The strange case of the plucky former NYPD officer Arno Herwerth (who is from Long Island, natch) and his GETOSAMA license plate has gotten even stranger. This time the man with “Kill Bin Laden” crudely painted on his American flag themed minivan and a habit of attending Smithtown board meetings in a chicken suit has rejected the offer of the DMV allowing him to keep his plates, since they would not pay his legal fees.......

Last Sunday and Monday a collective of activists, journalists, retired government officials and theater makers gathered at The Culture Project to begin mock impeachment proceedings against President Bush. The “trial by theater” arose in part out of frustration with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s pledge to leave impeachment “off the table” when her party seized the House majority. The month long series, called A Question of Impeachment, is intended to spark debate and, participants hope,......

There are 9.3 million vanity license plates in the United States, but every now and then there is one person whose choice of to proclaim on his/her plates causes some problems. Typically, the problematic plate is weeded out thanks to the DMV’s “blue list”of banned letter and number combinations ranging from the obvious, like GOD, NYPD and POL1CE, to the less so, like 3M TA3. Still the NY State DMV’s online plate lookup allows for......

A federal judge is allowing a NYC bus driver to sue the New York City Transit over harassment he received at the hands of fellow workers. Mathen George, a bus driver since 1987 and was born in India, claims that after September 11, 2001, colleagues called him "Bin Laden," "Saddam Hussein," "caveman" and "camel jockey." And all this allegedly took place at a depot in Queens. Judge Raymond Dearie wrote that George had shown "he......

It wasn't an anti-Muslim hate group that bombed a 24 hour deli owned by Pakistani immigrants in Staten Island after September 11 - it was the mob! The NYPD says that Edward "The Irishman" Fisher firebombed My deli & Grocery because it competed with a mob-protected bagel business nearby (it happens to be owned by a Pakistani immigrant as well). Fisher is supposedly a Gambino family associate, and other crime families were involved as well:......

A new book claims that Al Qaeda was 45 days away from attacking the NYC subway system with cyanide gas, but then, for an unknown reason, decided not to. Um, phew? The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind is being excerpted in Time magazine this week, and yesterday, Time teased the excerpt with a "web exclusive" (Ali is an Al Qaeda operative/nformant to the U.S.; Ayeri is "Yusuf al Ayeri, "bin Laden's top operative......

Oh man, when was the last time we had a good artistic freedom vs. religion controversy? Hmm... maybe the Black Virgin Mary covered in poo back in 2000-- which itself was nothing compared to Serrano's Piss Christ back in 1989. Well, here's a new one! CBS reports on the National Black Fine Arts Show at the Puck Building: But the writer had big problems with a painting by Harlem artist "Tafa". It depicts an......

Oh, Osama. You think you can release a new audiotape proving you're alive - and send our intelligence agencies into overdrive - and threaten to attack to the U.S. again as well as offer us a truce. Those are some mighty mixed signals! To paraphrase Jon Stewart on the Daily Show last night, while it's nice that Bin Laden acknowledges the fact that many Americans are against the war, people are still pissed off at......

- When Bin Laden speaks, everyone listens...but Mayor B says there's no threat to NYC - The NY Sun's problems with the Governor's budget plan - The city is cleaning up after yesterday's windy mess - a man was killed by a tree that fell in his yard - Bryce Dallas Howard will be Gwen Stacy in the new Spiderman movie, which is interesting to us because Gwen is a blond, so it'll be......

A.J. Daulerio, Oddjack...

Gothamist is really psyched to check out Dirty on Purpose tomorrow night (details below). Their sound gets endlessly compared to Yo La Tengo and we've been listening to their EP for a while now, but haven't had a chance to catch them live just yet. On any given Sunday we like to scroll over to their song Mind Blindness on our iPod and go walk around a quieter area of downtown...the perfect weekend soundtrack.......

The trailer for Mel Gibson's new movie about the last hours of Christ's life is up and it is a downer - very bloody and spooky. James Caviezel, who is a notably vocal Catholic (he didn't want to do a nude scene with Jennifer Lopez in Angel Eyes), stars as Christ and the entire movie is in Aramaic. Aramaic! There's been fuss over this movie since Mel Gibson decided this should be his directorial followup......