Results tagged “ifi”

Police are looking for a man suspected of assaulting two women in separate early Sunday morning incidents and released a surveillance video of him.

More than just a funny comedian, Elon James White (myspace) is becoming a notable force for his efforts to introduce new audiences to the sometimes overlooked diversity of talent within the world of black comedians. In other words, there’s more to black comedy than you might think by watching Def Comedy Jam. By creating The Black Comedy Project with comedian Baron Vaughn, White has helped cultivate an expanding community of artists who might be classified as Black-Alt comedians, for lack of a better term. At the end of the month, White will gather some of most innovative performers in New York for the first ever Black Comedy Experiment festival, which runs from February 28th to March 1st. The three day marathon (it’s a leap year) features an intriguing lineup of stand up, sketch comedy and solo shows, all gathered under one roof at the The Tank (Collective: Unconscious) in Tribeca. Tickets.

The specter of a Mormon multimillionaire as president has been lifted; Mitt Romney announced his withdrawal from the Republican primary race this afternoon. Romney used his speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee to declare: “If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win.” Wonkette liveblogged the speech to great comic effect.

MUSIC: When we talked to Jonny Greenwood (pictured) back in October, Radiohead's In Rainbows wasn't the only focus. His composition titled Popcorn Superhet Receiver will be performed tonight by The Wordless Music Orchestra with Brad Lubman as conductor. When we asked Greenwood if he would be in attendance, he said "I’d love to but I can’t really justify the flight just to come to that. I’d feel a bit weird about it. If I was in America already for touring or something I’d love to go but I can’t really justify it. It’s a shame." Since you won't be using as many carbon emissions to get there, we suggest you go.

The Brooklyn Paper isn't the only one who has missed Woody Allen's "quirky, oh-so-New-York films." On the verge of releasing his latest movie, Cassandra's Dream (in theaters Friday), Allen talked to The Daily News about when he might bring his New York to celluloid again.

Yesterday afternoon, the FDNY responded to a fire that broke out in a Midwood apartment building, only to find two girls, ages 1 and 2, alone. The girls' mother had left them with her boyfriend, who went out. Sigh.

Thanks to the soft real estate market everywhere except our fair city, many New York City residents have been able to pick up and move out of the Big Apple for less expensive and literally greener pastures. The NY Times had an article yesterday about people who cash out of their NYC apartments and "get much more for their money outside the city."

We checked in with some folks recently for a little end of '07 "exit interview" before we enter a new year. Next up is Nick Kroll, actor, caveman and one of our favorite comedians of '07...and probably '08.

One of the many reasons why we're excited about the close of 2007 is the fact that Mayor Bloomberg will have to make a decision on whether or not to run for President. Because ever since speculation began about a possible Bloomberg third-party run (fueled by his leaving the Republican party for independent status), countless stories about a billion dollar presidential run have been mentioned non-stop. And his remarks during a press conference yesterday are only keeping us curious!

Gary Anthony Ramsay, the former NY1 reporter who was fired after calling into the station's live call-in show under a different name (to complain about former police commissioner Bernard Kerik), is weary. At least that's what he told blog Deep In the Heart of Brooklyn, in a long, breathtakingly soul-searching email. DITHOB's blogger, Brooklyn Beat, had previously wondered "Dude, Where's My Anchor" and someone purporting to be Gary Anthony Ramsay wrote back and gave the...

We're sure that one Long Island father thought to himself, "If I can't use my for a urine test, I'll use my child's urine..." when he decided to take his 9-year-old out of school. The problem is, Suffolk police officers happened to be passing by the deli where the 36-year-old father and son were and became suspicious when they saw "the child fixing his pants and watched as the father poured something from a coffee...

A schoolgirl that entered her apartment building was attacked by a man wearing a suit-and-tie yesterday afternoon. A man, described as a white or Hispanic man, around 6 feet tall and 170 pounds (sketch here), starting talking to the 12-year-old, asking her questions about the building super. Then he forced her in the elevator and made her touch him. Apparently the victim's mother had buzzed the man - he said he was a UPS deliveryman,...

More trouble for the Knicks: Captain Stephon Marbury was missing from the morning shootaround in Phoenix, where the Knicks are set to play the Suns tonight. Marbury's apparent absence comes after coach Isiah Thomas may have told him he wouldn't be starting tonight and a Daily News article suggesting that the Knicks were thinking about a Starbury-less team in the future. Coming off a bad loss in Miami where Marbury threw the ball away in...

Kudos to The Real Deal for coaxing DUMBO-based designer Robert Scarano out of the shadows. One of the city's most reviled architects, Scarano has been scrutinized by Department of Buildings for his safety and zoning violations. Following a summer outcry, the agency issued stop-work orders on some Scarano sites. He's even being investigated by the NYS Department of Education, which oversees licensed architects, but there is currently no record of disciplinary action. Overseeing a whopping...

Clifford is unapologetic about his bullying behavior, claiming that it's his first amendment right to berate people who annoy him and laughing as he describes the time he punched a woman in the face. The lawyer who got his degree after retiring from the NYPD on disability says "If I look like an ass, I look like an ass. I can't change who I am."

