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 …
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