WORDS OF WISDOM

• Sexless In The City has some advice ... "lead an interesting life, and you tend to meet interesting people. Focus more on what you can do for others than how well they meet your needs, and sometimes you might be surprised how well you are provided for." ... sounds right to us ...
• Jewschool profiles Doc Hollywood, i.e., Dr. Neil Shulman ... who gets it right when he says, "life is a dash between two numbers on a tombstone, [and] everybody should enjoy that dash." ...
• Best Of The Web says "Folk Marxism leads a Jew to applaud the murderers of Jews, and a Christian to condone violence even while claiming to abhor it." ...

  SPORTS

• 10,000 Birds predicted a win for the Steelers ... "In 39 Super Bowl match-ups from 1967 to 2005, only once has a football team named for a bird emerged victorious. The Baltimore Ravens crushed my beloved New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV (2001) to become football's finest feathered franchise. Teams named for Homo sapiens just do better in this game. In an astonishing 27 of 39 contests, an organization named for a meat (not cheese) packer, chieftain, cowpoke, steel worker, indigenous American, gold miner, U.S. nationalist, or some species of pirate has won it all." ...
• The New SteveSilver.net states "There's a lot of hatred for Donovan [McNabb] around here, and all of it is more or less equally irrational." ... agreed ...
• MetsBlog.com agrees that "when the football season ends, we don't count the days until fall arrives, we countdown the days until spring training" ...

  419 SCAMS

• Suitably Flip is "a sucker for a good Nigerian 419 scam" ... lots of good 419 scam-the-scammer stories at 419 Eater and SCAM o RAMA - "The Lads from Lagos" ...

  POLITICS

• Ragged Thots says "Were I a Democrat voter, I'd be furious right now. If the party's handling of the Samuel Alito nomination is indicative of how it plans to convey its beliefs and 'values' over the rest of the year, then it is facing a very long election season in the fall -- despite all the political gifts (Libby, Abramoff, DeLay, Iraq) the GOP has been offering up on a silver platter." ...
• The Tin Man agrees with Nancy Goldstein that "Effective immediately, the Democrats will be known as the lyin’-ass boyfriend party - the perfect date for progressive voters looking to be stood up, bullshitted blind, or left holding the tab." ...
• Third Avenue is pleased that the House of Commons "voted down the government's attempt to outlaw religious hatred by a majority of 10" ...
• Miscellaneous Objections liked the captions CNN used for "the Cindy Sheehan / State of the Union / arrested over a t-shirt story" ... and asked: "Why is William Shatner giving the Democratic response?" to the State of the Union speech ... because they missed James Traficant saying "Beam me up"? ...

  SINGING, DANCING, and ACTING

• BounceFM invites you to "Join the FRESH FRUIT gang this month for their PRE-VALENTINE'S DAY passion fruit flurry. On the decks with be the one and only QUENTIN HARRIS spinning all his new productions, plus the old foot stompin' favorites we all love!" ...
• Cafe Aman says Osvaldo Golijov's opera Ainadamar is "an effective and powerful piece of theater" ...

  LIFE OF THE MIND

• Jossip says a "parody spread is a good idea, though. Maybe N+1 could do a doctored spread on 'Women you will never see reading,' and doctor photos of Paris Hilton and Jordan with copies of War and Peace. Those nerds would totally lock themselves in the library for hours." ... but it would be better if the covers of War and Peace were upside down ...
• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars reports that Pamela of Atlas Shrugs "was just voted Infidel Babe of the Week. She also won the Infidel Bloggers Alliance Golden Balls Award" ...

  TRANSPORTATION

• New York Hack is "really starting to believe there is something wrong with French people. Most cabbies know that the second they hear a French accent, it means there will be no tip" ... when we drove a cab, the worst tippers were airline pilots ...
• gridskipper NY describes the new P2P Circulator as "NYC-Philly Buses Now with 50% Less Chinatown" ...
• spinachdip nyc is glad he took the Chinatown bus to DC "this weekend and not the weekend before: 'Passengers were left completely befuddled as officers removed them from one bus and stopped the boarding of another. At least four buses were seized. The driver of a fifth bus ran away before police could inspect it, leaving his bus behind.'" ... I hate it when that happens ... our trips on the DC-NYC bus have been uneventful ...
• The Daily Dump was late for work "so when I got to the subway station and heard that a train was coming in, I ran down the stairs, through the turnstile and, to my surprise, saw that the subway car right in front of me was practically empty. My station is usually so crowded at rush hour that when a train rolls up you see the faces of the people inside the car pressed up against the windows like a cartoon." ... now, why do you suppose the car "was practically empty"? ...
• The Daily Gotham appears to have turned into a listing service for "Staten Island Defensive Driving Classes" ...
• Citizen Journal is not happy about the coming of cell phone service on the subway ...
• lowercase L complains that "It's hard enough navigating through the streets of Manhattan, with all the potholes, pedestrians, messengers, traffic and construction. Throw in a sign for a ClOSED street and one could easily get lost in confusion." ...

  PHOTOGRAPHS

• Right Moon? posts pics of her new baby girl ...
• joe's nyc has a pic of "Mary O'Garrim / Bart Balladeer / Requests Welcome" ...
• Ari Goes Down has a pic of Michael Jackson .. in a burqua? ... that guy is so weird ...
• WhatISee has a nice shot of the sunset in New Hope ...

  CULTS

• Brain Terminal analyzes Hollywood bravery and risk-taking ... "it is not a risk to say what everyone around you is saying. It is not a risk to put out a film with a perspective shared by all your friends. That's easy. What would be risky is if someone in Hollywood got behind a film that they didn't agree with, one that they knew most of Hollywood would disagree with. That would take balls." ...
• Sweet Blog o' Mine is starting to think David Allen's Getting Things Done is a cult (see 43folders) ... but liked the CLE credits ...
• Kevin McCullough reports "On The MuscleHead Revolution broadcast in New York just moments ago Saddam's former Air-Wise Marshall, Air Force General (number 2 in the Iraqi air-force) Georges Sada revealed where the illusive Weapons of Mass Destruction WMD's disappeared to prior to our liberation of Iraq. As it turns out Saddam used 747's and 727's and caused people to believe that they were being filled with humanitarian aid for Damascus victims of a dam break. In reality the specially equipped planes ran 56 flights from Baghdad to Damascus to airlift, raw materials as well as refined weapons." ...

  TECHNOLOGY and INTERNET

• mister snitch! posted "A compilation of the best [blog] posts we (and our readers) could find, from 2005" ...
• Letters from NYC discusses tools for your cell phone from Yahoo Mobile Tools and Google Short Message Service ...
• Miscellaneous Objections says that "A lot of people seem to Google the phrase "naked cowboys." A disproportionate number of them end up here." ...
• Clareified notes that "Western Union quits sending telegrams" ...
• Asymmetrical Information had "An unhappy accident" ... she "accidentally accepted a blogad for a website I will not link" ..

  GRATITUDE

• BuzzMachine has a commenter from New Orleans thanking WalMart, CraigsList, and Google ...
• Manhattan Transfer's "Girlfriend Left Me For A Dishwasher" ... and asked him: "do you mind coming by and sitting around my new place and waiting for the cable guy to come on Tuesday. I've got to work, and it's not like you're doing anything." ...

  ANIMALS

• Living the Scientific Life has moved her blog ... and bought a space-age farm ...
• CityRag has a pic of "Paris Hilton's noticeable similarity to an Emu..."

  OFFENSIVE CARTOONS and BUY DANISH

• A Guy In New York has a potpourri about "Freedom of Expression" ...
• ZombieTime has a "Mohammed Image Archive: Depictions of Mohammed Throughout History" ...
• Citizen Journal has copies of the "offensive cartoons" ... and has screen shots of "Tiananmen at Google" and "Tiananmen at Google China" ...
• The Malcontent, in "All the Islam That's Unfit to Print," writes that "The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission characteristically picked Leftist politics over gay rights, supporting a violently homophobic Palestinian culture that would kill them over a liberal Israel that protects gay rights. As the author notes, wrapping this decision in human rights rhetoric counts not at all considering the IGLHRC attended rallies in Beijing and Havana." ... and we love this from the comments: "What I want to know, is when they recruit women homicide bombers ..... like the one last month who screwed up and failed to detonate her bomb ...... what the hell was she going to do with 30 Virgins? Start the Rockettes? Surely to Shirley, she wasn't a religious Lesbian? Well, maybe so!!" ...
• Kesher Talk says "Not even those raucous 'alternative' weeklies like the Village Voice have printed the cartoons. Stories and pictures of Janet Jackson's top falling off at the Super Bowl? President Bush as vampire? Hey, no problem there. But graphic film footage of 9-11? Mohammed cartoons? The U.S. press suddenly acts like the culturally sensitive version of Brave Sir Robin." ...
• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars weighs in on the offensive cartoons: "Leftist artists in the West love to babble that their work is 'transgressive.' As Clayton Cramer points out today, TV writers love to insult Christianity. There is, of course, no punishment for doing so. On the other side of the world, Islamic terrorists take hostages and behead people for daring to poke fun at their religion." ...
• NYC Metblog can't even "get a glimpse of [the] political cartoons mocking" Mohammad ... the offensive cartoons? here they are ... btw, Piglet says, "Buy Danish" ... except the hams ...
• writersbloc's comment on the offensive Muhammed cartoons: "Perhaps if they promoted non-violence and condemned suicide bombers, this wouldn't even have made it into the newspapers worldwide" ...
• Exit Zero wonders "how far is CNN willing to go in its obsequiousness to Islamic law? Kathy Quiano and Paula Zahn might be ok with their burkhas, but I don't think Anderson Cooper can survive without a barber" ...
• Atlas Shrugs updates the charm offensive being waged by Palestinians ... "Danish Cartoons Incite Palestinian Arabs to Riot, Rampage, Burn European Buildings" ...
• Politburo Diktat has a "Mohammed Cartoon Update" ...
• Englishman in New York notes that "Thousands of Palestinians marched through Gaza City this week chanting: 'War on Denmark, Death to Denmark.' Over a cartoon." ... no, EINY, it was over TWELVE cartoons ... we might see spontaneous combustion if someone published as few as 50 or 60 "offensive cartoons" ...
• As I Please points out "For the most part, these weren't anti-Muslim images, you jackass. They were simply depictions of Mohammed. And the two images that equated Mohammed with terrorism or anti-women laws did nothing more than take Fundamentalist and Radical Islamists at their own words. They themselves claim to kill in the name of Mohammed and his laws." ...
• New York Brain Terrain weighs in: "The issue here is not free speech, the issue here is respect and courtesy for each other's differences. Yes, newspapers have a right to print these cartoons, however offensive. However, they also have a duty to remove these cartoons out of courtesy and respect for the offended group." ... a duty? ...
• Cake Or Death? also comments on the offensive cartoons: "you'd think that maybe Mohammad's followers would try a more peaceful route of protest, to try to, you know, dispel the 'myth' that Islam has some violent tendencies that may include strapping a bomb to one's person. Right?" ....

  I LOVE NYC

• Dawn Eden is looking for NYC heroes ... "if you know anyone who lives or works in the New York City area -- it could be yourself -- who deserves attention for the good work he or she does, please drop me a line with a little information about them" ...
• Downtown Dancer loves NY "Because an elderly Chinese man in a suit and fedora can get his leg up this high to stretch on a makeshift barre on Essex Street." ... click for pic ...

  FOOD

• dailyheights.com links to a discussion on the dailyheights discussion forum about Palava Hut ... that ends up being all about how much folks love White Castle ... "Prove me wrong about Palava Hut" ...
• Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit won't eat Domino's pizza "because Domino's does not sell pizza. It sells cardboard with "tomato sauce" and "cheese" slathered on top. It is to pizza what Tom Clancy is to literature: that is to say, a pale imitation" ...
• NewYorkology asks, "Isn’t it lovely when foreign travel writers can boil down the New York food scene to just three restaurants?" ... no ...
• A Guy In New York had his weekly roundup of restaurant reviews, "This Week in NYC Reviews" ...

___________________________________

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com

Technorati Tags: big apple, big apple blog festival, New York, NYC, New York City, Manhattan

Big Apple Blog Festival - January 30, 2006

Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

The Big Apple Blog Festival likes to go on tour ... if you don't like what we covered here, and if you have a NYC blog or you blog about NYC and would like to host an upcoming BABF, let us know ... The next BABF, on February 6, 2006, will be hosted by A Guy In New York ...

• Asymmetrical Information believes "that contraceptive availability is not a major factor in teen pregnancy" ... and that "children are a special libertarian case" ...

• Downtown Dancer notes Fayard Nicholas's death on Jan. 25, 2006 ... "the Nicholas Brothers were absolutely inspiring movers and I felt lucky to be able to discover their film work" ...

• An Unamplified Voice reminds us that "popular music exploded in popularity with the advent of the microphone. Athletic and remarkably well-trained as any particular one may be, the live voice is a limitation: it (with its sibling, the physical stage presence of one body) ensures that characters in opera remain at a recognizably human scale even as they're kings or heroes -- or gods. This fits naturally with the aesthetic of high culture, which characteristically explores the (tragic or amusing) limitedness of individual man, his inability to throw off mortal bonds from even the highest point." ...

• The Malcontent's headline for the post about "Cindy Sheehan said she is considering running for the U.S. Senate against Dianne Feinstein" ... "Dear God, Let It Be So" ... THAT would be an interesting race ...

• About Last Night has an interesting discussion about e-books ...

• Clublife reminds us that online "relationships go bad, just like they do in the "real world." You don't get along, or someone does something stupid, and things take a turn for the sour. It happens. The difference in Blog World, though, is that one or both parties are eventually going to write about it. You can't help yourself." ...

• The Assimilated Negro believes "There is no situation where a wink is appropriate. There’s no biological, or physiological, or any-ological pedigree that supports a need for a human being to wink." .. and is starting the "The Blink Don't Wink™ Campaign" ...

• Liberteaser says "Weed culture is stupid" ... and "Helen Thomas has the President shaking in his boots" ... "Who wouldn't want to skip her and thus avoid having to hear her shrill, well-past-her-prime, 'isn't she dead?' voice?" ...

• Forgotten NY added a page about "mysterious names over apartment house entrances" ...

• spinachdip nyc is going to have to start hanging out with a different set of bloggers .. you know, the kind that pay their tabs and leave tips ... not the other kind ...

• The Dawn Patrol has news about an eBay auction by an atheist to go to a church of the winning bidder's choice, every day .. for $10 per day ... and spiritual adoption of the unborn ...

• New York Hack was on TV ...

• Ace of Spades links to story "Cindy Sheehan Considers Challenging Dianne Feinstein For Senate" ... and says the recent Palestinian elections were "almost like the Constitutional Convention. If I recall correctly, Governeur Morris threatened to "liquidate" anyone who suggested that Congress consist of only one House. He retracted his objections when John Jay kidnapped his son and began sending him severed fingers through the mail." ...

• 10,000 Birds reports that someone mowed the grass at Croton Point Park in northern Westchester ... "Why they had to do it at the beginning of this critical season is beyond me." ...

• NYC Stories had to help a cabbie determine if a half-eaten meal was beef, pork, or veal ... and they discussed trichinosis ...

• Atlas Shrugs declares "Iran is begging, pleading for war" ...

• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars explains why he is no longer a Democrat ... likes satellite radio (4 years ago we wouldn't have believed we would happily pay $12 per month for it) ... and says "There is only one way to go now … the restoration of the Patriarchy" ...

• NewYorkology has the date and route for the "7th Annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade" ...

• Night After Night disagrees with Pinchas Zukerman ... "As far as I'm concerned, the historically informed movement breathed new life into 18th- and 19th-century music ... Zukerman's comments about the inability of HIP conductors and musicians to perform at any kind of professional standard do nothing more than make me think that he probably hasn't checked out a concert during the last decade -- especially given that he's still harping on Hogwood and Norrington." ...

