The Flavor of Depressing

There's a Newsday bulletin board where discussion has been ongoing for a couple of months. The issue? Not Iraq, property taxes, or Al D'Amato's mansion, but the TV show "Flavor of Love," as debated on Newsday's Impulse entertainment site, where participants display their intelligence, wit, and love for discourse.

Here's a quick summary. Someone suggests which girl Mr. Flav should choose.

But another reader provides a counterpoint.


Someone else clouds the issue.

And then we're off on a tangent.


We're steered back into the debate.

And a new issue is raised!


Seconded.


Thirded.


Back to the original subject at hand.

A devil's advocate arrives.


And we return to another point of inquiry.


Finally, some clarification!


And further explanation.


Finally, we're drawn to a conclusion.


And just in case we didn't understand the last post...


May we ALL receive heaven-sent Flavor Flavs this holiday season.

Nelson Ravings Summary: December 14, 2006

In which we plow through the weekly Long Island Press column so you don't have to.

Title: 'Tis the Season
Word count: 1233
"I" usage: 47 "I"; 15 "I'm"; 1 "I'd"; 2 "I've"
"Jenn" mentions: 2
Four-word summary: "I'm a baseball fanatic."

Here's a Big Idea: Create a Real Forum!

Joye Brown has asked for your big ideas. But where do you post them? Newsday's site serves content the way food would look served on dishes thrown down a flight of stairs and glued back together by a guy wearing mittens, so it's no surprise they didn't create a special forum that would funnel all discussion of the topic.



How will I know that someone else doesn't have the idea of putting a big bubble over Suffolk County? (It will keep the temperature at an even 68 degrees, plus keep out dem dam illegals!) I'll have to go to FIVE (and counting) different forum boards to check!

And yes, we know the way to Pace University (the downtown, midtown, AND Pleasantville campuses!). We just don't know the way to the right forum!

Another Big Idea: Better IP IDs

Another curious aspect of this Newsday Big Idea poll thingy is how the locations of many people (likely tagged by IP address) are misidentified:









One wonders whether their newspapers get delivered to the right place.

Will There Be Any Angry Replies?

Wade through the aptly named rants & raves section of craigslist and you'll find lots of bizarre posts, petty taunting, and proudly overt racism, sexism, and xenophobia.

Then we came across this headline: Buttermilk.

Could it be some gross, dairy-based sexual comment? A sick, dairy-based racial remark?

Actually, no:


Quite a contrast to the usual r&r stuff. So we flagged it as "prohibited."

You Asked for It, Joye Brown

Joye Browne, practically the only remaining "neighborhood" columnist at Newsday, requested "big ideas" from her readers. And boy, have they have responded:

It might be quicker to go east, around the world, and then through Manhattan:


Someone concludes his laundry list with an idea for the columnist:


Someone asks Newsday to first look in its own backyard...

...while someone else suggests Joye look in her own backyard.

We get the typical ALL CAPS RANTS THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO READ WITHOUT EYEBALL HEMORRHAGING.

Joye's comments about the Suffolk courthouse being the "ugliest federal courthouse on the planet" draws this response:


But she is quickly defended!

And then—

We gave up after this. Maybe some of us should keep our ideas to ourselves.

Liberal-Bias Accusations Replaced by Projectile-Ignorance Accusations

And the readers are fuming mad at Newsday again, but not because of the paper's alleged lockstep with the liberal hordes. This time, it's because the paper's reporters don't know the difference between a crossbow and a compound bow. Why this should even be an issue on Long Island is beyond us.


Right. Now it is so totally a conspiracy.

Stay Tuned for "The Return of Crookhaven"!

What a blast from the past. Remember that Brookhaven politician/crook (we know: in Brookhaven, "politician" and "crook" are usually synonymous) John Powell? The guy ran the Suffolk GOP until he went to jail for stuff like being part of a stolen-truck ring and extortion, racketeering, and bribery — activities beneath the standards even of the Suffolk GOP.

Looks like his son is running for, uh, something. It's not quite clear, says Newsday's Rick Brand:

The rather imprecise message [on lawn signs all over Medford] states: "Anthony POWELL — an INDEPENDENT Voice for INDEPENDENT Voters."

