctor’s office, it just isn’t done - throwing a plastic cup out in front of people, dumping your loose change into it and hoping for the best is nice enough but, don’t expect me to feel guilt.

Starbucks, is one of those places where you find the innocuous tip jar. It kind of makes me chuckle in some ways because I’ve read Howard Schultz’s book and seen him on TV speaking about creating a certain atmosphere in his stores. He goes on at length on how Starbucks was trying to copy the whole expresso bar experience he found in Italy but, funny enough I can’t seem to remember there being a single tip jar in any of the many expresso bars I visited in Rome.

Maybe I would be a lot less reluctant to tip if I wasn’t getting socked with a $3 plus charge for a cup of coffee. Chances are though, if all I’m buying is a cup of coffee and it’s costing that much I’m thinking about where I really should be spending money instead of pissing it away so cavalierly. Geez, somewhere there is some retired executive from the Chock Full of Nuts chain who is just banging his head against a wall watching what has been going on with Starbucks over the last decade.

So, part of the whole ‘experience’ in some of these Starbucks is being asked your name by the counter person when you place your order.

Now, maybe it’s me but, I don’t want to build a personal relationship with La Baristas. The coffee bar is not my modern day equivalent of Cheers and I am not f**kin Norm. So, it doesn’t happen often but, every once in awhile you hit one of these places where they do ask you for your name when you order your coffee.

And... I f**k with them.

Look, like I said I don’t want a personal relationship, just give me my damn overpriced coffee to go. I don’t want it to take a half hour - WHICH IT SOMETIMES DOES EVEN WITH THAT CRYPTIC STARBUCK SPEAK!

I’ve been in places where the cash register even prints out your order over by the expresso machine but that still doesn’t speed the process up - so asking me my name while I stand around like an idiot isn’t going to make me any happier. Today’s choice was Agamemnon, sometimes it’s been such jewels as Ulysses or Socrates. I just like giving them a mouthful or a real handful to write. It stops ’em dead in their tracks, like a deer caught in headlights, they don’t know what to do!

Sometimes it’s just fun to see if they can get a name like that out of their own mouths, ‘What was that?’

‘Agamemnon.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

‘C’mon that’s not really your name!’

‘Okay, Jason.’ (still not my name - thinking about Friday the 13th at this particular moment)

‘Okay. Jason. What was that name again... from before.’

‘Agammmennmmonn,’ I even have trouble getting it out of my mouth.

She chuckles, I chuckle and still shrouded in mystery go to the coffee bar to get my exorbitant drink. When La Barista asks, ‘Jason, do you want room for milk?’ It is all I can do to keep from totally losing it.

As I walk away, coffee in hand, I imagine one of the ladies hovering around the bar for their triple, nonfat, giganto, mocha, icerino with whipped cream saying to her friend, ‘He didn’t look like a Jason.’

And she’d be right.

He who smelt it, dealt it.

If you are in and around Manhattan today you may have noticed it:

Across the Hudson River, Jersey City, N.J., mayor’s spokeswoman Maria Pignataro said officials there were told the odor was due to a gas leak in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, just north of Greenwich Village.

It’s on all the news channels right now but, watching it the funny thing is watching all the companies and elected officials deny responsibility. Con Edison says they don’t have a leak (pushing the speculation the source is New Jersey) and the Jersey City mayor says her people have informed her the source was in Manhattan.

Numerous people have called 911 to report the odor. Con Edison, the Fire Department and the U.S. Coast Guard are investigating. The Fire Department began getting calls about the odor around 9 a.m., said spokesman Tim Hinchey. PATH service has been suspended into the 33rd Street station, although the service was still running to the World Trade Center Station. F and V subway service has been suspended at 23rd Street.

It’s funny if only because you can imagine the localities as people in a room where someone has farted.

The odor of natural gas was reported across Midtown Manhattan, prompting hundreds of calls to emergency workers. Eyewitness News is told the smell was first reported in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. Earlier this morning around 9:00 a.m. hundreds of calls poured into city emergency officials. Apparently the calls are coming from Chelsea, Battery Park west, Madison Square Park, and there are also reports of the gas smell outside of our studio on 66th and Columbus. A very similar smell was also reported in Downtown Jersey City.

I just enjoy watching all these newscasters speak endlessly about the awful smell. If you view it in that context (someone farting) it’s really, really funny.