• WhiteTrashBBQ wishes a "Happy Birthday to one of mankind's greatest inventions, canned beer. The first canned beer was released today, January 24, 1935 in Richmond, Virginia. It was Krueger's Ale and Krueger's Beer." ...

• greg.org links to an unusual video ... "Football team owner Gigi Becali [aka the Woody Johnson of Bucharest]'s car got sideswiped. So he and a henchman opened the door like they do in the old country: with a couple of crowbars and a sportsnews camera crew watching on." ... Ai yi yi ... don't let those guys near your car ...

• Brain Terminal compares search results for "Tiananmen" on Google and Google China ...

• Deadprogrammer's Cafe is unsettled by the fasces on the NYPD badge ... fasces are "a bundle of sticks with an axe inside - the ancient symbol of authority. Along with the swastika, fasces has been marred as a symbol of Fascism, to which it gave its name." ... get a grip DPC ... the design of the Mace in the U.S. House of Representatives is derived from the fasces ...

• exit zero points out the link between "cannibalism and clean air" ... "I don't know if they're still eating people in Uganda, but they do in the Democratic Republic of Congo, specifically UN representatives. The Congo is in a state of chaos, with a civil war that has taken millions of lives." .. and then asks, "Are these environmentalists suggesting that this is the sort of good governance we should copy in the US?" ...

• Ragged Thots agrees with Shelby Steele that "Republicans may be 'freer' of a certain 'political bigotry.' However, they do evidence a deep-seated need to do their own sort of 'alchemy' on the black members of their party, which plays out in its own demeaning fashion" ...

• The Politburo Diktat notes that the US win over Norway "was a good win, the U.S. absolutely dominated, but it’s important to note that this was not Norway’s first string. It was basically a U-23 team" ... we wondered why the Norwegians looked so cowed ...

• Kesher Talk runs a profile of former CIA Director William Colby ...

• Mona's Apple says she could watch "The Last of the Mohicans" over and over ...

• Metroblogging NYC asks "Dear Pervs: Why, why, why?" ... "my friend Mari told me that a few blocks after we said good-bye at the corner of Broadway and Astor Place, a car pulled up next to her at the intersection of 10th and Broadway. Some guy leaned out the window and started yelling something at her. It was even more obscene than what St. Mark's perv had yelled." ... and gets a link to the movie "War Zone" in the comments ... free screening, Tuesday, February 21, 6:30pm - 9:00pm, New Lantern Events, at the Whirlwind Creative Gallery, 330 West 38th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues, Suite 511 ... cosponsored with Holla Back NYC ...

• jewschool, who is traveling in Israel, discovers "a Jewish hipster TV show" ...

• A Hamburger Today says he can help ... "Did you forget to make reservations for Valentine's Day this year? Does your wife/girlfriend have an obsession with hamburgers? Are you looking for a way to end your relationship without actually saying "it's over"? I think I may have the answer for you." ...

• elvira black got some grief for cross posting on her blog and at blog critics ... and likes mister snitch!'s "rules for internet trolls to live by" ...

• slashfood "would like to thank Hershey's for finally deciding that filled Kisses were a good idea" ... "But I must say that the new Peanut Butter filled Kisses might just be the best of the bunch" ... and suggests that Di Fara's post a sign: "Limit 2 Slices When Busy" ...

• blog NYC has "it on good sources that the owner [of Burrito Bar and Kitchen] is terrible to work for. Employees have told us that guests have seen him on the floor, dressed in sweats and a Brazilian soccer jacket, scolding employees while the guests ask, 'who's the dick?' Our source says that if the owner ever has to deal with a table and they don't know who he is, they ask the bartender or waiter, 'hey, who's the guy with no personality'." ...

• Drones Club makes a too-rare appearance ... "The old man came through town this evening, and I had managed a subterranean balcony, as it were. The view was not everything, but the acoustic quality of the space was remarkable, and Rostropovich himself was every bit his melancholy instrument" ...

• Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit declares "Googling "rent boy" doesn't constitute proof that one is looking to hire a hooker, any more so than googling cocaine proves that one is looking to snort some blow" ...

• mister snitch! advises "The biggest mistake people make with their resumes seems to be in parroting the language they see in the classifieds" .... links to some pictures: "Proof that your job COULD be worse" ... and says "Iraqis and Afghans are among the world's most economically-optimistic people ... they saw what happened to Japan and Germany's economies after we flattened THEM" ... and links to pics of "another cruelly-humiliated cat for your enjoyment" ...

___________________________________

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com.

Technorati Tags: big apple, big apple blog festival, New York, NYC, New York City, Manhattan

Big Apple Blog Festival - January 23, 2006

Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

The Big Apple Blog Festival likes to go on tour ... if you don't like what we covered here, and if you have a NYC blog or you blog about NYC and would like to host an upcoming BABF, let us know ... The next BABF, on January 30, 2006, will be hosted by A Guy In New York ... Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars ...

RELATIONSHIPS

• The Apiary says if you're "tired of sauntering aimlessly around the Big Apple going food cart to food cart without any real life plan" or "meeting people on eHarmony who won't shut up about their stupid decaying ovaries' .. "Then it's time to join The Apiary Odyssey Club." ...
• The Anonymous Blogger says "All the dating services I know of are run by women. How come men don't run dating services?" ... what about eHarmony? ... see previous ...
• Clareified links to a post about which she says, "This is the best reason I've seen yet to get married." ... and has a good joke: "Friendship Between Women: A woman didn't come home one night. The next day she told her husband that she had slept over at a girlfriend's house. The man called his wife's 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it." .. you'll have to click to see "Friendship Between Men" ...
• Ragged Thots discusses "a man at work rushes to the aid of his wife who seems to be endangered by strangers that may or may not have been drinking. What should be his reward? How about suspending him from work!" ...
• Daily Lunch thinks it's a positive sign that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Assad met in Damascus in a "defiant show of solidarity" ...

  POLITICS

• Asymmetrical Information hopes the Supreme Court overturns Roe "just so that we can all shut the hell up about abortion for a while" ... or take it up at the state level where it should have been decided in the first place ...
• Liberteaser says "Congressman Gary Miller (R, CA), who helped 'secure' $1.28 million of federal funds as an 'earmark' in legislation" is a "thief, and he ought to be removed from Congress and prosecuted" ...
• The Corsair says we can count on "Hillary versus Gore -- Centrist versus Civil Libertarian-Progressive" in 2008 ...
• Atlas Shrugs updates "You have Two Cows" with some new ones ...
• Jewschool says Jack Abramoff is "A Failure As A Jew" ... Quixotic Optimism wonders if Abramoff is a "Heartless swindler or spineless Republican lackey?" ...
• As I Please opines that "the argument that Democrats didn't take money directly from Abramoff is a silly semantic argument. Here we have a Senator in Washington State feeding at a trough replenished often by tribes in California, Michigan, Mississippi and Louisiana" ...
• Jossip asks "Politicians, comedians, everyone, do us a favor. Stop tarnishing the eloquent Dr. Martin Luther King Jr with your mind-numbing, nonsensical speeches that try to prove you're one of the people." ... sounds good to us ...
• Ace of Spades "just KNEW Bush was going to win" in 1992 ... "Oh well. Youthful optimism." ...
• Kesher Talk has a report with pics of a protest and counter protest with "Protest Warrior to protest a protest against military recruiters" "by the Youth and Countermilitarism Program of the War Resisters' League" (which has this as the only entry on its site's calendar: "1 AUGUST 2005: Calendar launched. This calendar will be updated frequently by the WRL Youth and Countermilitarism Project team.") ...
• The Daily Gotham says "Brooklyn politics is a complicated mess." ... and believes "A political machine can be a good thing, even though they tend almost unavoidably towards corruption." ...

  WAR

• Gone Underground agrees with "This Letter of Apology" written by Lieutenant General Chuck Pitman, USMC, Retired ... "I am sorry that most Arabs and Muslims have to live in squalor under savage dictatorship" ... "I am sorry that Muslim extremists have killed more Arabs than any other group" ...
• Alarming News points out that "most spiritual quests don't usually end with the seeker taking up arms against his own countrymen but that's neither here nor there to Dad Lindh. John Walker Lindh committed the most obvious form of treason." ...

  BOOKS and LITERARY TYPES

• Dawn Eden has a quote from G.K. Chesterton about literary style and believes it applies to Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan ...
• New York Brain Terrain notes that Julian Barnes, author of "The Lemon Table," will be in town from the 26th through the 31st ...
• Miscellaneous Objections has pics of "two fellow commuters ...reading James Frey's lie-tacular tome, 'A Hundred Thousand Or So Medium-Sized Pieces.'"... we like this plot summary of Frey's book by "hllib" on Amazon the best: "Spoiled rich kid with tough-guy attitude and severe alcoholism/crack addiction has his parents pay for a stay at the exclusive Hazelden clinic in Minnesota. Goes in a busted-up, addicted idiot. Comes out a semi-repaired, sober jerk" ...

  SINGING, DANCING, ACTING

• About Last Night has his weekly list "of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows" .... he clearly doesn't have a teenage daughter or Wicked would be on the list ...
• My Urban Kvetch reports "the princess of pop's hailing the Hindus" ... and she's off on a Caribbean cruise ...
• Downtown Dancer wonders, was "Alison Chase Fired From Pilobolus?" ... follow the Update link at the bottom ...
• Fisher-Price My First Opera Blog is thinking of changing the name of his blog because he's "feeling a little guilty about the number of searches I see that lead someone to this tarty little blog that clearly was looking for a Fisher Price toy" .. how about "My Second Opera Blog" ... 
• Night After Night believes "a gloomy, wet, steel-gray evening in Manhattan [is] a perfect day to listen to La Cieca's wonderful Birgit Nilsson podcasts, as well as the searing renditions of Hindemith, Mendelssohn, Dvorak and Shostakovich violin concerti found in a Brilliant Classics box set of radio recordings by David Oistrakh." ... on gloomy days we prefer Cab Calloway's "A Chicken Ain't Nothin' But A Bird" and "Everybody Eats When They Come To My House" ... we admit it: the Birgit Nilsson podcasts are worth listening to ...
• An Unamplified Voice ... "the unique quality of opera -- what, I believe, guarantees its market life as a niche luxury for as long as companies remain true thereto -- is what can't be so reproduced and extended: the costly, laborious, and very human live presentness of operatic performance." ...
• Cinema Strikes Back declares that "If a Stephen Chow sci-fi film is anything as wild as his lone horror outing in “Out of the Dark“… then I need to fly to Hong Kong opening day to see it!" ...

  TV

• Cake Or Death? "can't tell you how many times I've seen kids projectile vomit upon seeing commercials for cereals high in sugar. And the number of recorded cases where a toddler will spontaneously explode into a giant ball of fat when watching an ad for Fruit Roll-Ups is astounding" ...
• The Tin Man joined a gym and likes the elliptical ... because he can watch TV while using it ...
• blog NYC says "The only reason to watch American Idol is the auditions" ... and has a link to a, like, like, an orange, like, bimbo ... Simon Cowell: "You're 16, and it is the most strange look, make up tan I have ever seen in my life" ...

  FOOD and DRINK

• Englishman in New York got together with NYC nosh "to find a good meal for three including wine, tax and tip for $20 total." ... next he should talk with Twenty Bucks a Day ...
• New York's Sixth reminds us that the Hudson Restaurant Week begins today ... "meals starting at $15 for lunch and $30 for dinners" ...
• A Brooklyn Life is "in a good mood, and I think it's due to the copious amount of Boylan's sodas I consume. All of Boylan's sodas are good, but I'm a seltzer girl myself, and I'm convinced I have never tasted a better seltzer." ...
• A Guy In New York had the weekly roundup of NYC restaurant reviews ... and a reminder about Winter Restaurant Week in NYC ...

  MONEY

• rion.nu has pics of 20 Exchange Place in Wall Street ... "Its rich facade of bronzed depictions glorify both historic and modern transportation vehicles of the era. These are surrounded by elements of nature, as well as two allegorical figures to represent the balances of banking: abundance and prudence." ...
• Dead Programmer's Cafe took "29 1/2 lb of coins in a Strand bag" to the bank ... what was the $ value? ....
• dailyheights.com has a new definition for millionaire: "anyone who won't think twice about plunking down a record-breaking (for Brooklyn, at least) $1000+ per square foot for a condo" ... what if it's a really tiny condo? ...

  LIVING IN NYC

• The Urban Grind has no sympathy for Nixzmary Brown’s "parents" ...
• Bridge and Tunnel Club says "New York is the biggest, bestest city on the planet and we have the busiest Target store in the state -- no, country -- no! -- hemisphere! Yes, one of the busiest in the Northern Hemisphere" ... map ...
• this is what we do now tells the "the denizens of Billyburg thinking their little enclave is some sort of bastion of cultural relevance and that any invasion of a national franchise is somehow detrimental to the very fabric of the neighborhood" to "Get over yourselves already" ...
• NewYorkology has her usual great roundup of interesting things to do in NYC ...
• gridskipper NY links to "a helpful comparative chart on how to tell the difference between New York and Los Angeles" ...
• The People's Cube reports that "After learning that New York City police officers have been receiving Islamic-culture training, the Big Apple's largest street communities, the Bloods and the Crips, criticized the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg for discriminating against the gangsta people. Furious gangsta community leaders demanded that a similar sensitivity training program be created to educate law enforcement members about the intricacies of 'gangsta-culture,' with its vibrant rituals, traditions, and etiquette." ...
• Lengths of comfy verdure is "not one of those people who thinks that everyone in america should speak english immediately necessarily. but if you wax eyebrows for a living, you absolutely should" ... well, Yeah! ... and she's engaged ...

  MISCELLANEOUS

• Sexless In The City has info about the "Love > Revenge" fund ...
• Exit Zero likens Britain's plans for the Middle East after WWI to "a colonial version of Star Wars 1, 2 & 3" ...

  SPORTS

• Steve Silver predicts "It'll be Seattle and Pittsburgh, squaring off in Detroit on February 5" ...
• spinachdip nyc says it will be Denver and Carolina ...
• SerandEz gives his reasons why he also believes "the Carolina Panthers will be playing the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XL" ...
• Yanksfan vs. Soxfan says "for a measly 5K (or thereabouts), you can hobnob for 6 days with your favorite ex-mediocrities." ... heck, you can hobnob with Hobnob for less than that ...

  SCHOOL / EDUCATION

• Yet another weird SF fan has the Cognitive Reflection Test and says "The really interesting fact is that the test was given to a sample of Harvard students and to a sample of ordinary Bostonians at the Boston Fourth of July celebrations. The ordinary Bostonians did better" ... makes you want to turn the monitor upside down to check your answers ...
• Homeschooling in New York City is "convinced that Randi Weingarten (head of the teacher's union in NYC) is the one who doesn't care about kids. She only cares how well the teachers have it - herself included." ...
• My Urban Kvetch reminisces about reading all the Ian Fleming books ... in grade school ...
• this fish needs a bicycle also reminisces ... about middle school ... "On my first day of middle school, I accidentally walked into the boys' bathroom. I've never quite recovered from the humiliation." ... but after falling recently in front of a bunch of sixth-graders, she thought about calling her mom, “I hate middle school and I want to come home!” ... if you want to know what kids talk about, drive them around ... it's like you're not even there ...
• Brain Terminal writes that "Most cars cost far less than four years at college, which now averages over $100,000 for a four-year undergraduate degree. Yet, like the car that comes with a major part missing, many colleges provide educations that are unbalanced and incomplete." ... and wonders if college professors "feel the same way when 60 Minutes or 20/20 exposes the malfeasance of other businesses that are engaged in consumer rip-offs" ...
• Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit says innumeracy is a problem with college grads ... and takes Carl Bialik's math quiz ...
• tres chicas declares "80% of law students qualify for 'most annoying human being' status" ... seems high to us ...

