Overheard on patio of a midtown brewery and eatery:
"We don't want to remove the nest because there might be little birdies in it," explained a waitress to two diners who complained that pieces of a bird nest—and a feather—were falling on their table as they tried to eat. The diners had already physically shifted their table twice to try to avoid the falling debris. Said another passing waiter, nonchalantly, "One of these days that nest is going to land right on the table." Um, thanks for the warning there, bird man.
Skip the CD, Read This.
There's really no reason to play the new Fall Out Boy album, From Under the Cork Tree, because no emo-pop-punk formula can result in songs that are as much fun as their titles: "Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued," "I Slept With Someone From Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me" and "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More 'Touch Me.'" Rock on, dudes.
In some ways, Mayor Oscar Goodman's dogged pursuit of a professional sports stadium mirrors New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's push for a new football stadium on Manhattan's west side.
Goodman argues that Vegas is a major-league town and deserves a pro sports franchise (preferably a Major League Baseball team); said ballpark would be downtown, as it should be at the "heart of the city," he's said. Pegged at $1.7 billion, Bloomberg's stadium would house the NFL's New York Jets and, most importantly, serve as the centerpiece for the Big Apple's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics—you can't get more major than the Olympiad.
Financing is a contentious issue in both cases—Goodman thinks the casino industry would pony up; the Jets have promised to put up hundreds of millions; both expect hefty taxpayer contributions—and so is opposition.
In an April 3 editorial on the Nevada Public Research Institute web site, policy fellow Doug French says there's no citizen outcry for a team and calls plans for taxpayer financing "a swing ... and a miss." Nearly all Bloomberg's Democratic rivals for mayor say the stadium is too expensive; the situation has even gotten litigious, with the Jets suing Cablevision Systems Corp., which owns Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall, alleging the company has spent millions to misinform New Yorkers about the stadium plan.
Overheard in an alley Downtown: An interaction between a seeker of crack and two local women who'd spent the evening promoting the new Beauty Bar.
Purveyor of crack: "Do you ladies know where I can get some rock?"
Response from one of the women: "Yeah ... and roll."
From Travelbiz.com:
"Dubai has become the fastest growing hotel market in the world.At the first annual Arabian Hotel Investment Conference it was confirmed that Dubai now attracted the highest per capita hotel investment in the world, overtaking Las Vegas.
"There are currently 37 accommodation properties under construction on Dubai's human-made island of The Palm Jumeirah, with the gigantic Atlantis hotel probably the most well-known development.
Hotel occupancy in the city is around 80 per cent, with average room rates of $192 per night."
There it is, on the front page of last Monday's New York Times "Arts" section: A photograph of the mirror-ceilinged innards of the Liberace Museum, right alongside a shot of the wood-lined halls of the British Museum in London. In the accompanying article, art critic Edward Rothstein points out that even the populist Liberace Museum uses the traditional "paternalistic" presentation style of traditional museums (an approach that encourages a mix of learning and reverence), and that therefore old-style museum presentation is still relevant and energetic enough for modern times.
The British Museum was opened in 1759 by King George III; the Liberace Museum was opened in 1979, by, well, Liberace. Here one begins to notice the commonalities: Both of these dates include a "1", a "7", and a "9". Both the British King and the Vegas ivory-tickler, moreover, were known to wear capes from time to time. And neither possessed a mind that operated quite like the ordinary mind. Nevertheless, Rothstein stresses that one shouldn't overrate the parallels between the two museums, and that certainly one should not tryto argue that the British Museum is "as vulgar as Liberace's." OK. We'll stop doing that.