Love the all-caps emphasis. Here are some other fun details about the son, Anthony. We mean, Anthony POWELL:

1. He's 22 years old.
2. He lives at home.

We don't know whether he has a job. Someone made 500 signs and 5,000 bumper stickers for this guy. When we were 22, we could barely afford to make 50 photocopies of our resume (which tells you how long it's been since we were 22. At least we're no longer living at home!)

His dad seems to have turned his life around; Brand notes that Powell pere quietly toils at a paving company, which is an honest place to work because OH SNAP LOOK WHAT NEWSDAY WROTE ON DECEMBER 6:

In a blistering new audit, Suffolk Comptroller Joseph Sawicki blasts purchasing practices at the county public works department, citing possible collusion among suppliers in cases in which bid specifications were narrow enough to give some vendors an "unfair competitive advantage." [This goes beyond] four leading Long Island road paving contractors indicted last year on federal charges of running an "asphalt cartel" that allegedly rigged millions of dollars in contracts in Suffolk and Brookhaven Town since 2003.

Can't wait to find out what this dude is running for!

Update: It must run in the family. We found another bit by Rick Brand that mentions that Anthony's mom had the $109,000 position of Deputy Commissioner of Jurors (whatever that is) until she was fired (for what, we don't know).

A Peek at Newsday User Comments: Power 105.1 DJ Shot

It's fun to see what Newsday online readers are thinking. And it's great to know that what they are thinking, regarding some disc jockey getting shot, is rather ignorant (click to enlarge if you must):


I mean, the guy can't even spell "riddance"!

Nelson Ravings Summary: December 7, 2006

In which we plow through the weekly Long Island Press column so you don't have to.

Title: In the Pines
Word count: 1,233
"I" usage: 40 "I"; 6 "I'm"; 1 "I'll"; 3 "I've"
"Jenn" mentions: 13
Four-word summary: "I am Charlie Brown."

White Castle Upgraded to SECOND Most-Dangerous Fast Food

The more curious aspects of the E. coli/Taco Bell issue:

1. Newsday reports that one guy who got sick ate at three different Taco Bells (and no, it's not Richard Kessel)


2. The comments section for the Newsday article finds people who express the horror that they ate there after the news came out (but before reading about it)

Our Problem Was That We Always Confused It With FarmingDALE

Farmingville residents are looking to change the name of a portion of their town to Oak Hills in order to wipe away its association as the capital of illegal immigrants.

Someone might eventually alert these people that there is an Oak Hill, New York, which is so similar that they'll have to pick a new name. We suggest New Mexico City or Xenophobiaville.

From St. James to St. Petersburg

Sometimes we're like, jeez, what is going ON on Long Island? So we turn to the Avis of Long Island newspapers, the Press, and go to their "Local News" section. Amid updates on the local Taco Hell and Long Island DWI crash of the week, we found this:


A story about a Russian who was poisoned in England.

For a newspaper that grabs a good deal of its content from syndication (hello, Roger Ebert!), does the Press really need their own writer to give us updates on the poisoned spy? What's next? Ed Lowe in Tehran? (Actually, that's not a bad idea.)

Oops!

So LIPA's Richard Kessel resigned his CEO post (while still remaining chairman and collecting the CEO's $165,000+ salary) nine months ago, and never told anyone.

This from a guy who's drawn to a microphone like geeks to a Rush concert at Jones Beach. According to Newsday:

Asked why there was no public release, he said, "I didn't see any reason to do it."

Turns out there were a few other things Kessel has found no reason to publicly disclose:

1. He owns a solar-powered applause machine that he hides behind the podium during his ubiquitous press conferences.
2. He is working behind the scenes to kill Donald Trump's plans for a high-end restaurant at Jones Beach because he wants a Ponderosa with an all-you-can-eat buffet.
3. He is the reason all the chicken-salad sandwiches have gone missing from refrigerators in the LIPA cafeterias.
   

What Would Castellano Have Said About This Kind of Drug Trafficking?

Oftentimes we'll be driving along Jericho Turnpike in Huntington and notice what looks like a auto-wreck garage but with the name "Gotti Tans." And we're like, it can't be that Gotti.