  WORK

• Now What? started a new job and "nearly did a Sharon Stone to my new officemates" ... I'm glad I don't have to wear pantyhose ...
• The Daily Dump says "if my [law] firm had a motto it would be 'We sacrifice enjoyment so you don’t have to.' Although I would probably be in charge of making it our motto, so I’d likely shorten it to 'We sacrifice enjoyment!'" ... and his "job over the past few days has been to read blog posts and (I’m smiling just thinking about it) OTHER PEOPLES’ EMAILS looking for incriminating evidence." ... he finds some ...
• BuzzMachine has an interesting post about "The ghosts of newsrooms present and future" ... that applies to all kinds of organizations ...

  ONLINE

• Letters from NYC has a scary story about online stalking ...
• Mister Snitch! has "Rules for trolls" ... we find it interesting that there are people who believe a newspaper can "censor" anyone or anything ... get a clue, get a blog ... and mister snitch asks, "At what point did we become obliged to put up with obnoxious houseguests?" ... and has a post about "The coming collapse of income tax" ...
• As I Please links to the pissing contest that took place on one of the Washington Post's blogs also discussed by mister snitch! ...
• The Politburo Diktat, commenting on the WaPo thing, says, "From my own experience, Leftie blog-comment ‘dissent’ consists largely of vile name-calling." ...
• Clublife has had problems with trolls on his blog ... which is why he turned comments off ...
• opinionistas is anonymous no longer ... she turned her comments off, too ...
• Elvira Black tells us how to get blog traffic up ... "simply mention 'pro-life,' 'pro-choice' or 'sex' in a post, and you've got yourself a feeding frenzy like you wouldn't believe." ...
• tres chicas says the cheap way to increase hits is to write: "Osama's back in the news. I think he and Paris should date. They're both crazy rich people who don't care about anyone but themselves. W can be their adopted uncle, and Dick Cheney can play Grandpa." ...
• blog NYC shows us how it's really done ... "BlogBlitz: Sexiest Fetus Almost Alive is Already Wreaking Havoc" ... Madonna Dearest ... Angelina Jolie ... Kelly Clarkson ... Jennifer and Vince ... Leif Garrett ... Nick Nolte ...

  PHOTOS

• Express Train has a pic from the subway station at Smith and 9th in Brooklyn, ''the highest point in the subway system, you couldn't see the ground.' ... "It seemed like we were riding through the clouds." ... more pics from that station from Bridge and Tunnel Club ...
• Theater of My Mind has a nice pic of "The view down the East River from Long Island City" ... at night ...
• WhatISee has a pic and links to Clifford Ross' R1 camera and the gigapixel project ... and some shots of Cafe Americain ...
• Scriberoptics is "learning how to get the most out of my macro lens so that when spring, with its flowers and insects, finally does arrive, I'll be well schooled in taking macro shots" ...
• Melissa Medina at NYC Metblog is now "the building celebrity - the girl with the cursed apartment" after a pipe burst in a closet ... and Dhaval Mehta works with some wierdos ...

  ANIMALS

• Gotham Gal wonders why people take their dogs with them when they go shopping ...
• 10,000 Birds looks at the factors in deciding which species to watch ... and concludes that birds are the clear winner ... "birding is one of the fastest growing outdoor interests in the world. This is not to say that snail watching (best not to call it 'snailing') lacks its own charms." ... his count is over 350 ... one of my law school professors, the late Thompson G. Marsh, was an avid birder with a count of over 800 ...
• Living the Scientific Life has a big roundup of bird news ... including using evolutionary theory to modify the evolution "of New Zealand’s critically endangered parrot, the kakapo, Strigops habroptilus" ... and links to a story about how "a gossipy parrot split up a pair of lovebirds when a computer programmer discovered that his girlfriend was having an affair when his pet parrot kept repeating her lover's name" ... birds of a feather ...

  TRAINS, PLANES, AUTOMOBILES

• New York Hack is wondering why "the NYPD seems to think that placing two cop cars in the left lane at the beginning of the [Brooklyn] bridge will act as a deterrent to terrorism, when in fact all it does is create a long slow-moving stream of tired and angry drivers that reaches all the way up to the Williamsburg Bridge." ... and got a nice pic of the sunset "from underneath the FDR, facing the Brooklyn Bridge" ...
• New York's Sixth continues to follow the woes of the automatic parking garage in downtown Hoboken ...
• Forgotten NY added Part 2 of "The Original 28. The artwork of NYC's original subway stations" ... Part 1 is here ...
• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars promises "a boatload of pictures" from the International Motorcycle Show at the Javits Center ... shouldn't that be "a sidecar full" or "a motorcycle trailer load" or something? ...

___________________________________

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com.

Technorati Tags: big apple, big apple blog festival, New York, NYC, New York City, Manhattan

Big Apple Blog Festival - January 16, 2006

Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

The Big Apple Blog Festival likes to go on tour, and different blogs host it ... if you have a NYC blog or you blog about NYC and would like to host an upcoming BABF, let us know ... The next BABF, on January 23, 2006, will be hosted by A Guy In New York ...

This week's Big Apple Blog Festival is hosted by Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars.

Some excerpts:

• Why do we fear Friday the 13th? Suitably Flip has the answer.

• My colleague in multimedia, nyc stories, announces a two week theater festival based on the life and works of Edgar Allen Poe.

• Living the Scientific Life has been nominated for “Biggest Blog Whore.” Vote once every 24 hours.

• The Tin Man wants to impeach President Bush. “The wiretapping is the last straw.” Ain’t gonna happen. One of the delights of performing my turn as host of this blogfest is that I get to surf so many sights with pictures of men in their tighty whiteys sharing a kiss. You don’t see that at Harley shows.

• Ace of Spades suggests that the way to influence the Muslim world is to pay “… millions of dollars to get broadband internet there and all the free porn we can.” He also reports on the threat that a radical Muslim Iman perceives in the dancing of John Travolta.
  

___________________________________

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com.

Technorati Tags: big apple, big apple blog festival, New York, NYC, New York City, Manhattan

Big Apple Blog Festival - January 9, 2006

Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

We didn't break it up this week ... just presenting it in all its Big Apple bloggy goodness ...

The Big Apple Blog Festival likes to go on tour, and different blogs host it ... if you have a NYC blog or you blog about NYC and would like to host an upcoming BABF, let us know ... The next BABF, on January 16, 2006, will be hosted by Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars ... Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by A Guy In New York ...

• Living the Scientific Life has lots of interesting news this week ... including using a tropical blood-sucking bug to get blood from wild birds ... and a good example of "why you shouldn't necessarily believe everything you see." ...

• Exit Zero has a roundup of attacks by Islamists "waging war against the foundations of their own societies" ...

• Elvira Black "lets it alllll hang out" ... she got kicked out of her apartrment on Sunday morning ... and she's "Blogging from both sides of my brain" ... now on Blogcritics, too ...

• NYC Metblog declares that "as with pedicures, I've quickly gotten used to having my laundry sent out." ...

• Forgotten NY added "THE ORIGINAL 28. The artwork of NYC's original subway stations" ... check it out ...

• 10,000 Birds has a reminder about the 4th Annual National Bird Day ...

• Tres Chicas likes Bob Dylan ... "that's why they make chocolate and vanilla" ...

• Lengths of comfy verdure "never thought of music as something that had to be done well. it was just something you did with the people you loved. it was a part of life, something you used, like a hand thrown mug or bowl." ...

• New York Brain Terrain reminds us that NEUROfest runs through January 29 ...

• the daily isolato loves the Chocolate Souffle at Zipi Zape ... "It is sweet, warm, chocolate/raspberry/boozy/custardy goodness, with splashes of some kind of kirsch/pomegranate molasses/I don't know what all over the plate. It's tart and rich and kiddie and grown-up all at the same time. I love it I love it I love it." ... she loves it ...

• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars declares "White Men Can Jump!" ... well, at least Greg Brunner can ...

• Overheard in New Yorkhas mnay good overheards this week .. "A man is beeping his car horn incessantly in a traffic jam before the 59th St bridge. The guy in the car ahead of him rolls down his window, pokes his head out and calmly asks: What should I do? He rolls down his own window. Man #1: I...um...I just thought maybe you could move up a little." ... just a little ...

• Englishman in New York reports that "Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is also expected to announce a doubling of Danish troops in Afghanistan." ...

• what about the plastic animals? has pics of Whitman chocolates that are only "only a third full. Very sneaky, Whitman. Just as sneaky as Breyer's and other ice cream brands whose half-gallon containers now only contain 56 ounces of ice cream." ...

• rion.nu has some very beautiful pics "on the roof of La Casa Milà, also known as La Pedrera (The Quarry in Catalan). built by architect Antoni Gaudi, the unique biomorphic building has no straight lines" ...

• Kesher Talk summarizes a never before published interview with Abbie Hoffman ...

• Yanksfan vs. Soxfan has an old post "on the supposed budding romance between our hero, Derek Jeter, and aspiring mactress Stacy Lynn Spiers" that is still generating comments ... more than 400 of them ...

• Dave Friedman asks, "If one were to take a leak in the urinal, would that constitute defacement, or utilitarian appreciation of Duchamp's aesthetic?" ...

• Fifty Minute Hour says "the world is more free than it's been in a decade" ...

• CityRag has pics of "a life size snow-globe, but much better" ...

• Clublife meets someone who says Dominican cigars are better than Cubans ... "Much higher quality. You wanna try one?" ... so, what's the verdict? ...

• insignificant thoughts says "Paper Does Job, Apologizes for It" ...

• Bridge and Tunnel Club blog warns us that Eliot Spitzer has jumped the shark ...

• Travis Ruse ... check out his great pic of Union Square Station, 9:30 am ...

• CaiLun.info has set up a new gallery and ways to purchase his handmade books ...

• Cake or Death? has a link to a funny video ... "Soldiers The Size Of Wales..."

• Brownstoner has a nice pic ... "Red Hook: Fantail Cobblestone" ...

• Modern Fabulousity likes the egg pics of Digital Apoptosis ...

• Karukeion wants to know if anyone else knew about the increase in postal rates effective today ... yep, we stocked up on 2 cent stamps and the new 39 centers a few weeks ago ...

• Greasy Guide links to a story about proposed legislation in Connecticut "that would require movie theatres in the state to post the actual starting time of a movie." ...

• Letters from NYC is "blogging straight to Munu from my Treo phone" ...

• blog NYC admits "we've seen a few episodes of 'Newlyweds' and sometimes Jessica says or does something so outrageously stupid that it's made us want to cry, we just don't admit it to Elle magazine." ...

• Jewschool has info on the Brooklyn Israel Film Festival ... starts January 24th ..

• Asymmetrical Information likes "drinking with economists, because they're funny." ...

• The Tin Man walked up up "Fifth Avenue on a weekday. There are so many glamorous and good-looking people who must spend entire weekdays walking up and down Fifth Avenue, because they were all out there today. And such beautiful architecture and fashionable shops. It felt like what people who have never been to Manhattan imagine Manhattan to be like." ... yep ...

• As I Please cites a news story reporting that in Houston there was "a huge crime wave following the arrival of refugees from hurricane-hit New Orleans." ... and notes: "Because an influx of 150,000 extra people from, say Salt Lake City, would drive up the crime rate as well. It's not the 140,000 regular poor bastards in Houston causing the problem. It's the 10,000 new thugs and murderers." ...

• Kevin McCullough says Jimmy Carter "is an angry old man, who if he takes his own advice on how to interpret the Bible or the basic understanding of Christianity - is himself on the wide road to Hell!" ...

• mister snitch! has some great Quotes of the day ... our favorite: “The Paris riots are actually a splendid demonstration of the successful integration of immigrants into French culture.” ...

• Amazin' Avenue declares: "there's just something so mystical, so organic about paying $9 for a beer and $15 to park a mile away from the stadium." ... wow, for $24 we get a great dinner, for 3 people, at Sanur ... OK, OK, that does not include parking or beer ...

• Suitably Flip has the witness list for the Alito hearings ... with bios ...

• The Assimilated Negro has a list of "pitfalls when bloggers date bloggers" ...

• Amy's New York Notebook notes the closing of Chicaggo's City News and says "It's a shame the Tribune Co. (which also owns the LA Times and oodles of other papers and TV stations,) couldn't do something with that news, like run with it rather than shut off the spigot because only their competitors knew what to do with it." ... many, many people got their start in journalism at City News ... too bad they apparently didn't have any business-types there ...

• The Daily Gotham has a very interesting post on the "Green Synagogue" in Latvia ...

• About Last Night warns you not to send him stuff ... "If you send me a CD without asking first, I won't listen to it. ... If you send me a book without asking first, I won't read it ... If you send me unsolicited press releases, I'll toss them in the nearest wastebasket." ...

• Alarming News went to Atlantic City and doubled her money ...

___________________________________

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com.

Technorati Tags: big apple, big apple blog festival, New York, NYC, New York City, Manhattan

Big Apple Blog Festival - December 19, 2005

Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

The Big Apple Blog Festival likes to go on tour ... if you have a NYC blog or you blog about NYC and would like to host an upcoming BABF, let us know ... The next BABF, on January 9, 2006, will be hosted by A Guy In New York ... Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by NYC Stories ...

Food

• My Life With Garlic is putting together a "Best Of list" for hot chocolate ... we wonder if she'll rename the blog "My Life With Hot Chocolate" ...

• A Brooklyn Life created a "cilantro-jalapeno pesto worthy of our classic Osterizer blender" ... looks pretty good to us ...

• A Guy In New York has his weekly roundup of restaurant reviews ... "This Week in NYC Reviews" ...

  Shelter

• Clareified says that if there is a transit strike, "I'll just stay with the Mayor in his mansion" ...

• Lengths of comfy verdure recommends Batherapy ... "i take a batherapy bath first thing when i get home every day these days. there was a natural hot spring near rome, in the olden days, in which the "lunatics" bathed, which calmed them. it has been tested in modern times and was discovered to contain lithium. try it. you'll like it. i gay-run-tee." ...

  International

• Forgotten NY added a new page on the "remaining Avenue of the Americas medallions and just a little about the countries whose coats of arms they depict." ...

• The People's Cube has an email exchange that "started when a student from Communist China currently living in Japan bought an anti-Che T-shirt 'My American Revolutionary Kicked Your Commie Revolutionary's Ass' from Che-Mart" ...

  Technology

• elvira black says that "bloggers who never answer anyone's comments turn me off so much that I often never visit them again" ... hmmm, THAT shoe fits ...

• mister snitch! links to a site where you can build an online snowman ..

• The Tin Man asks "Exactly how long does it take to port a cell phone number from one carrier to another?" ... in our experience, which includes porting 6 separate numbers from AT&T to Verizon, about 5 days ...

• Eye Dream Awake has an "Update On $100 Laptop" ...

• The Politburo Diktat recommends blogrescue.com ...

  News

• gothamist has an "Obligatory Braunstein Wrap-Up" ...

  Transportation

• NewYorkology is keeping an eye on the transit talks ...

• The Wonkster is "Reading the Tea Leaves of a Transit Strike" ...

• New York Hack gave a fare from Chicago a "Welcome to New York" he'll remember ...

• New York's Sixth is impressed by the new Interactive Transit Map even if you "tell it you want to go from City Hall [New York] to Grove Street [Jersey City] and it sends you up the R/W line to 33rd Street" ...

• NYC Metblog "spent most of Thursday evening sitting in a bar with some of my close friends, drinking way too much whiskey and watching NY1 (with the volume turned down of course) to figure out if I could take the train back home or if I had to fighting someone for a taxi." ...

• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars has pics and a link to the 4 new motorcycle stamps being introduced in August, 2006 ... we're getting those ...

• Quixotic Optimism suggests that to make riding trains more pleasant "maybe they could create a 'child' car where wayward brats could with chocolate-smeared cheeks 'gimmiegimmiegimmie' their corpulent moms and dads for the duration of their ride without thrusting otherwise sane passengers beyond the brink of psychosis and forcing us to fire death-ray glances over the tops of the books and memos we're trying desperately to concentrate on." ... that is certainly quixotic and optimistic ...