Former police commissioner Bernard Kerik's misdeeds continue to plague Rudy Giuliani's Presidential ambitions, with news that the former Mayor knew that his one-time right hand man vouched for a mobbed-up construction company before appointing him police commissioner. Before Kerik was appointed commissioner, one of Giuliani's top aides was made aware of the fact that Kerik––while commissioner of the Corrections Dept.––met with mayoral aides in a Tribeca bar and defended Interstate Industrial Corp. of criminal wrongdoing, as the firm was undergoing a criminal investigation and also undertaking a $165,000 renovation of Kerik's apartment. While at Walker's [the bar], Kerik allegedly said "If I thought Interstate was mobbed up, do you think I'd let my brother work there?" A city investigation of Kerik's conduct eventually cleared him of wrongdoing, but Giuliani has previously claimed that he didn't know about the matter.

We understand the desire to milk every last dollar out of sports fans, but we have to say, the "Wild Card collection" is ridiculously bizarre. The Sports Hernia Blog pointed out the Yankees Wild Card hat and some reactions to it:

"If I see one person wearing that hat, they will get a swift donkey punch. I will take their hat, light it on fire and then shove it up there f**king nose." -- Brian, 30, passionate Yankee fan

Continue reading "Hats Off to MLB's Wild Card Chutzpah"

The Brooklyn Paper has a sad tale of some Prospect Heights kittens. The ferals wandered into the back yard of the Pond family, who immediately fell in love, had them spayed/neutered, called them their own and named them Inky, Blinky, Mookie and Clyde.

The Ponds grew so attached to their backyard kitties that they began treating them as if they were their own. They had the cats spayed and neutered. They fed them daily. When the Ponds vacationed, they had a cat-sitter watch over their frisky charges.

“When I saw five stray cats living in my backyard … I did extensive research to figure out how I could bring them to be sterilized,” said the neighbor. "All anyone could offer was to come and sterilize the cats. But I would have to first trap the cats and provide a space for them to recover from the surgery. I was not willing to do that. It was too laborious. I personally don’t think cats should be allowed outside to be exposed to cat AIDS, or to get maimed by other cats,” she said. “If I wanted a cat, I would have a cat and I would keep it in my house. “I didn’t destroy it,” she said. “I didn’t hurt it. I just wanted to lower the population of cats. I thought I was doing a service to the neighborhood.”

The St. John's student who was found carrying a .50 caliber rifle in a black plastic bag on the school's Queens campus and caused the campus to be locked down yesterday afternoon was charged with criminal possession of a weapon. Omeash Hiraman, a 22-year-old finance student, had been wearing a Fred Flintstone mask and was stopped by campus security. A guard and another St. John's student who happens to be a police cadet restrained Hiraman.

Yesterday afternoon, a tractor-trailer dangled from the side of the Staten Island Expressway. Authorities believe the driver, James Christian of North Carolina, may have lost control of the rig when another car stopped short.

Could the YES Network and the Yankees be up for sale? A report from Fortune Magazine quotes sources that say the YES Network is being shopped around - and that the Yankees could be up for sale in three or four years.

This morning, thousands of police officers and members of the community attended the funeral of Russel Timoshenko, a 23-year-old police officer shot during a traffic stop of a stolen SUV. Timoshenko, who died a few days after the shooting, was posthumously made a detective; Mayor Bloomberg explained it was "a small measure of our appreciation for the supreme sacrifice that Russel made, and to honor his life."

Last night Beverly Sills lost her battle with lung cancer, she died at her home in Manhattan at the age of 78. While she was a lifelong non-smoker and only found out about the cancer a few weeks ago, this wasn't her first experience with it - she underwent a successful surgery for cancer in 1974.

The New York Times notes an interesting and under-stressed part of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan that would charge drivers $8 for entering a certain zone in midtown and lower Manhattan: the plan is also going to charge drivers $8 to leave midtown and downtown Manhattan. The Times seems to think that charging drivers to exit a proposed congestion zone is counterintuitive, prompting Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff to admit that congestion pricing has less to do with reducing congestion, than just getting people not to drive in Manhattan at all.

There's a fantastic look at a cross-section of Queens residents in the Times today. There's a feature about a Wednesday night class at the James A. Bland Houses in Flushing, where a group of curious and determined residents are learning Mandarin. There's an Italian-American woman who explains, "Kind of like, ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,'" a few people who simply want to communicate with their neighbors, and an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who knows seven other languages. The latter student, Frank Sygal, totally inspires us:

Mr. Sygal grew up outside Krakow and lost his parents on an August day in 1942 when German soldiers rounded up Jews, stripped off their jewelry and machine-gunned them. His facility with languages helped him survive: He spoke Russian with the Russian soldiers, Ukrainian with the Ukrainians and German with the Germans, reserving Hebrew for private spaces. Once he arrived in New York in 1949, there were two more languages to learn — English and Spanish.

Continue reading "Chinese As a 2nd, 3rd or 8th Language"

, a much more interesting affair because it goes from being a novel written by some guy to being a novel written by someone you know. And in this interview you'll get to know a little more about Tao Lin, and then you can read Tao's thoughtful and interesting post on Cho Seung-Hui's killing rampage or his amusing exploration of his writing process.

The NYC Transit Authority continued its investigation of Sunday's fatal accident involving a track worker and an oncoming G train. "Non-essential" track work has been suspended as the agency looks at its safety protocol. NYC Transit Authority president Howard Roberts suggested work should have been suspended earlier, given that another transit worker was killed last week, "If I had any idea we would be here this afternoon on this subject, clearly we would have started the process we are in now last week."