Turns out, it is.

And it's owned by Frank "Gotti," whose real last name is Agnello, the 16-year-old grandson of mobster/Brioni-suit-wearing fashion icon/thief and murderer John Gotti. (We assume Frank figured "Agnello Tans," while more accurate, isn't as catchy a name.) The kid got pinched when the cops found drugs in his car. And by "drugs," we mean OxyContin tablets.

We think that more important than the drugs is the fact that he was driving two friends: one was 17, the other a juvenile. Drivers with a junior license ae not allowed to drive with more than two passengers under the age of 21 unless they are members of the immediate family. If we got caught doing that, Dad would have snatched the keys from our grubby mitts. (Frank's dad, Carmine, once referred to as a "moron" by his late father-in-law, is currently serving a racketeering sentence in prison.)

But the kid is doing a lot more than we did at age 16. Not only does he own a tanning salon, he's the author of a book called The Gotti Diet. And he got arrested!

Curiously, he was driving a 2006 Chrysler Pacifica. Which is like a glorified station wagon. Guess he's not so goomba after all.

There's Crazy, and Then There's Cah-RAY-zeeeee....

"Mental illness. Thought process disorder. No empathy. Malignant narcissism."

Judith Regan's self-diagnosis during weekly therapy sessions? No, these are the DSM-IV categorizations that the ambulance-chasing publisher uses to describe O.J. Simpson in her latest statement responding to criticism about her decision to publish The Juice's "hypothetical" tell-all book "If I Did It."

However, a quick scread of the 11706-native's raving, Percocet-fueled manifesto reveals that perhaps the Island has spawned another veritable whackjob the likes of which haven't been seen since John Spano thought he'd tap into his nonexistent petty cash fund and purchase a local NHL franchise.

Second Floor: Lazy, Spoiled Rich People

Meet Lucy Ghazvini. She's 38 and lives in Brookville. And, oh yeah, she and her husband installed a fuckin' elevator in their house. Newsday (which notes that the couple have no physical limitations, lest you think we're picking on the disabled) sez:

...the couple's live-in maid finds it handy when carting laundry up from the basement.

Good thing the Ghazvinis have a maid. Because Lucy's a "homemaker" (we assume she must be cleaning the toilets while the maid's doing the laundry) and maybe if she didn't wear that scarf so tight, she'd get more oxygen to her brain and she'd be able to actually walk up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath.

First Act of Office: Place National Earthquake Center Along San Andreas Fault

To the surprise of no one since, oh, 2002, "America's Mayor" (try saying that with a straight face) Rudy Giuliani is running for president. There's probably a joke in there somewhere, but we're feeling lazy this morning and will instead do a cheap "separated at birth" thingy:

Wow. That was fun. Here's another one featuring greedy cue-ball Dick Grasso:

Proof That Gun Control Might Not Reduce Violent Crime

Soon Long Islanders will be forced off the Island not because of high taxes or unaffordable housing, but because of the increase in murders committed by bizarre weapons (see also previous post).

As Opposed to Those Gentle Misdemeanors Involving a Samurai Sword

Don't Forget Who's Still Sitting Pretty in Oyster Wang, I Mean Bay

Sanjay Kumar is going to jail for 12 years.

To put the sentence in perspective: if Charlie Wang's former protege serves the full term, there will STILL BE THREE YEARS LEFT on the contract Charlie gave Rick DiPietro.

Also on the Budget: Robot Firemen!

More of your tax dollars at work: Farmingville's fire commissioners recently passed a budget that allocates $260,000 for the renovation of its stations' recreation rooms and $55,000 to buy a race car.

A deeper look at the budget also reveals an earmark for this:

Uh...that's a Farmingville FD patch on the space shuttle. Which isn't really a space shuttle, but a balloon shaped liked the space shuttle. But you know what we mean.

The Facial He'll Get in Prison Is Not Quite What He'd Get at a Spa

Finally, after a million delays, Frank Tassone is going to prison. He joins fatty Pam Gluckin (pictured, and fat) and a bunch of other thieves who ripped off Roslyn. Your taxes at work!