  Holidays

• CityRag, for "the seventh day of Dog-mas brings to you - Mach 7 Airspeed" ...

• The Daily Dump has a tradition: "Regardless of the fact that my apartment is the size of a newsstand, every year I buy a Christmas tree the size of a hatchback" ... pics of tree and ornaments taken with his new awesome digital camera ...

• Letters from NYC warns: "Beware of Amazon and etoys failure to deliver goods as promised" ...

• Brain Terminal has "Christmas Tips for Parents" ...

• Joey McKeown is "looking for a Christmas gift for my goddaughter. Maybe I should get her something her father can use. I'm cracking up just thinking about it." ... click the link in the post if you like warm beer ...

• greg.org has links to limited artist-edition wrapping paper ... definitely not Sally Foster ...

  Humor

• mister snitch! has a good joke demonstrating "How religion adapts to the world." ... and read the comments ...

  Op-Ed

• The Daily Gotham opines that "MTA Disrespects Us All, Governor Dodges Accountability" ...

• Exit Zero believes "The concept of defending free speech to the death has faded a bit over the years" ...

• NYC Right weighs in on immigration, "a topic that looms large over the American psyche these days" ...

• Yet Another Weird SF Fan warns that "Avoidance of loopholes can also have unpleasant results" ...

• mister snitch! just wants "to be a rebel, like everyone else" ... noting that NJ Governor-elect Jon Corzine, "after naming Menendez to assume his Senate seat, vowed to continue the fight against the evildoers in Washington, as if it were the source of Jersey's high taxes, corporate flight, and political corruption." ...

• BuzzMachine says "we are reentering an age of leadership by the very rich: Bloomberg of New York, Corzine of New Jersey, Bush of the White House, Gates and Bono for charity" ...

• Jewschool says that "now that it's been covered in The New York Times, the whole 'Cool Jew' trend/movement/phenomenon is now officially OVER." ...

• Ragged Thots on Stanley Tookie Williams: "Given 26 years of trials and appeals after the murder of four people at two convenience store robberies, this seems like a fair process." ... while Da Greasy Guide links to a video with a different view ...

  Living in NYC

• New York Brain Terrain says Chicago is "like New York without all the rude and angry people" ... check out New York Brain Terrain regularly for lots of interesting things to do in NYC ...

• Slant Point says "Don't ever - ever - let anyone tell you different. New York has some of the most generous people around." ...

• Englishman in New York wants advice on how much to tip delivery guys ...

• and Downtown Lad also needs tipping advice: "How much do you tip your doorman?" ... easy for us: we don't have a doorman ...

• Blog Chelsea has a "Florist Recommendation" ...

• Stay Free links to "Rejection Line, a phone number ... that you can give out to people who hit on you, to get them to go away (212-479-7990)" ...

• Homeschooling in New York City "finally figured out what I want to say to folks who constantly ask me why we homeschool." ...

  Work

• The Assimilated Negro posts "a segment from the instructional 'How To Be A Psychic' manual" which he got when he did "a short stint as a psychic for the Miss Cleo network." ...

• opinionistas reminds some folks who used to practice law in big firms why they're glad they no longer do ...

• copyranter says "forehead ads are all the rage. But, let’s look into the not-too-distance future"... and looks to the future: "Busted? 555-CROW (on Cops’ foreheads)" ...

• Asymmetrical Information says "The world doesn't really need more journalists; people already have more writing than they can (or will) read." ...

  Photoblogs

• WhatISee has pics of a "Snow Boogie" ...

• Express Train captures how some feel about riding the subway ... "R Train, 4th ave, 8:14am" ...

• untitlednamedotcom has pics of "Clogged Drains [at] Seaview Hospital. Staten Island, New York" ...

• The Bronx has a pic of angelic love ...

• Late Final notes that Michele Catalano's "new photo blog, Scriberoptics, is now open" ...

• joe's nyc has an interesting pic of a partially bald guy in a barbershop ...

• Theater of My Mind has pic: "The new building in Long Island City is looking great looming over the 7 train to Queens" ...

  Sports

• Steve Silver writes "Judge Quarterbacks Not By the Color of Their Skin, But By The Content of Their Game" ... yeah ...

• even though baseball season is over, the baseball blogs are still going strong ... Mets Geek ... MetsBlog.com ... Yanksfan vs. Soxfan ... Amazin Avenue: A New York Mets Blog ... we thought these were the boys of summer? ...

  Singing, Dancing, and ACTING!

• Downtown Dancer found a "Chanukah 'Nutcracker'" ...

• Night After Night gives "kudos to tenor Raúl Melo for hanging tough tonight in front of a crowd primed for the Second Coming" in Rigoletto at the Met on December 13 ... and says An American Tragedy "a seriously effective piece of music theater, and more surprisingly one in which both operatic neophytes and sophisticates will find much to enjoy" ...

• Cafe Aman "walked away from the world premiere of Tobias Picker's 'An American Tragedy' quite disappointed." ...

• An Unamplified Voice saw An American Tragedy at the Met twice and it was "pretty full on both occasions, but I now wonder how much of it was paper" ... (as in "papering the house") ...

• Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit says Madonna is a transvestite ... that explains a LOT ...

• Kesher Talk, in "Spinning Munich Into Gold", says, "Not content merely with having former Ambassador Dennis Ross in his pocket to provide diplomatic soothing for his new film, Spielberg has now hired Eyal Arad, one of Ariel Sharon's spin doctors strategists, to market 'Munich' to Israel" ...

• The Dooryard liked King Kong ... "If you had told me I'd see an incredible love story in the theaters this month, I'd have bet it would have involved two gay cowboys. Instead, last night I was emotionally moved by the love affair of a 25-foot ape and a blonde chick" ...

• Cinema Strikes Back gave 4 stars to King Kong in his review "King Kong: PJ does it again" ... with pics ...

  Animals

• Daily Refill has pic and post about Fabien Cousteau's shark-shaped submarine ... very cool ...

• 10,000 Birds has "a description of our pilgrimage to the Pelham Bay Park parrots, one of the millions of little known wonders of NYC" ... with a pic ... 10,000 Birds is new to the BABF and is highly recommended ...

• Living the Scientific Life has a nice bird news roundup, with pics ... "Birds in the News #39" ...

• Cake Or Death? found it difficult to blog last week due to lack of heat at home and lots of work ... at work! ... so "As a gesture of goodwill, I turn to my staple ... penguins" ...

  Parties

• Da Greasy Guide says "If you missed the Laces NYC party last night, you missed a good time." ...

• Clublife loves working private parties ... "private affairs are decidedly my favorite worknights at any of the clubs at which I've been employed. You're paid your usual bouncer shift rate to spend the balance of the evening doing absolutely jack shit. You're simply a greeter, and that's the entire extent of your involvement." ... but he wasn't invited to his own club's private Christmas party, which he worked ... what a screwed up business ...

• The Urban Grind has a "Blogger Party Recap" ... we're sorry we missed it ... Suitably Flip also has a recap of the blogger party ... and Red Guy in a Blue State has a few pics ...

  Nostalgia

• Third Avenue reminds us that "Golden Ages only ever exist in the past. In 2055 I have absolutely no doubt that people will be bemoaning the Golden Age of the first decade of the century." ...

  Money - Swiss

• Towleroad has link and pics ... "A new set of Swiss banknotes features one bearing an image of our solar system on one side, and an image of the AIDS virus on the other" ...

  Dreams

• Dead Programmer's Cafe had a dream ... "The whole thing ended badly - alarms sounded, I left, but did not rat out Xenu's grave robber. Later, they accused my of stealing Xenu's toe." ... and has #30 in "100 Views of the Empire State Building" ...

• tres chicas had a much stranger dream ... "We were in Houston and, miraculously, the city had a full-fledged subway system" ...

___________________________________

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com.

Technorati Tags: big apple, big apple blog festival, New York, NYC, New York City, Manhattan

Big Apple Blog Festival - December 12, 2005

Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars.

This week's Big Apple Blog Festival is hosted by NYC Stories.

Some excerpts:

• An Englishman in New York reports on the Park Slope Food Coop and communism.
• mister snitch! from Hoboken blobs about blogging or not blogging. "The secret of blogging is not to blog at all." Then he asks about "Pajamas Media". "Did anyone else wince when, at their big NYC party, Roger Simon said they wanted to be the New York Times of blogging?
• Shouting Thomas at Harleys, Cars, Girls and Guitars brings us a look at the work going on at a Woodstock Tattoo parlor.
• Finally on the subject of work, Asymmetrical Information has been nominated for best business blog of 2005.

See this week's BABF for much more.

Next week's BABF will be hosted by A Guy In New York.

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form.


Technorati Tags: New York, NYC, Big Apple Blog Festival, Big Apple

Big Apple Blog Festival - December 5, 2005

Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by A Guy In New York.

This week's Big Apple Blog Festival is hosted by Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars.

Some excerpts:

• Living the Scientific Life discovers that beekeeping is popular in New York City. Right in Hell's Kitchen, honey is being produced!
• Over in Jersey, Mr. Snitch! says: "Human-to-human avian flu variant reported."
• nyc stories covers the movie version of the play, "Rent." A word of advice: Stick with the play. The blogger behind nyc stories, and the blogger behind Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars just completed a week of corporate video shooting. Results to be released at a trade show in Las Vegas in January.
• To continue the movie theme, Michael Blowhard discusses his conflicting feelings about “The Passenger” by Michelangelo Antonioni. Can somebody explain to me why 2Blowhards features five blowhards?

See this week's BABF for much more.

Next week's BABF will be hosted by NYC Stories.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form.


Technorati Tags: New York, NYC, Big Apple Blog Festival, Big Apple

Big Apple Blog Festival - November 28, 2005

Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by mister snitch!.

Next week's BABF will be hosted by Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars ... if you have a NYC blog or you blog about NYC and would like to host an upcoming BABF, let us know ...

Food

• WhatISee has a photo showing Shake Shack still has a line in winter ...
• Gothamist has a great suggestion for a street vendor restaurant in New York ...
• My Life With Garlic had "Food to Die For" on Thanksgiving ... with pics ...
• A Guy In New York had his weekly roundup of restaurant reviews ... This Week In Reviews ...

  Clothing

• Now What? switched to the glockenspiel after marching in Macy's Thanksgiving Parade so she could march in parades wearing pants ...

  Shelter

• gothamist has a great post on "Con Edison's NYC steam system" ...
• Letters from NYC has tips on how to reduce your utility bills ...

  Technology

• writersbloc needs a new computer ... and is "willing to consider my options with a Mac if anyone cares to give me justification and arguments to strengthen their case. Besides 'it integrates better with your iPod'." ...

  OpEd

• Urban Elephants wonders "what the hell is a Republican in New York?" ...
• Wonkster writes: "Reviews of the Port Authority’s possible plans for retail development near the World Trade Center site are trickling in, and they are not favorable." ...
• Asymmetrical Information believes "Making the country as a whole poorer in order to reduce income inequality doesn't sound to me like a good idea." ...
• The Daily Gotham says "Wal-Mart is one of the worst examples of what can go wrong with capitalism. Their rival, Costco, is an example of what can go RIGHT with capitalism, but Wal-Mart represents the ultimate in worker exploitation, anti-union, anti-small business, etc. capitalism." ...
• Ace of Spades defends Al Gore ... a little bit ... says Andrea Mitchell is dazed and confused ...
• The Corsair raises a glass to Condoleeza Rice ...
• Exit Zero declares "Whether our government chooses to acknowledge it or not, Saudi Arabia is at war with us." ...
• Brain Terminal hopes "that conservatives don't go too far down the road of conspiracy-mongering." ...
• As I Please reports that the avian flu vaccine shortage is now solved ...
• Ragged Thots wants to know "Why would a clearly-identified publication of the Left like the Village Voice basically castigate a local politician as being in the pocket of labor?" ...
• Dawn Eden speculates that Scott Spear, chairman of the national medical committee of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "probably meant to say, 'Is this a local tissue?'" not "Is this a local issue?" ...
• The People's Cube reports, "As usual, the Europeans have been leading the way." ...
• Liberteaser has a campaign finance proposal ... and is "willing to bet Robert Kennedy, Jr. $10,000 that Manhattan will not be under 12 feet of water in the next 10 years." ...

  Animals

• Theater of My Mind has a photo showing how a roach sees a subway station ...
• untitlednamedotcom has some interesting photos of New York City Wildlife ... look at the last one ... is that a guard poodle? ...
• Ace of Spades has a bit of advice for bear hunters ...
• The Politicker reports that "Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, recently ventured to Washington to chat with Republican legislators about global warning (sic)" ...

  Living in New York

• NYC Stories: "New Yorkers can be jaded. We think we have seen everything, and sometimes we ignore the things going on right in front of our faces." ...
• Forgotten NY added a new page about "Edgemere on the Rockaway peninsula, whose mile after mile of ocean beach front has been left to rot." ... Google map ...
• rion.nu has photos of "some of the back alleys and river walkways of darkened downtown manhattan at dusk" ...
• Living the Scientific Life explains why "removing an egg from the endangered whooping crane's nest increases the species' chances of survival" ... and has an interesting post about the 2 Galápagos tortoises currently on exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History through May 29, 2006 ...

  Travel

• Young Manhattanite is going to live in Jerusalem for a month ...
• Dave Friedman reminds those of us who drive, "cutting trucks off on the highway with the expectation that they can stop like cars is foolish and ignorant." ... I'd been wondering where that post had gone, thanks Dave! ...
• greg.org has an interesting post about President Bush's visit to Mongolia, with links to many photos ... and he's a "A Sucker For A Good Tracking Shot" ...
• Amy's New York Notebook has something you'll like in DC ... "Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress may be my new favorite building in the world." ... we like the Jefferson Building a lot and will be using a photo of the main reading room on the cover of a book we're publishing in 2006 ...

  Health

• Clublife needs some advice about why he is snoring like a buzzsaw ...

  Family and Friends

• Ace of Spades links to an article that shows "what happens when self-esteem triumphs over good manners" ...
• The Assimilated Negro is thankful for finding a long-lost sister this year ... and has a great list including "Things You Learn About Your Boyfriend/Girlfriend After They Move In With You" ... our favorite: "they're only funny one to two hours of the day, which used to be the one to two hours of the day you spent with them, but now is the one to two hours of the day you don't" ...

  Entertainment

• The Anonymous Blogger has price comparisons of bowling in New York and bowling in Union City ...
• joe's nyc has a great photo of a bicyclist riding past a movie set ...
• Mister Snitch! says "The fanboys have taken over the asylum" ... and "office photocopier repairs spike during holiday season" ...
• BounceFM has info on the next 718 SESSIONS Holiday Classics Party on December 11, 2005 ... with Danny Krivit and Davdi Depino ...
• Fisher-Price My First Opera Blog writes that "the movie of Rent is, overall, a resounding disappointment." ...
• About Last Night posted his weekly "list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows" ... including Bach in Leipzig, which closes December 18 ... and has 2 good quotes on gratitude ...
• Corante New York explains "Why people often confuse Toronto (yes, Toronto) with New York" ...
• My Urban Kvetch "saw Walk the Line on Thursday night, and really enjoyed it." ...
• dailyheights.com asks, "Is Richard Dreyfuss a Jerk? Playful? A Playful Jerk?" ...
• Cinema Strikes Back gives 4 out of 4 stars to "Tarkan Versus The Vikings" (aka "Tarkan Viking kani") ... "Turkey’s answer to the Italian sword and sandal films, is more fun than the proverbial barrel of monkeys and just as crazed." ... "On any scale of normal quality, Tarkan is clearly total crap. The four stars are based entirely on the fact that it’s amazingly fun, and a perfect way to introduce yourself to the insanity that is Turkish cinema." ... now out on DVD (with "Deathless Devil") ...

