Today's end-of-day links: Companies have been less willing to make holiday hires, Bill Thompson still quiet on Senate rumors, little Jasmina didn't meet the President because she was taken to the hospital, the FAA released transcripts from the incident where pilots overshot their destination and more.

After Adam Lambert's racy, same-sex kiss-and-simulated blow job performance on the American Music Awards, Good Morning America cancelled the singer's performance on the morning show. But now it turns out that GMA is welcoming admitted, convicted girlfriend-beater Chris Brown to the program next week.

       

While many are celebrating the slashed prices today, Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir are lambasting the Black Friday masses and the corporate overlords that preside over them. This morning the good Rev hit Macy's for his annual Buy Nothing Day. In an op-ed yesterday, he wrote, "We'll be there at 5am, when shoppers who have been up all night wait in line rush the glass doors. This is the human comedy at its most sad, and it is an environmental shopocalypse."

An Upper East Side sports bar popular with Wisconsin transplants was slapped with two fines totaling $20,000 for selling a popular beer that's only licensed to sell in Wisconsin. The owners of Mad River Bar & Grille were fined by the SLA earlier this month for pouring Spotted Cow, a microbrewed ale that retails in Wisconsin for about $30 a case or $1.25 a bottle.

Is there any band as old as Sonic Youth (nearly three decades!) still radiating such adventurousness and vitality? (The E-Street band, perhaps, but that's apples/oranges.) On Tuesday night the ever-fresh noise rock quintet unleashed yet another spellbinding show at The Music Hall of Williamsburg—an exhilarating return to form after seeing them swallowed up by the United Palace Theater in July. As if to emphasize their commitment to developing new material, the 90-minute performance skewed toward their most recent album, The Eternal, with highlights including a blistering "Calming the Snake," and an orgasmic "Anti-Orgasm." The night climaxed with a show-closing rendition of timeless classic "Silver Rocket," and though the improvisational segment never quite blasted into outer space, the song burned up completely, inspiring atavistic stage-diving which hilariously culminated in one husky, bespectacled man struggling to get on stage just as the show ended—and diving into the audience anyway.

A popular deejay in Chelsea's gay nightclub scene has gone missing. Last seen on September 27th behind the decks at Splash Bar on West 17th Street, 53-year-old James Moyer (also known as DJ Jimmy) hasn't been seen, hasn't returned emails or phone calls, and hasn't been to his apartment for nearly two months.

Street artist Posterchild, who hails from Toronto but has recently been spending time in New York, just proposed to his girlfriend... via street art, of course. He says his lady love Sonja, "thought she was just helping me out with another street art project; I kept this covered until after it was installed and after the unveiling I was expecting some kind of reaction — but it took a little while to convince her that this was a proposal for real, and not just some art project!"

The family of Vada Vasquez, the 15-year-old Bronx girl who took a stray bullet to the skull last Monday, declined their usual Thanksgiving feast this year, postponing it until the teen can eat again. But the five young men accused of involvement in the shooting were given a seemingly generous Thanksgiving meal in jail yesterday. Dinner included turkey with dressing, yams, steamed greens and carrot cake!

From CBS News, "Authorities say Tiger Woods has been seriously injured in a car wreck in Florida. The Florida Highway Patrol says the PGA star hit a fire hydrant and a tree as he pulled out of his driveway early Friday in his 2009 Cadillac sport utility vehicle." He was taken to the hospital. "The highway patrol says the crash is still under investigation, and charges are pending. However, the highway patrol said the crash was not alcohol-related." Update: Woods' spokesman said the golfer was released from the hospital in good condition, while the "mayor of Windermere, Fla., reportedly said Woods was treated for facial lacerations." TMZ has a photo of the hydrant.

Tomorrow night the Hudson River Quadricentennial Celebration year closes out with the addition of New York City’s Lighted Boat Parade. The sparkling aquatic march will make its way down the Hudson, around the tip of Manhattan and up to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The couple who apparently crashed the Obamas' first State Dinner on Monday has now caused the Secret Service to investigate how a couple with reality show dreams managed to get through the security. Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan wouldn't given details on how Michaele and Tareq Salahi managed to attend the event, "We're being intentionally vague on that. All we are saying is that procedures we have in place weren't followed."

Ladies, meet Martin Berres, a 62-year-old single man who describes himself on his MySpace page (martynycforever!) as a "classy native New Yorker." His heroes include Niccolò Machiavelli, and he is "in better shape and health than most men 1/3 my years. Do not let the age mislead you; I am young in heart and looks... I consider myself to be a find." Marty would love to meet you provided you meet the "paramount" requirement of "outside beauty" and "inside beauty." Oh, and you should also have lots of money and jewelry he can pawn—according to two women who say Berres swindled them out of $400,000.

New York State's dire budget situation gets the front page treatment from the NY Times today. And the Times sounds the alarm bells and points a finger in the direction of a certain state body:

"Without a budget deal, New York will be left with just $36 million in the bank by the end of December, according to current projections. And the money will last that long, officials say, only if the state chooses to fully exhaust its emergency reserves by tapping several billion dollars’ worth of temporary loans from its rainy-day fund and short-term investments.

Continue reading "New York State Running Out Of Money"

Today's mid-day links: Deep-fried turkeys mean the very real possibility of a fire, a man tried to shoplift two suits by stuffing them into his pants, volunteers were out in force on Thanksgiving, and more.

On Wednesday afternoon, DOT officials had met with the pastor at Our Lady Queen of Peace church on Staten Island to discuss the problem of reckless drivers on the street that runs by the church and its school. Rev. Pancrose Kalist warned city officials about the dangerous situation on New Dorp Lane, where crossing guards routinely witness drivers blasting by them and running the red light. Six hours after his meeting, an elderly married couple was killed by a hit-and-run driver with numerous traffic violations who sped through a red light.