  Holidays

• SerandEz links to a cartoon, "If the First Thanksgiving Had Been Jewish" ...
• New York Hack has a nice holiday lights pic and heard the words every cab driver loves to hear ...
• NewYorkology has a list of the "Top 10 new things to do in NYC this season" ...
• Jewschool is "a huge supporter of Buy Nothing Day" ...
• Dorian Davis has a poem for Thanksgiving ...
• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars doesn't believe Santa can "can deliver 12 beautiful young women from Bali to wait on me hand and foot." ...
• Elvira Black asks, "Ever feel like you've been cheated?" ...
• Englishman in New York declares "Thanksgiving is fast becoming my favorite day of the year. It’s the one day when almost everything in New York stops—apart from the trains. ... it’s one of the most inclusive and relaxed holidays I have ever experienced." ...

  Blogs, Blogging, and Some Other Stuff

• opinionistas has crossed the line and is now "associata non grata" ...
• lowercase L thaks "the Donut Shop on 7th Ave here in Park Slope, Brooklyn, for giving me this perfect example of improper lowercase L usage." ...
• Modern Fabulousity has his weekly ModFab Gallery with links to 17 photoblogs ...
• Nonsense Verse has a phrase that "is strangely satisfying" when added at the end of "those stupid, cryptic movie or episode descriptions on your digital cable" ...
• copyranter says "Starbucks seriously needs to go to Billboarding School" ... and advises that advertising agencies "DON'T HAVE A CLUE ahead of time whether the TV spots/ads they create are going to sell product." ...
• Buzzmachine is not happy with RSS readers that don't tell him subscriber numbers ...
• CaiLun.info reports on his "first attempt to bind single sheets" into a book ...

• Alarming News has a link to "Best personal ads ever" ... and says "Ann Althouse has problems" ...
  
• Late Final says "piling on [Open Source Media] has gotten even more boring than the name, 'Open Source Media.'" ...
  
• Kesher Talk guesses that "the people who are going ballistic about the business end of PJ Media actually expect to make a significant portion of their income from their ads." ...
  

___________________________________

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com.

Big Apple Blog Festival - November 22, 2005

Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by A Guy In New York.

This week's Big Apple Blog Festival is hosted by mister snitch!.

Some excerpts:

• The 'old' old-media relationship with bloggers: Bash 'em. The NY Times latest swipe at bloggers, bashing Gawker, gets a closer look and yields this insight. (Amy's New York Notebook) (See also: Does the New York Times have a learning disability?) (PressThink)
• Kissy face. Uberblogger Glenn thinks Karol is cute. Karol wants to 'fix' that. Please send Karol some advice on becoming a blogger femme fatale. (P.S.: Dawn Summers hates her.)
• Pissy face. Everything you need to know about blogging can be summed up by this cartoon.

For much more, see this week's BABF for more.

Next week's BABF will be hosted by A Guy In New York.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form.

Big Apple Blog Festival - November 14, 2005

Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit.

Next week's BABF will be hosted again by mister snitch! ... if you have a NYC blog or you blog about NYC and would like to host an upcoming BABF, let us know ...

Food

• Walker New York : Eats was at the NY Chocolate Show and it "convinced me that the world would indeed be a better place if we all had our daily dose of chocolate, right along with the vitamins" ... mmmmmmmmmmmmm, chocolate ...

• A Guy In New York had its weekly roundup of restaurant reviews from the previous week ... "This Week In Reviews" ... and also a post with pics of Vendy Awards finalist Tony Dragones at 62nd Street and Madison Avenue ... and his brother John Dragones at 64th and Madison ...

• Manhattan Transfer asks, "Now who in their right mind gets up, dresses and goes out for breakfast at 8 am on a set day, every week with anyone, anywhere?" ...

• Slashfood wants to know "When you go out to eat, do you tuck in to your meal as soon as it is placed in front of you or do you wait until everyone has their food before eating?" ... we usually eat family style so that's not an issue for us ...

  Clothing

• NYC Metblog has some choice words for parents who spend "$25 on your bullshit Mao boutique shirt" for their toddler ... "buying your children a Ramones shirt will not make them any cooler or you any cooler." ... Ah, fashion ...

• Amy's New York Notebook says these are the "Ugliest Boots Ever" ...

  Shelter

• Englishman in New York explains "How to Make a House out of One Red Paperclip" ...

  Health

• mister snitch! has a good post on avian flu ... "Charlie Rose interviews the Avian Flu, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the pandemic" ... let's all take a deep breath ... and some 5-star anise ...

  Staying in Touch

• Dorian Davis has an interview with Dawn Eden, whose blog The Dawn Patrol is "in hibernation" ...

• BuzzMachine supports the idea that in a hurricane or flood "drowned numbers terminate in voice mail. Those looking for family members generally know their phone numbers. Numbers are much more precise than names in the chaos of a disaster." ... and don't forget to add ICE (In Case of Emergency) numbers in your cell phone ... and get the Charge2Go to use a single AA battery to power your cell phone ...

• mister snitch! has "Some advice on corporate blogging" ...

• Dave Friedman says, "I Don't Understand This Web Site..." and we agree ...

• spinachdip nyc is taking a blog break ... "will go on hiatus and I have no idea if/when/how it will return." ...

  Planes, Trains, Automobiles ...

• New York Hack has "a picture of the trash left behind on McGuiness Blvd in Brooklyn after the big NYC Marathon" and "two cop cars blocking both lanes of the street, and one is facing the wrong direction, so their driver's sides were closer, making for a better conversation" ...

• BuzzMachine answers the question ... Why do you blog when flying across the Atlantic? ...

• The People's Cube reports that "Taking their lead from the frustrated youth of France, the Pennsylvania Dutch have 'found their voice' by burning hundreds of cars in Lancaster PA over the last few nights." ... "Jehovah's Witnesses rage, in fact, has spread via its missionary channels to other countries. Well-dressed missionaries have been attacking citizens from Togo to Japan, usually with sharp knives. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Saudi Arabia has been encouraging students to saw the heads off local citizens." ...

• Theater of My Mind has a pic of "The 7 pulling out of Courthouse Square late on Thursday night." ...

• The Politburo Diktat has two reminders about November 9 ...

• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars says it's time to "pack up the bike for the winter. Next weekend, I’ll pull off all the leather, fill the tank with gas stabilizer and put the battery on a trickle charger." ...

• gridskipper NY does not like the PartyBike ... "Something about them suggests an octopoid tarantula mutant, and it’s jarring to see people pedaling in a direction at odds with the way their bicycle seat faces. Plus, it just looks wrong and unsettling, like something out of a medical abnormalities textbook." ... octopoid tarantula mutant works for us ...

  Family

• Dead Programmer's Cafe writes that "My paternal grandmother, the matriarch of the family, a mechanical engineer and a workaholic, was the main driving force behind our move to America." ...

• opinionistas and her mother had a little disagreement ... look at all the comments ... and reminds us of a few of the many reasons why we never worked in a big law firm ... as a lawyer who no longer practices, my advice is simple: get a life ...

• gothamist says in "Something Quirky in the Science High School Test" ... "Nothing, except maybe college admissions, seems to get New York parents panties into a twist like the city's specialized high schools. Parent have, since the inception of "the Test," been complaining about how unfair it is that admission into the city's math and science schools is decided completely by a test that is taken only once in eighth grade." ...

  Song & Dance ... and Other Entertainment

• Cafe Aman is standing by her "statement that the CSO [Chicago Symphony Orchestra] schooled New Yorkers in what a real first-class orchestra actually sounds like." ...

• stereogum reports that "Sony's QRIO robot can dance, react to people, and get up when it falls on its ass. Sony's goal: a personal entertainer." ... so THAT'S why they bought those music and movie companies ... robot talent ...

• gothamist has a post about dogs in bee costumes "Time for Some Bee-Dogs!" ... also check out Tubcats!

• Modern Fabulousity has 2 of the "10 Worst Album Covers Of All Time" ...

• BounceFM reports that the next 718 Session will be Sunday, Nov. 20th, with Danny Krivit on The Turntables The Entire Night! ...

• Clublife explains why you don't want to mess with the bouncer ...

• Amazin' Avenue writes that "There are rumblings all across this great land of this guy or that potentially donning a Mets uni in 2006, so stay tuned to AA for the latest news and rumors." ...

• Mets Geek hosts "The Ramon Hernandez Debate" ... 4 years/$24 million or four years, $40 million ...

• NYC Stories posts about his recent Dracula Tour of Transylvania ...

• An Unamplified Voice called the Barbara Bonney recital at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall "a very enjoyable success." ... and called "Canadian soprano Shannon Mercer, the find of the evening" ... also saw Così Fan Tutte at the Met ... "a coherent, detailed revival that -- at least in the first-cast performances that ran through Tuesday [Nov. 1, 2005] -- outshone all of its previous incarnations." ...

• listen. has a "a brief list of music appropriate to" Veterans Day ...

• About Last Night has a great piece about "about how blogging is affecting arts journalism" ... and says he is: "I'm a regular-guy aesthete. I like fancy sets, but I like bare stages, too. I like Stephen Sondheim and pretty girls. In fact, there’s only two things I never, ever like: pretentiousness and being bored." ... we believe that statement does justice to his writing, which we like ...

  Politics

• Quixotic Optimism writing about the national debt: "We take in X dollars per year and spend 3X. I used to do that. That is, until the stubbled jowly bounty hunters that smelled like Wendy's came and took all my stuff as restitution for my frivolous spending habits. Yeah, that worked out well." ...

• Alarming News says "I'm a conservative but I'm also a realist. Wake up, New York conservatives. A pro-lifer is unlikely to get elected to the City Council, despite the fact that the Council has zero to do with abortion policy. No one that runs against gay marriage, or rent control is getting elected in NY (and, please, spare me the Staten Island examples, that borough has near zero in common with the other four)." ... she's also "looking for a 'real' job." ...

• Ragged Thots has "Two views on the French crisis" ...

• The Politicker links to "what is surely the Godliest piece of political literature in New York City this year." ...

• Asymmetrical Information suggests that "If you don't want to stop engaging in risky behaviour, then vote libertarian and buy yourself a gun." ...

  New York, New York

• NewYorkology reports how to sing "Goin' to the Empire State Building and we're Gonna get married" ... but you have to apply by November 30 ...

• dailyheights.com asks, are "NIMBY Yuppies Stealthily 'Disappearing' Tacky Public Trash Cans?" ...

• Corante New York links to National Geographic's "New York Underground" ... "a fantastic cut-away look at what happens 800 feet below the surface of a typical New York City street" ... and reports that "Donald Trump still hates the New York Times" ...

• forgotten NY has a new page ... "Broadway Bulletin" that looks at Broadway in Williamsburg ...

• rion.nu has pics of autumn in Central Park ...

• Our favorite from Overheard in NY this week: "What About People Who Misuse 'Subtlety'?" ...

___________________________________

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com.

Big Apple Blog Festival - November 7, 2005

Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by spinachdip nyc.

This week's Big Apple Blog Festival is hosted Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit.

Some excerpts:

• Chad at Cake or Death reminds us that Greenpeace is sometimes its own worst enemy. Also check out his quote from Eisenhower: ""History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." I'm no fan of Eisenhower, though there is something to that quote that strikes me as true.
• Mr. Snitch notes how Apple's new OS, which can be run on Pentium-based PCs, is creating a base of very cheap, very powerful computers that threatens the status quo in the PC market.
• LawHawk informs the debate surrounding the rebuilding of Ground Zero:
  If there is any need greater than the rebuilding of Ground Zero, I'd like to hear it from the Mayor or anyone else. Bloomberg is yanking Silverstein's chain around for no reason other than because he can.

See this week's BABF for more.

Next week's BABF will be hosted by A Guy In New York.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form.

Big Apple Blog Festival - October 31, 2005

Last week's Big Apple Blog Festival was hosted by mister snitch!

This week's Big Apple Blog Festival is hosted by spinachdip nyc. Some excerpts:

• Last week started with the firing heard around the New York blogosphere, as Condé Nast freelancer/blogebrity Andrew Krucoff was escorted out of 4 Times Square. Krucoff tells his side of the story. Though according to the commenters on this Gothamist post, this news is only of consequence to the "blogger elite". There's a blogger elite? [Ed. "Blogger elite"? - Who knew?]

• This Overheard in New York entry finds two girls who really know what's important when you live in New York.

• New York hack, everyone's favorite cabbie/blogger (cablogger?) had a pretty rough Thursday night.

See this week's BABF for much, much more.

Next week's BABF will be hosted by Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form.

Big Apple Blog Festival - October 24, 2005

This week's Big Apple Blog Festival is hosted by mister snitch!. Some excerpts:

Lad tells Kip that China is no longer a communist wasteland. Kip disagrees, and coincidentally points out that, in this country, even the Amish will abide only so much government interference. (A Stitch in Haste)

If I'd known I was going to die, I'd have worn more comfortable shoes, the NYC horror festival, and another post involving a cheese grater, a garbage disposal, and severed limbs. (Bunniblog)

Karol declares Mark Steyn's piece on the Death of Russia a must-read. (Alarming News)

See this week's BABF for much, much more.

Next week's BABF will be hosted by spinachdip nyc

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC-related blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form.

Big Apple Blog Festival - October 17, 2005

This week's Big Apple Blog Festival is hosted by Englishman in New York. Some samples follow:

Welcome to the first EiNY-hosted Big Apple Blog Festival -- a round-up of the best New York bloggers had to offer during the wettest week in 102 years when broken $3 umbrellas clogged city sewer gates. A dark, damp seven days during which:

Tessa at NYC Metblogs got mugged by a Fresh Direct [food] delivery man.

Yanks fan and Sox fan provide a list of excuses after their dismal showing.

Baby frustration spilled over in the messageboards at Dailyslope. "It all started innocently enough, with Carnivore suggesting that aggressive baby-pushers install "cow catchers" on the front of their monster-strollers before they begin plowing down 7th Avenue [in Brooklyn]."

See this week's BABF for much more.

Next week's BABF will be hosted by mister snitch!

To nominate your favorite blog post for the next BABF, send your nomination to aguyinnewyork AT gmail.com

Big Apple Blog Festival - October 10, 2005

Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

Next week's BABF will be hosted by Englishman in New York ... if you have a NYC blog or you blog about NYC and would like to host an upcoming BABF, let us know ...

Lots of questions this week ... scroll down ...

• Miscellaneous Objections ... "There’s nothing like riding the subway with the Stroller of Damocles hanging over your head." ... or bumping into your leg ... Stroller of Damocles ... Heh.

• The Dawn Patrol is "going into hibernation until I finish my book, which will likely be just when it's due, in the middle of January." ... Happy hibernation and good luck with the book!

• cityrag.com has pics and a reminder that "so many animals still need help in the areas devastated by Katrina" ...

• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars says "Hudson Corner [Diner], on Hudson and West 11th Street, produces a great hamburger and fries." ... also likes the spaghetti marinara ... 570 Hudson Street, between 11th and Perry Streets, 212-229-2727 [MenuPages | Citysearch]

• Mister Snitch! links to "Greatest '404 page not found' ever" ...

• forgotten NY added a new page ... "5 ALIVE. Brooklyn's Fifth Avenue" ... a "comparison of Fifth then [1970s] and Fifth now." ... with a pic of "The House of Tuition" ... and Brooklyn Superhero Supply, "a spiffed-up tutoring center for neighborhood kids" ... 5th Avenue between Flatbush and Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn ...

• Salli Vates is "excited to learn that The Chocolate Room is once again offering its beloved bittersweet hot chocolate." ... it's located at 86 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-783-2900 [Citysearch]

• Alarming News has an interesting guest post by Candace ... "Party Foul" ...

• this fish needs a bicycle tells how she has thus far avoided ... the Gym Weirdo at her gym ...

• Asymmetrical Information has an interesting post ..."Lawsuit culture" ... "Is it the result of our lax regulatory system, or the decline of unionisation?" ...

• Slashfood says ... "Pomegranate juice may fight prostate cancer" ...

• eat drink one woman also has a post about pomegranates ... and has one of her regular "You Are What You Eat" posts ... with one of her 150-plus cousins ... Saigon Grill sounds good to us ... [MenuPages | Citysearch]

• A Full Belly reports that Shake Shack will be open until December 23rd ... southeast corner of Madison Square Park, near Madison Avenue and East 23rd Street [A Hamburger Today | MenuPages | Citysearch]

• New York's Sixth says "your cab driver still insists he can't cross the Hudson River without an introduction to Ben Franklin." ... 50 cents extra? ... or $100? ...

• The Kitchen Review reports on Pickle Day ... "In honor of the immigrants who started their American life in the Lower East Side, I ate pickles and challah for dinner. Very New York." ...

• Hotel Chelsea Blog quotes a story from The Toronto Star ... "Chelsea owner Stanley Bard, 71, fondly remembers the years Bob Dylan lived here in the 1960s. ... 'He stayed to himself and he was a gentleman'" ...

• Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please ... "There are days when the subway is so packed, like yesterday morning at the time I wanted to get on, that however tiny one is, there is just NO room in the subway car." ...

• Express Train has a pic of a full car ... "5 Train ~ Grand Central Station ~ 6:10pm: Packed rush hour. No more room on this car." ...

• greg.org found a "great vintage Jewish cowboy belt buckle on ebay" ...

• Kevin McCullough is "working with 'Food For The Poor' in the ghettos of Kingston Jamaica" ...

• slice has a link roundup, featuring ... Canadian Pizza Scandal ...

• stereogum got married this weekend ... Congratulations and Best Wishes! ... and The Corsair says: "I think it's a safe bet that this wedding will have the best music of any wedding in history." ...

• Amy's New York Notebook has the perfect gift for "reporters out there who have been wanting to thank your anonymous sources but didn't know how" ...

• A Socialite's Life is taking a vacation with the largest martini glass we've seen ... but before she left, she linked to the story about a 13 foot-long Python eating a 6 foot-long alligator ... Hey You! Yeah, you! The one trying to flush your pet alligator down the toilet! DONT! ... Oh. Never mind ...

• gothamist reports "Cat Show Comes, Goes" ... and "the City Council is about to make Gothamist very non-plussed. On Tuesday the Council is expected to override Bloomberg's veto of a bill that would kill metered parking on Sundays" ...

• Right Moon? got a call from the hospital billing department ... and "although it's illogical and not quite true, I feel that I saved $30,000 today." ...

• A Guy In New York had his weekly roundup of restaurant reviews in "This Week in Reviews (TWIR)" ...

• Third Avenue reviews "Ariadne auf Naxos at the Metropolitan Opera" ... "Were I to be stranded with just one opera recording on that mystical desert island, I would be torn between either Parsifal or Tristan und Isolde, with my preference probably going to the former. But iTunes does not lie - and the opera that, by some margin, I listen to most often is Richard Strauss' 1916 gem, Ariadne auf Naxos." ... "the Met's production by Elijah Moshinsky does not disappoint. Neither does it offer any original insight, but it is for the most part inoffensive and, joy of joys, totally devoid of animals." ... (An Unamplified Voice reviewed Ariadne last week (BABF, October 3, 2005)) ... Metropolitan Opera ...

• modern fabulousity comments on the Screen Actors Guild report "showing a 10% plunge in episodic television roles last year to 34,431 -- a loss of 3,523 roles from 2003 -- as primetime reality programming increased from 15 to 22 hours per week. ... however, if you're dedicated enough to eat bugs, date a bimbo or a himbo, work for a tyrant, or go stircrazy, you can still follow your dreams of acting on TV!" ...

• The Tin Man is "beginning to think that I’m a social liberal but a judicial conservative, or at least not a judicial liberal." ...

• The New SteveSilver.net has the best headline we've seen about the AOL purchase of Weblogs, Inc. for $25 million ... "Let’s Hope It Works Out Better Than That Whole 'Buying Time Warner' Thing" ... and asks: "Could Yahoo!Gawker be far behind?" ...

• snack brought back food in a tube from Europe ...

• untitlednamedotcom has comments and pics ... " round 7 pm on October 5, 2005 the NYPD removed bicycles locked to the entrance of the Bedford Avenue L station in Williamsburg. Locks were cut, bicycles were tagged and driven away in vans without prior warning" ...

• jewschool reposts "The Laws of the Sukkah according to Dr. Seuss" ... "Forget about the Green Eggs and Ham" ...

• Englishman in New York reports "A New York institution passed into history last week. The banking hall in the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building on Atlantic Avenue, in Brooklyn, closed its doors for the last time on Friday." ... with pics and lots of great links ...

• cityrag has a story and a pic of an "attack cat" ...

• the bronx announces "BLOGS: An exhibition of photoblogs -- NYC Exposition, Puerto Rico Sun, and East Harlem" ... October 14-November 26, 2005 ... at MediaNoche ... 161 East 106th Street, first floor (between Lexington and Third Avenues), 212-828-0401

• NewYorkology has a ... "Autumn roundup: where to see the leaves peak" ... with lots of links ...

• Ace of Spades has a clip and a pic of an Alaskan Airlines 737 painted to look like a salmon ... read the comments ... you paid for the paint job ... "If You Like Puns .... this should tickle you. Presenting the Salmon Thirty Salmon." ... also has a "Stupid Product Alert" ...
  
  

  Q and A

• writersbloc wants to know "Why do people proudly announce maxing out their credit cards? Is credit card debt that chic? Am I missing something? Furthermore, why would you proudly announced that you've maxed out your Saks Fifth Avenue card?" ... guess we can't brag - we pay our credit cards in full every month ...

• Slant Point answers the question ... "What does 7-11 stand for?" ... we're old enough to remember when they did close ...

• Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit asks ... "why does the lore of the Ivy League persist, despite ample evidence that it remains a relic of outdated thinking?" ...

• Yet another weird SF fan asks, "If there are driverless robots that can cross 130 miles of desert, how long will it be until we can buy driverless cars?" ...

• Jolie in NYC answers the question ... "do you know what the advantage is to using one of those ionic hair dryers?" ... at $160 plus, it better make coffee, too ...

• gothamist asks "What do you think is the smelliest subway station?" ... read the comments and add your nomination ... and reminds us ... "Both the Hudson and East Rivers have extremely strong currents, and can look deceptively calm from the outside. Never, ever, ever go in, for any reason-- even your life's work isn't worth dying for."

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

To nominate your favorite blog post about NYC, or if you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... or use the Carnival Submit Form ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com

Big Apple Blog Festival - October 3, 2005

Welcome to Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

• The Kitchen Review has a funny post ... "Corporate Potluck" ... with a link to "one of the greatest bad cookbooks ever - The Company Cookbook. Snarky comments and nausea inducing photos abound!" ... hilarious ... we don't eat company potluck anymore after we noticed that a few women never joined in .. and when we asked why, they asked us if all the men who brought in dishes washed their hands after using the toilet ... uh, "No thanks, we're not hungry." or "Not today, I've got the flu / diarrhea / a cold." ...

• Alarming News has a summary ... and many links to other blogger's posts ... of the Autumn NYC Blogger Party ... "'Bout last night" ... Clareified also has a good summary ... "Boobs, Blogs, and Bloomberg" ...

• one of Cinema Strikes Back "all time favorite actors (is) Giuliano Gemma" ... [IMDb | Brian's Drive-In Theater]

• Third Avenue reviews "La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera" ... "Following the feast for the ears given by Falstaff last week, I must admit to being a bit underwhelmed musically by this Bohème. The cast was good, but by no means exceptional, and Philippe Auguin conducted the Met orchestra with more speed than insight. Indeed, there was a moment during the more complex choral scene in Act II when I feared the whole thing was going to unravel. Luckily, catastrophe was averted." ... "Nevertheless, even a mediocre Bohème, and the Met's is way better than mediocre, is a magically moving experience." ... Metropolitan Opera ...

• An Unamplified Voice reviews Ariadne auf Naxos at the Met ... "Notes on an Ariadne" ... "That the Met's revived Ariadne auf Naxos fails is no surprise: the house hasn't succeeded with the piece since at least the Norman days" ...

• Kesher Talk had one last beach trip ... "Beach Haven" ... "The water was warmer than the air, the seagulls were aggressive (they really like Smartfood cheddar popcorn), and the waves were pleasant but not of bodysurfing quality" ... "These waves were too nice. If they had been people they would be sitting in a circle passing a talking stick and singing kumbaya." ...

• Englishman in New York, in "Ignorance is Blind," discusses ... "a thoughtless article which appeared in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine about a blind or partially-sighted applicant for a chef’s job at a city restaurant. The article is one of 40 essays which appear in a new book by Bloomsbury called Don’t Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World’s Greatest Chefs. It was written by Gabrielle Hamilton the chef and owner of Prune in the East Village." ...

• forgotten NY has a new page ... "tough Shell: Shell Road and West Brighton" ... Google map ...

• Dead Programmer's Cafe asks: "Would a real pirate drive a Honda?" ... maybe if it was a "Pirate", er, Pilot ... and links to an article about a preliminary test of a robot designed to crawl a cable ... eventually into space [NASA: space elevator] ...

• Letters from NYC says ... "I just made a mental note – order lunch in the next time I have an eye twitch." ...

• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars bumped into Paul Teutle of Orange County Choppers on a flight to Phoenix ... "He really does have huge biceps, tattoos and a big moustache." ...

• rion.nu has 6 pics of chess in bryant park ...

• Sexless in the City would rather help married friends watch their baby than go out to a bar to meet up with friends for a party ... "Beer baths vs. babysitting" ...

• Daily Refill has a roundup of "the bands that would play on The OC" ... and links to a touching reminiscence on the anniversary of her mother's death (click "a bad anniversary") ...

• NYC Stories wants to know ... "What's with those bags that are for sale everywhere in the city right now? You know the ones that look like a flapper threw up in technocolor. Some in frightful pink, others in ghastly yellow, and even others in multi-color atrocities." ... "Make sure you get a good deal, because this fad won't last long. When it ends, maybe you can chop yours up and make a sexy dress for your Barbie." ... with pic ...

• Autoblog has pics of a Rolls Royce concept car ... "Rolls Royce 100EX tours Big Apple" ... "RR has just released these pictures of the 100EX rolling around the isle of Manhattan increasing property value wherever it roamed." ...

• Dave Friedman reminds us Wikipedia entries are ... not always reliable ... "Wikipedia's Odd Take on the World" ...

• insignificant thoughts has an interesting post ... "Wal-Mart is a bunch of greedy bastards…" ...

• Gotham Gal says "Charmin is out and Scott is in. Who would have known?" ... Charmin is 2-ply, Scott is 1-ply ... but did she consider the impact of that decision "on the next seven generations"? ... we wonder why she doesn't follow her own advice and use Second Generation ...

• Corante New York summarizes a WSJ article by Alan Murray in "Technology is making real estate's business model obsolete" ... "How is it still possible, asks Murray, that real estate middlemen are able to pocket 5% on every transaction?" ...

• Theater of My Mind has a picture of "Pumpkins behind bars" ...

• Asymmetrical Information posted "Guzzling gas" ... does every blog post mentioning gas prices, SUVs and hybrids generate so many comments? ....

• gothamist has a "A Modest Dog Poop-rosal" ... and a roundup about the "4 Year Old Abandoned on Queens Street" ... and an update: the girl's mom's "live-in boyfriend was charged with her murder" ...

• Buzz Machine posts on "Needless exaggeration" ... "in the case of Katrina — and in spite of very good reporting and commentary across media — it’s still true that everybody messed up, everybody (myself included; Goldberg includes himself as well) bought the exaggerations as news." ...

• Stay Free! Daily has a post and a pic at a U-Haul Moving Center ... "30 days free storage for Katrina victims" ...

• the dawn patrol ... has "For Better or for Verse, A Guest Post by Robert N. Going" ... a judge with a sense of humor ...

• Express Train has a good pic ... "this is the kind of scene you only catch if you ride the train every day. So there you are minding your own business when this guy decides to lay down a few tracks during your morning commute." ...

• Downtown Lad has a post and pic ... "the most important news of the day. Scientists have taken the first pictures of a live, Giant Squid. That's a lot of Calamari . . ." ... yummmm, calamari, salt and pepper squid ...

• A Guy In New York says the best roti canai in NYC is at Sanur ... and posted his weekly "This Week in Reviews (TWIR)" ...

• our favorite this week from Overheard in New York ... "Ticket lady: I'm sorry, no pets allowed. Woman: But even if the dog is in a bag? --Central Park, Overheard by: armur" ... our second favorite is a classic ... "Wait for It...Wait for It..." ... "Girl #1: I like to surround myself with ugly people because it makes me look prettier by comparison. Girl #2: I know what you mean. --F train, Overheard by: Daile" ...

• our favorite from Sweet Blog o' Mine ... "Overheard at the 53rd Street subway stop: 'Queens-bound E train now approaching the station.' Pause. (same voice, singing) 'To find I'm king of the hill . . . top of the heap.' Pause. 'It's up to you, New York, Neeeeeeeeeew, Yooooooooork!' Smiles all around." ... makes us smile, too ... is this a great town, or what ....

• Mister Snitch! has 3 tips on how to appear informed, projecting "worldly savvy without many hours of tedious research"... and links to a story about ... "Genetically altered mice discovered accidentally at the Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have the seemingly miraculous ability to regenerate like a salamander, and even regrow vital organs."

• A Small Victory says "Things are going to be baseball heavy around here today and this weekend as the Yankees and the Red Sox face off in a season-ending series that will determine which team gets the division title." ... "Let's Play Three! Yanks, Sox and a Green Monster memory" ... we know how that turned out ... "'That's got to be a first, huh?' New York general manager Brian Cashman said. 'Two teams playing each other, clinching in the same stadium.' The Red Sox and Yankees each finished the year 95-67, though the Fenway scoreboard listed them alphabetically, with Boston ahead of New York. But the Yankees actually took the division title because they beat the Red Sox 10-9 in the season series." ...

• dailyheights.com reports that "Now you can use your multifunction "ABC" library card (with PIN) to download audiobooks and eBooks from digitalbooks.brooklynpubliclibrary.org." ...

The Big Apple Blog Festival is listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

If you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com

Big Apple Blog Festival - September 26, 2005

Welcome to Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

NY blog party on Friday, September 30, 2005 ... Evite here ...

• dailyheights.com, in "Call 311, Get a Fine" ... reprints a report from Dr. F ... "A few weeks ago we called 311 because rats are nesting in our front yard ... and then a few weeks later we got a citation in the mail from the Department of Health claiming that we had a garbage situation which violated the health code, causing the rat problem. The problem ... was the apartment building next door ..." ...

• Jolie in NYC has tips if you want to get into the fashion biz ... "How Do I Break Into the Industry?" ...

• Dead Programmer's Cafe bought a 13-year old can of "New Coke" on eBay ... "decade old New Coke _did_ taste a bit like Diet Coke With Splenda." ...

• jewschool has an "Anatomy Of An Air Strike" ... and has a brief review of a Yiddish "Pirates of Penzance, Di Yam Gazlonim, at the 92nd St. Y" ...

• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars discusses "Marketing to Women Riders" ... "Eleven percent of all Harley riders are now women." ...

• A Guy In New York had his weekly roundup of NYC restaurant reviews ... "This Week in Reviews - September 23, 2005" ...

• gothamist, in "Faulty Tours?" comments on the Daily News article "Takin' tourists for a ride: News puts city's tourist guides to the truth test – and guess what?" ... "to be fair the News doesn't quite take into account just how difficult it can be to jabber on for three hours and not make a mistake or two" ...

• Third Avenue attended opening night of The Met ... "Metropolitan Opera - opening gala night" ... and we love this description of NYC weather: "Summer clings on to New York. September is on the wane, yet the temperatures still think it's July. Every afternoon the thermometer climbs to 30C and beyond, and refuses to dip below 20C at night. Autumn waits in the wings, like an impatient tenor waiting for the self-obsessed soprano to finally stop taking curtain calls." ...

• Manhattan User's Guide has an interesting roundup of web sites in "Hump Day" ... we liked ... Ukrainian Bus Shelters ... World Beard Championships ...

• A Stitch in Haste has some thoughts on China ... "'China is Still a Dictatorship' Fact of the Day" ...

• NYC Metblog links to the TranStrap ... "a company selling these personal straps you carry with you to attach to the subway bars so you don’t have to touch them." ...

• The Wonkster ... "Public Toilets Hooray — Maybe" ...

• LittleViews on New York City lists 4 places where you can try small samples of many different beers ... "Beer Tasting at New York City's Microbreweries"

• The Urban Grind is one-year old ...

• greg.org gave us the link to the NYT piece on the floating "Gate" chasing the floating "Central Park" ... "Water, Gate" ...

• The New SteveSilver.net links to a site "posting free versions of NYT op-ed columns" ...

• the dawn patrol comments on an article in The Telegraph of London "that women are trying to get pregnant via in vitro fertilization because they don't want to do it the old-fashioned way" ... "I look at the practicing Catholic families I know, and say what you will, no doctor warns them that they're missing out on sex." ...

• Stay Free! proposes a new unit of measurement ... the Walt ... "the Walt Scale of Crass Commercialization." .. we'll just call it Walts, as in "Disney World is 100 Walts, Isle Royale National Park is 0 Walts" ...

• ForgottenNY is running a Katrina Relief Tour Saturday, October 2, 2005, ... donating all proceeds to the Red Cross ... and has a new page up about Sunnyside, in Queens ...

• The Apiary says check out the New York Musical Theatre Festival site ... "They give you a chance to say 'I saw that when...' and most notably you get to see future Broadway hits for CHEAP CHEAP ticket prices." ... sounds good to us frugal types ...

• BounceFM has news about "Benefit for MusiCares Hurricane Relief Fund and North Shore Animal League Hurricane Katrina Animal Rescue Fund" ... Sunday, October 2, 2005 ...

• rion.nu published a photographic "Ode to Summer's End" ...

• anguswit cites a report showing ... "Hartford, CT, is actually poorer than New Orleans" ...

• liberteaser "thought it would be entertaining to check out some psychic predictions about the 2005 hurricane season, and compare them to what we've seen." ... we like the other questions, too: "why aren't you rich enough that you don't have to peddle your abilities in this strip mall, and why do you let so many people die in events like Katrina and 9/11?" ...

• express train has a photo of a "human avalanche" in a subway station ...

• Englishman in New York says "all information—from the New York Times to BoingBoing—should be treated as suspect. It’s called weighing information; making your own decisions; having a brain." ...

• mister snitch! links to a report on the "startlingly similar images of a library in Dublin and Star Wars' Jedi Archives."

• NewYorkology reports that "Carnival Cruise Lines' Oriana docked at Red Hook's Pier 11 this morning [Sept. 24, 2005], making it the first ship to dock at the future home of Brooklyn's Cruise Ship Terminal, which is expected to open in April 2006." ...

• A small victory went to a classic car show at Point Lookout ... "when you look at cars as a works of art rather than just a machine that gets you from A to B, you see them in a totally different way" ... links to 37 pics ...

• Ace of Spades also went to a vehicle show, "Weekend Geek Confession" ... "Rochester Robot Rampage, sponsored by the Battlebots folks. Two days of robot carnage." ...
  

Listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

If you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail.com ... see you next week ...

You are free to repost the Big Apple Blog Festival so long as you leave this URL attached: BigAppleBlogFestival.com

Big Apple Blog Festival - September 19, 2005

Welcome to Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

• Stereogum suggests that you keep your iPod volume turned down ... "Keep it at an hour a day, at 60% of max volume, at most, if you don't want to end up wearing a hearing aid to your 30th birthday party." ...

• Frost Street is supporting Kathy Mayers in the "Gourmet Survivor Competition, a foodblog-community fundraiser for the victims of Hurricane Katrina." ... organized by The Amateur Groumet ...

• Amy Blair went to vote ... "On Tuesday, I went to go vote in the New York City Democratic Primary. The lady at the table for my election district asked me my name and I clearly told her 'Amy Blair.' 'Amy Blair,' she responded, 'that's an easy one to remember.'" ... after looking at every page in the A-L book, the poll worker then started to go through the M-Z book ... "I let her know that she wasn't going to find me in the M-Z book, as my last name starts with the letter 'B,' and the books are alphabetized by last name. 'Oh really?' she asked. 'Alphabetized by last name?' She then found my name in the book and thanked me for my help. She hadn't realized that's how it worked until then. The polls, by the way, had been open for thirteen hours at that point." ... Ai yi yi yi yi ....

• A Guy In New York posted his weekly "This Week in Reviews (TWIR)" ...

• gothamist reports that "The Taxi and Limousine Commission thinks that summons issued to cabdrivers for rudeness dropped 26% because of 311, since it's much easier for NYers to call up and complain about bad behavior. Well, here's Gothamist theory for the better mood: The taxi fare hike!" ... "Taxi Drivers Were Nicer This Year" ...

• jew school says that even if you're not sure if you know Dave Brubeck’s music ... you do ...

• mister snitch! has some good posts this week ... including ... Googles's launch of blog search (and check out the link at the bottom, "Glad you asked.") ... and he links to a CNN story about an inventor who makes fuel out of dead cats ... :-O ... Loco and Luca will NOT end up in our tank ... "Amazing sidewalk chalk art" ... check it out, it looks amazing ...

• modern fabulosity doesn't understand why our link to him comes first in a Google Blogs search for "modern fabulosity" ... neither do we ... but congratulations again on reaching 100,000 page views! ...

• Stay Free! Daily, in "Doctors fight online critics" ... writes that medical groups are upset about doctor ranking sites like RateMDs ...

• A Brooklyn Life gives her sister advice about how close she can park a car near a fire hydrant ... a commenter gives the "3-sidewalk squares" rule ... count "the number of concrete sidewalk squares between you and the hydrant -- if there are three full ones, you should be safe." ... sounds right to us ...

• A small victory has lists ... "Foods that are ok for pizza toppings" ... and "Foods that are NOT pizza toppings" ...

• NewYorkology and Corante New York look at the NYT's "36 Hours" story on ... Brooklyn ...

• MadKane has composed a "A Baysider's Ode To Queens" ... and has lots of limericks and New York humor on her site ...

• As I Please writes that "L.A. Times bests N.Y. Times" ... "At least in its coverage of Lafayette, Louisiana." ...

• CaiLun.info shows a book and box set in ... "Blue: Coptic with Case" ...

• The Politicker in "Brown vs. Rasiej" ... states that "One of the interesting down-ballot outcomes of this race was a reminder of what a low-tech slog city politics really is." ...

• A Stitch in Haste in "Sacré Château!" ... says "White Castle doesn't count" when it comes to a recent EU/US deal governing the transatlantic wine trade .. that requires: "From 2008 US vineyards will no longer be able to boast that a wine hails from a château unless they can prove its grapes are grown within sight of a castle." ... what about King Friday's castle? ...

• The Corsair writes that the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, has ... "the dreamiest hair" ...

• Amy's New York Notebook links to the Helvetica vs. Arial death match ...

• a picture BY me has a photo titled ... "Surf Grand Central" ...

• On Probation is leaving NYC and says ... "I can't think of anything I'm gonna miss about NYC. Period." ... happy trails to you ...

• Englishman in New York went to the Russia! exhibition at the Guggenheim museum and got a great pic of a dancer ...

• The Citizen Journal reports ... "At least one case of poison ivy confirmed in New York City; Officials on Alert" ...

• Cake Or Death? is very excited about the new Gillette 5-bladed razor ...

• Express Train has a photo ... "Pacific Street Brooklyn ~ waiting for the M/R ~ 8:30am"

• A VC asks, "Is Bill Gates the Cat with Nine Lives?" ... examines the first three lives ... and wonders if Vista (previously Longhorn) will be the fourth ...

• Asymmetrical Information has a succinct post about what "Little House on the Prairie" can teach us about Structural Unemployment ...

• Corante New York points to Paragraph ... "An incubator for bloggers" ... don't forget Village Quill ...

• Manolo’s Shoe Blog has roundup of Fashion Week ... "Fashion Week: Bland is the New Black" ...

• The Corsair also has a "Fashion Week Wrap Up" ...
  

Listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

If you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF ... or you have a NYC blog and would like to host an upcoming BABF ... send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail ... see you next week ...

Big Apple Blog Festival - September 12, 2005

Welcome to Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

• CaiLun.info has a great post ... "Pop-Up Books" ...

• Asymmetrical Information says "The poor really are different" ...

• Late Final suggests that "it might be a good time to look at the emergency management plan for your home town" ... and has links to more than ten cities ... and also notes that ... "Long Island, N.Y., where between 3 million and 4 million people live, is doing more to publicize tax-free shopping week than its coastal evacuation routes in the middle of a hurricane season." ...

  The Politburo Diktat ... "The local fire department announced a collection for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. We collected a few bags of clothes, stuffed animals, shoes, etc. and brought them over. When we arrived at village hall, we were astounded at the mountain of goods. Take a look" ... amazing ... take a look

• On Probation says goodbye and thanks to NYC ...

• forgotten NY added a new page called "Bank Yankin' - former savings institutions" ... pics of banks, buildings that used to be banks, and some old bank signs ...

• The Tin Man has a list of "the articles (with opening paragraphs) that the New York Times ran on its front page four years ago (September 11, 2001)" ...

• Time Out New York is having its EatOut05 on September 27th ...

• Modern Fabulousity hit 100,000 page views on Sept. 10th ... and wants an iPod nano ...

• My Urban Kvetch 2005 reveals that ... she did give the panhandler $5 ... (BABF, August 29, 2005)

• downtown lad believes TriBeCa has ... "the best dining experience in New York City" ... (for anyone wondering:
  TriBeCa means "'Triangle Below Canal' between the Hudson River and Broadway") ...

• Express Train has some beautiful pics of an everyday commute on the subway ...

• Young Manhattanite doesn't like the new Sploid design ...

• NYC Metblog reminds us that it is apple picking season ... with links to Pick Your Own farms within one hour of the City ...

• Third Avenue reviews the New York City Opera's new production of Richard Strauss's last opera, Capriccio ... in "A jubilant beginning" ...

• The Apiary has the secret for "Breaking into Comedic Television Writing" ...

• Right Moon? has a link to a shelter in Houston that "has specifically requested Plus Size Clothing" ...

• Republican Party Reptile is starting a "Million-Babe March" ...

• Ace of Spades HQ, in "Depak Chopra vs. Agent Smith" ... asks: "Is humanity a cancer? Or, as Agent Smith would have it, merely a virus?" ... or spam? ...

• A Brooklyn Life says "General admission tickets went on sale September 6, so now's the time to buy." for ... Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival ...

• Englishman in New York has a pic of the "Smallest Removal Van in the World" ... for GregsExpress.com ...

• the muse's pics sent us a link to three of her NYC photos ...

• Ragged Thots had a roundup last week that we missed ... "Bruce Ratner/Forest City Ratner's 'Brooklyn Standard', an ersatz paper with a raison d'etre of boosting the downtown Brooklyn development project -- of Forest City Ratner!"

• Alarming News is organizing a NY blogger bash for sometime in this month.
  

Listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

If you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF, send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail ... see you next week ...

Big Apple Blog Festival - September 5, 2005

Welcome to Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

Not all Katrina-related ...

• NYgirl ... "Too many of the stories on Katrina have focused on the worst aspects of humanity. While there are villains a plenty, there are also many heroes. Rescue workers, National Guardsman, & ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Here are the links to their stories. If you have a story you'd like to add to this post, please add your link to the Haloscan comment section." ...

• As I Please has some practical requests from a friend in St. Landry Parish, in Opelousas, LA ... "basically, anything you and I would by at Walgreen's for personal upkeep. These things are rarely thought of. The best way to purchase this kind of stuff is to actually in travel size so that individual packets can be given to people, and they don't have to share." ...

• AlarmingNews reminds us that TODAY (Sunday, September 5, 2005) is the last day of the Barneys Warehouse Sale ... 255 W. 17th Street

• Right Moon? is cleaning out the closet ... and donating 50% to The Salvation Army ...

• jewschool said "The trauma in New Orleans is very personal, as my family lives there - or I suppose I should say, lived there."

• Gotham Gal had a pig roast ... with pics ...

• NewYorkology says "The New York City jazz community is organizing a week-long fundraiser beginning Sept. 11 to raise funds to help the hurricane relief efforts in New Orleans."

• A Brooklyn Life, in "funny cat websites" ... links to stuff on my cat ... here's our favorite ... but where's the link to tubcat? ...

• dailyheights.com has a list of one-liners generated by the arrest of Dan Hoyt, allegedly the subway onanist caught on cellphone camera ... "(Really Bad) Subway Lewdness One-Liners"

• manhattan transfer is traveling and has "Pictures from Wyoming" ... take me home country road ... actually, Chug is from Colorado, not Wyoming ...

• forgotten NY has a new page on Queens Boulevard ... "Blvd. of Death" ...

• Asymmetrical Information gives a lesson on basic economics ... "In praise of price gouging" ...

• a small victory is collecting school supplies for the Kids of Katrina ...

• Letters from NYC has a great roundup ... "Disaster Relief Information for Victims and their Friends"

• insignificant thoughts donated some photos to the Katrina Relief Auction / Photos for Charity on flickr

• Now What?, in " Lord of the Flies II: Escape From New Orleans" ... links to Survival of New Orleans blog ... which in turn has links to lots of New Orleans pics ...

• Yanksfan vs. Soxfan ... Priorities: "Baseball is about the last thing on most of our minds right now, and with good reason. Over this holiday weekend we will be taking a break from baseball blogging, and we wish everyone out there a happy and safe Labor Day. For those in distress, we offer our sincerest thoughts and hopes. If you are an a position to do so and feel so inclined (and as YF linked to yesterday), please give here (the wonderful organization "Architecture for Humanity") to help the victims of the hurricane."

• mister snitch! has a post with lots o' links to video and pics of Katrina damage ...

• Clareified, to all the pleas for sending money to Katrina victims ... says, "let me take this opportunity to just.say.no." ... and adds, "And if there are places in or near the affected area that have clothes, food and housing, but refuse to give them to the victims of this disaster unless they cough up my lotto money, then I definitely don't want my money supporting those businesses. In fact, the nation should collectively be boycotting any and all of those establishments." ... uh, OK ...

• The Apiary has started a comedy clubs for hurricane relief thread ... "Come out to see the city's finest and most upstanding comics while doing your part to help the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been irrevocably devastated. Here is a list of upcoming benefits" ...

• Kesher Talk on New Orleans ... "one cannot help thinking that the failure of local government to have someone in place of the calibre of a Rudi Giuliani to hold down the fort until the big guns could arrive has quite a lot to do with what we are seeing. It makes the difference between a successful disaster and one that is entirely disastrous." ... and also has a good roundup of sites covering the disaster ...

• Brain Terminal talks about the music industry ... "For years, the recording industry has resisted the notion that its current business model is obsolete in the era of music-as-files. Even though the iPod and other MP3 players have effectively separated music from its physical medium, the industry itself has done little to embrace the mechanism that more and more people prefer for their music enjoyment. Instead, they've been busy suing teenagers who download music illegally and trying to prop up an outmoded distribution model. Music no longer needs to be trapped in circles of plastic, but the music business is so paralyzed by panic that they're ignoring what customers want." ...

• A Guy In New York has his weekly roundup of NYC restaurant reviews in "This Week in Reviews - September 2, 2005" ...

• Laren at Gothamist tells us how to dine for $5 ... "Eating for Five Big Ones" ... we love Vietnamese sandwiches (Banh Mi) ...

• Theater of My Mind took a pic of a colorful sign for Maxie's Delicatessen ... but the reviews of the food aren't so hot ... [MenuPages | Citysearch]

• Corante New York has a report about a program that will provide a laptop to every school child in NYC's Region 10 public schools ... "Bridging the digital divide with free Apple and Dell laptops for Manhattan school kids" ...

• Alarming News is organizing a NY blogger bash for sometime in early September.
  

Listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

If you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF, send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail ... see you next week ...

Big Apple Blog Festival - August 29, 2005

Welcome to Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

Alarming News is organizing a NY blogger bash for sometime in early September.

• Yanksfan vs. Soxfan says the "First Street Gallery in New York, has started what seems to be a minor controversy. It seems that the gallery is displaying what is purportedly a death mask of Ted Williams" ...

• rion.nu, a NYC photoblog, has pics of tomatoes and peppers ... at the Union Square Farmer's Market ...

• The Politburo Diktat has news about ... the Flying Spaghetti Monster ...

• Overheard in New York in "Don't Ever Dare a New Yorker to Do Anything" ... Woman: "If you don't stop hitting the fucking brakes like that, I'm gonna throw up all over the back of your cab." ... Cab driver: "Oh yeah? Go right ahead, lady!" ... She did. ... --Cab, 34th & Lexington ... Overheard by: Her friend, who was also kicked out of the cab ... never had that happen when I drove a cab ...

• A Guy In New York posted his weekly roundup of NYC restaurant reviews in "This Week in Reviews - August 26, 2005" ...

• On Probation is leaving NYC ... for Las Vegas ...

• Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars got back from his Caribbean cruise ... barely ... he and the Karaoke Queen missed the boat out of Nassau ... "Don't Rock the Boat" ...

• Gothamist has "Classic New York Trips, part 5" ... featuring the "New York Marble Cemetery, smack between Second and Third Streets and Avenues" ...

• Matzoh Cojones ... "The search is still on for a marrow donor, most likely of Eastern European Jewish decent." for jazz saxophonist Michael Brecker ...

• Newyorkcityboys links to news about "the third execution of a homosexual in the past 2 months ... "

• NYC Metblogs ... "TV Junky? This One’s for You" ... "if you live in NYC or LA you can view some of the new fall pilots before their broadcast Premiers at the Museum of Television and Radio. And it looks like they will be providing liquor too!"

• a picture BY me has a link to a sewing class ... "you not only learn how to sew, you learn how to produce correctly finished pieces that look every bit as good as what you buy."

• A Small Victory is asking for help naming her new cat ...

• Cinema Strikes Back says ... "you need to pay closer attention to Indian cinema, especially if you like gangster films."

• Clareified ... "It's real easy to be all fiscally responsible when you live with your mom." ... well, yeah! ...

• Deadprogrammer's Cafe ... has some interesting photos of ... steel eagles on the Chrysler Building ... "The Devil in the Details"

• we feel like AMW with this one ... "pervert081805" is a flickr post ... "I was minding my own business, taking the train to work as usual when this man got on the car and kept staring at me. I tried to avoid eye contact with him but I had a feeling he was up to no good when he kept massaging his crotch. I couldn't believe this guy had the audacity to do something like this in the middle of the day! So I took out my cell-phone and turned on the camera." ... via dailyheights.com ...

• Jolie in NYC answers ... "Beauty Question= 'Help Me Fight Blemishes!'"

• anguswit ... "both critics of the left and right acknowledge the existence of a continuum between civil liberties and effective counter-terrorism measures-- if you increase one you tend to get less of the other." ...

• Amy's New York Notebook reports on the "Peterborough Beer Festival, this year featuring more than 500 draught real ales." ... 500 ...

• Forgotten NY added a new page about "ancient posters found at the Tenement Museum" ...

• cityrag lets us know that "2 Big Macs have less fat than 1 Chipotle burrito!" ... Ai yi yi! ...

• The Galvin Opinion reminds us that in the Western U.S. ... you can't take water for granted ... "Arizona Braces for Water War with Other States" ...

• Ragged Thots asks ... "Would sending [Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson] to Cuba to hash out Caribbean basin policy be a violation of the embargo? I mean -- assuming that they have to stay there?" ...

• the daily isolato has "Four tips for perfect cupcakes" ... one of which is "add a cup of sour cream" ...

• A VC "spent $54.25 to fill our Honda Minivan with 17.9 gallons of gas" ... and links to a blog post that "explains why the mainstream media's fearmongering over the rise in oil prices is missing the big point."

• The Tin Man wants "TheaVo - a TiVo for the theater. Pause live theater, just like live TV!"

• Theater of My Mind, a NYC photoblog ... has a nice pic of the Bryant Park Hotel ...

• towleroad says that if you want to duplicate Ansel Adams photograph "Autumn Moon" ... you "may be able to do so next month, when the moon will rise in nearly the exact position it did in 1948." ...

• Letters from NYC says "Being sick as a dog has some benefits." ... in "CBGB's - a love ending too soon" ... has some fond memories of CBGB and growing up ... touching ... if my 14-year-old niece was to do something similar she'd probably get grounded for life ...

• My Urban Kvetch 2005 was approached by a man who said he had lost his keys and asked for $9 to go home ... and her address so he could repay it ... and she asks, "Did I give him anything? And if so, how much? What do you think?" ... we hope not ... read the comments ...

• Jane Galt at Asymmetrical Information comments on the jury system in "Who decides--and how?" ... "The jury system was designed in an era of generalists, before even the invention of forensic evidence. Juries were generally being asked to rule on things they understood well--theft, infidelity, property rights, murder. Now they're being asked to rule on things far outside of their experience (and in some cases, outside of their cognitive ability)." ... and has observations on predicting the price of oil ... "Predicting the peak" ...
  

Listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

If you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF, send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail ... see you next week ...

The next Big Apple Blog Fesitval

will be posted on Monday, August 29, 2005. To include your best post from this past week, send it to us by 9:00 pm ET tonight, Sunday, August 28.

aguyinnewyork [at] gmail

While you're here, have a look around.

This Week in Reviews ... Googletalk ... Counterfeit Handbags ... Upcoming free events at Lincoln Center ... Rossville, Staten Island - "One of the eeriest places in the five boroughs" ... and more ...

Big Apple Blog Festival - August 21, 2005

Welcome to Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

Alarming News is organizing a NY blogger bash for Thursday, August 25th

Blissful Ignorance recounts his journey to America in "Boat Trip" ... "after drifting at sea for about 30 days, encounter with pirate (and related horrors), we were pick up by Indonesian Coast Guard. We spend several months in an UN Refugee game with other Vietnamese boat people. In the winter of 1980 we arrive in Brooklyn, NY." ...

Jolie in NYC responds to a reader who asks, "I want to know what is really on Naomi Watt's cheeks!" in "Beauty Question: Complexion Luminizers" ... we thought it was olive oil ...

Jeff Jarvis posts a discussion list of who is "using blogs well to expand news coverage and in newsrooms and who’s using the internet well to change how news is gathered and distributed" in "Who’s doing it right? Recommendations, please…"

Now What? is getting laser eye surgery next month and describes the preliminary exam ...

A Guy In New York posted its weekly roundup of NYC restaurant reviews in "This Week in Reviews - August 19, 2005"

the daily isolato links to a very interesting study on facial attractiveness ...

As I Please calls it a "Cold day for the Devil" ... because he's linking to The Village Voice ...

Exit Zero advises ... "when you're speaking to a bureaucrat, don't accuse his/her department of incompetence - accuse another, possibly competing department of incompetence and ask for their help in proving your case." ...

My Urban Kvetch 2005 does NOT approve of "14-year-olds with perfectly tweezed eyebrows." ... "My Emma Roberts Issue" ... we agree ...

Kesher Talk links to a blog "with cliff-hanger installments of the fairy-tale-cum-screwball-comedy story of his courtship of his wife...."

words to eat by warns you to NEVER, EVER, ON NO ACCOUNT, use Brooklyn Locksmiths, dba Speedway ... in "A PSA for Brooklynites: NEVER USE BROOKLYN LOCKSMITH, AKA SPEEDWAY" .. and helpfully lists all of their phone numbers ...

Overheard in New York's best subway-related post this week ... "Conductor: ...we are told the delay is indefinite...for future reference 'indefinite' does not mean the train won't leave at all. So all those people that just got off the train and went upstairs to wait, are still waiting! And you're on your way!" ...

brain terminal links to an interesting article in LAWeekly ... "Hollywood to Drive Nail in Newspaper Coffin?" ...

the corsair has an "Exclusive: Madonna is Stubborn" ... and promises: "In our next episode of Exxon-Mobil Gas-terpiece Theater, Rooco declares himself Zeus." ...

Asymmetrical Information ... says that "Many academics of my acquaintance profess to be aghast at the "status seeking" in which their neighbours engage--and yet I have never met anyone as obsessed with collecting professional merit badges as an academic." ... "Money money money money" ...

verbosecoma reminds you to "get your CMJ Badge so you won't miss some of fall's most anticipated films" ... September 14-17, 2005 ... CMJ Film Fest

Armavirumque reports that George Galloway will debate Christopher Hitchens ... on Iraq and U.S. and British foreign policy ... on September 14, 2005 ...

Waiter Rant has a post "I’m Letting the NY Post Do My Job Today" ... Ai yi yi yi yi ... and take a glance through the more than 250 comments ...

Newyorkish has a great collection of "Links: David Hasselhoff & Christmas Lights" ... including ... "Holiday gift idea: Mars will produce customized M&Ms with a name on them" ... "Slate reveals one of the closest guarded secrets on the Web: Amazon.com's customer service number" (we bet THAT will change) ... "Strange animation of the day: It's a Wonderful Life, performed by animated bunnies in 30 seconds" (really) ...

A Year in Food is leaving NYC and moving to San Francisco ... after a 3 month tour of Europe ... starting in Barcelona ...

Bakerina, commenting on the Amanda Hesser NYT article, "Under Pressure," says that "It has been almost 30 years since my stepdad was foolhardy enough to buy my mother a Daisy Seal-a-Meal for Christmas, almost 30 years since we took a pass at making big batches of stew, vacuum-sealing them, freezing them and reheating them in boiling-water bags, only to decide that the results weren't worth the added time, the cost of the Seal-a-Meal bags or the increased amount of plastic in our garbage, 30 years since we said goodbye to all that...." ... but Bakerina, "sous vide" sounds so much more ... elegant ... than "seal-a-meal" ...

The People's Cube reports that "Nebraska Mom Demands Meeting With DQ CEO"

slice found a bunch of pizza-related postings on Craigslist Missed Connections ... "That's Amore: 'You Were on a Break from Mandee's'" ...

The Amateur Gourmet's 1000th post is "My 1000th Post: How To Start a Food Blog" ... congratulations on the 1000th post!

The Malcontent says lightning does strike twice ... in "The L Word" ... "Frozen in front of me for what seemed like a minute was an enormous wooden pot, carved from the trunk of a tree, beginning to tip over on its base. My mind was paralyzed with horror as I did some quick math on whether dropping a $400 camera-phone would be more foolish than reaching out to save a pot of indeterminate value." ...

Speaking of lightning ... Towleroad took a photo of lightning striking the Empire State Building ... only got it striking once though ...

A Hamburger Today has a quick overview of "The History of the Hamburger" ... yes, we know it's not this week, but we missed it ...

A Stitch in Haste notes that CRS has "released a report summarizing the Social Security debate and a convenient fact sheet on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation system." ... coming soon to a citizen near you ... "Crises, Crises Everywhere..."

Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars is cruising the Caribbean ... with the Karaoke Queen and her extended family .. and blogging about Caribbean Harley dealers and tattoos

John-Boy at NYC Metroblog, who rides the G train, is looking for a fight over who has the "suckiest train" with anyone who rides the N train ... in "Straphangers? Where are these Straps? Is this S&M?"

Listed on the ÜberCarnival page and in Carnival News.

If you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF, send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail ... see you next week ...

Big Apple Blog Festival - August 14, 2005

Welcome to Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week's posts by NYC bloggers.

Amy Langfield says today, Sunday, August 14, 2005, is Cat Adoption Day in Brooklyn

Alarming News is organizing a NY blogger bash for Thursday, August 25th

A Full Belly has some interesting links, including one to MetaFilter about why steaks in France taste different than U.S. steaks ... and the difference between real vanilla and vanillin ...

dailyheights has a "Creepy mural advertisement seen in Crown Heights, near Dean and Bedford." ... Ai yi yi yi yi ... what was that dentist thinking? ... also a "meaty" post on "The Mighty Wind of Meat (El Carneviento) on Flatbush Avenue" ... with a photo of the "combined essence of thousands of pork shoulders and chickens." ... ugh ...

A Guy in New York posted his weekly "This Week in Reviews" ... with links to many NYC restaurant reviews .. and has a bleg for humorous food blogs

The (vast) Right Wing Conspiracy has a list of ice cream flavors from "Star Spangled Ice Cream" ... Navy BattleChip sounds good to us ...

Adam Kuban at sliceny looks at the "Daily News Pizza Roundup" of New York City's best pizzerias from last week and adds comments ... and links to his reviews ... read it all ...

Englishman in New York has a link to a hilarious video titled "The Triple Tofu Tower"

Slant Point has a Hawk Sighting Update

greg.org has a link to a good story by asking "Did you know George W. Bush shot a miraculous 11 holes-in-one on the first round of golf he ever played?" ...

AlarmingNews had the best headline for the NYC government effort to remove trans fats from restaurants: "First they came for the cigarettes but I wasn't a smoker so I did nothing. Then they came for the cupcakes...." ... we would have written it: "First they came for the cigarettes but I wasn't a smoker so I did nothing. Then they came for the chicken feet...."

NYC Stories has a quick roundup of the upscale burger joints opening in Chelsea

NewYorkology notes that the Central Park Conservancy will have walking tours of Seneca Village on August 27 and September 18 in "Scientists probing Central Park's Seneca Village"

the corsair states that "The education going on in American public schools at present is naught else but incoherent piffle, and if we are honest with ourselves, we all know that already. When was the last time a President allowed their children to attend a public school? I thought so." ... recommends the Paideia Proposal ... in "A Little of the Old In and Out" (scroll down) ... and also asks "Did George Stephanopoulos inadvertently get Madeline Albright her gig at Foggy Bottom?" ...

cityrag covers the opening .. with pics ... of "the cheesy Hard Rock Café" at Times Square in "Smashing!" ... where guitars were smashed on cinder blocks (cause the old rockers couldn't bend over?)... and suggests ... "maybe donating a bunch of guitars to local schools would have been a better promo" ... yeah ... also has some pink catblogging ... with links to flying cat pics in "flair for style" .. AND ... "great drive-by shot of the Weenie Mobile on the NYS Thruway" ...

Stereogum asks "Who are the WORST-DRESSED MEN in rock 'n' roll? Rock chicks are too easy to pick on (especially w/ Fergie now sporting Depends), so stick with the dudes. Does Jacko get automatic top billing?" ...

Towelroad has "New Info on Hangings in Iran" about the hanging of two Iranian boys in July ...

Jossip says Eugene Robinson is a media hero for "tackling the issue no other media want to address: the obsession with the missing white-girl obsession." in "Missing White Girls: The meta-meta coverage obsession" ... and is looking for an intern ... "Free indentured servitude now available!"

Charlie Suisman at Manhattan User's Guide put out his "Best of MUG" ... we are very interested in the Flybar ... a pogo stick on steroids ...

Jane Galt of Assymmetrical Information was guest blogging at Instapundit this week.

Salli Vates liked the Comte de Montagne she picked up at the Bedford Cheese Shop.

Listed on the ÜberCarnival page.

If you have a NYC blog and want to see something in the next BABF, send us a short write up and a permalink to aguyinnewyork [at] gmail ... see you next week ...

Big Apple Blog Festival - August 7, 2005

Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF) for August 7, 2005, a representative roundup of the last week's posts by NYC bloggers.

Ay Caramba! We thought this was going to be a slow week being August and all ... thank goodness sliceny is closed until August 8 for renovation or we would have had even more ...

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