And he has a wicked sense of humor to boot:

The MTA should sell its plush Madison Avenue office building and use the proceeds to offset another fare hike, a city official said yesterday.

City Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens) said the building, located on Madison Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets, is worth at least $200 million. That money, he said, could fill in a significant portion of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s budget shortfall.

“It’s a little too easy to pass on costs to taxpayers and riders rather than looking at their own operations and cutting the fat,” Gioia said of the MTA.

The agency is expecting a 2009 deficit of $216 million and faces a $15 million to $20 million hole in its five-year capital-improvement plan.

But the man gets big props for trying to Google his way out of the bar:

The night in question started innocuously enough for [Kyle] Hausmann, 24, a Harvard graduate who lives with a roommate in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. It was May 20, a Tuesday, and Mr. Hausmann’s roommate was the D.J. at Trophy Bar in Williamsburg.

Mr. Hausmann got to the bar at 8 p.m. It was a spirited night. There was dancing. There was drinking. Mr. Hausmann downed a few more drinks than he normally would.

“Really sweet guy,” Mandy Misagal, one of the bar’s three owners, who was bartending that night, said of Mr. Hausmann. “Really wasted but super nice.”

The hours melted away. Four a.m. approached, closing time, so Ms. Misagal tallied the night’s receipts as a worker cleaned up. Mr. Hausmann was milling about with the last stragglers. Then, around 4:30, he went into a bathroom. And for reasons that are unclear even to him, he stayed in there for quite a while.

The bar emptied. Ms. Misagal flipped off the light in one of the bar’s two bathrooms, reached for the doorknob of the second bathroom and found it locked. “Curious,” she thought. Seeing no light coming from the bathroom, and hearing not a peep, she figured that the other bar worker had accidentally locked it behind him. Then her car service showed up and honked. Ms. Misagal went outside. The other worker pulled down the security gate and padlocked it from the outside.

They both left.

A few moments later, Mr. Hausmann opened the bathroom door. That is when he realized he was locked in the bar.

. . .

He wandered around the bar, trying to figure out what to do. Then he happened on a laptop on the bottom shelf of the D.J. booth.

“I checked my e-mail,” he said, “which was completely not helpful. My friends were planning a get-together. And I wrote back, ‘Yes, this will work. If only I could figure out how to escape from the bar I’m trapped in.’”

Next he did a Google search for “what to do if you get locked in a bar.” “But Google did not have any good answers,” he said.

Yeah, you will:

A pyrotechnics display last week spelled out the name of the family that anted up $15 million for Barnard College’s new student center: Vagelos. Diana Vagelos, ‘55, and her husband, Roy, will get to pick a final name for the building, but students at the all-women’s school have already started joking online: “I’ll meet you at the Vag.” “I lost my pen in the Vag.” “There’ll be a Kant library in the Vag.”

Lance Bass has only been here like a matter of days but he’s complaining like he’s been here for years:

Lance Bass is here for a few months to star as Corny Collins in Hairspray. He’s not sure he likes New York so much.

. . .

He’s not hanging out at fellow ‘N Sync alum Justin Timberlake’s barbecue joint. “I’ve been a few times,” he says. “But it’s really up there. The Upper East Side? I’m not in college anymore.”

No one can resist rooting for the Turd Surfers:

They usually deal with No. 2, but yesterday they were fighting for No. 1.

(Incidentally, that’s like the worst lede ever; can you imagine a newscaster starting a segment with that?)

Teams of city Department of Environmental Protection sewer workers showcased their skills at the agency’s 20th annual Olympics of Sewage Treatment.

The spirit of competition mingled with a slight odor of waste at the Jamaica Water Pollution Control Plant in Queens, where six teams were scored on speed and efficiency while performing the essential tasks of their jobs.

Though they had fanciful team names like the Tallman Island Turd Surfers, the competition was serious, with a chance to represent the city in the state finals on the line.

“It’s a lot cleaner here than it is in the field,” said Marty Bunce, 36, who captained the Bowery Bay Bowl Busters through the five-event course.

. . .

The Bowl Busters had just completed a portion of the challenge where a “co-worker” — a life-size dummy — is overcome by fumes in a “manhole” — a 6-foot drop from an elevated stage — and has to be rescued.

Working feverishly, the team had to set up a tripod over the manhole, attach pulleys and wear harnesses that would lower them to their victim.

Once two men were underground, the dummy was harnessed and gently pulled up to the stage, where he was placed under a disinfecting shower. Bunce’s team finished the task in just over six minutes.

If you want to play a fun trick on someone — lecherous clients, people with annoying allergies, your loser alcoholic stepdad — book a hotel room for someone at the Hotel Pennsylvania this week:

The Hotel Pennsylvania went to the dogs yesterday, as canine competitors arrived with their owners and handlers for the Westminster Kennel Club’s 131st Annual Dog Show, which starts today at Madison Square Garden.

More than 2,500 dogs will compete at the two-day pooch pageant, which will showcase 156 breeds of tail-waggers who compete for best in breed as well for the coveted best in show prize. The lobby of the hotel, just across from the Garden, was like a mini-runway yesterday as humans and best friends checked into their rooms and used the time to acclimate the dogs to the noise, congestion and other pooches.

Dog handler Nancy Huether, of Cape Cod, Mass., said the whole process was an adventure, particularly staying with three bullmastiffs — including a massive 4-year-old named Vinnie — as well as a Saint Bernard in three hotel rooms.

After earlier smelling gas the mayor serves up a line to remember:

While Monday’s mystery might never be solved, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s assessment of the situation may live on: “We are waiting for the gas to pass.”

From today’s Craig’s List job postings*:

English Pud Downtown Looking for Host Staff

*What’s it to you if I’m looking for a job? Know of any?

I’m pretty sure he meant to refer to the Hudson Rail Yards as something other than an “open sore”:

Mayor Bloomberg defended the city’s offer to purchase the Hudson Rail Yards for $500 million, saying the site has been an “open sore” and that the city has a vested interest in what is developed there.

While some have criticized the city’s offer as too low and say the undeveloped land on Manhattan’s West Side is valued at $900 million at the very least, Mr. Bloomberg called the city’s offer a “fair price” and argued that the city has no interest in shortchanging the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the state agency that owns the site.

A Bronx cop gets busted for buying weed — in his own precinct:

A Bronx cop assigned to the “buy-and-bust” division was nabbed for scoring marijuana in the same precinct he was assigned to protect, the NYPD said.

Ten-year veteran officer, Milton Smith, 44, was arrested at 4 a.m. at University Avenue and West 179th Street for buying an unspecified amount of dope — within the boudaries of the 46th Precinct where the officer was assigned to catch dealers in sting operations, according to his wife, Dahlia.

“He was in the ‘buy-and-bust’ division or that’s what he told me,” the shocked woman told The Post. “It’s really unbelievable.”

Although they are separated, Dahlia said Smith is a “devoted father” to their son and “loves his job.”

“I can’t believe he’d be capable of something like that,” she said.

Smith, who was off-duty at the time, was charged with criminal possession of marijuana and official misconduct. He has been suspended without pay and was released without bail last night.

I was raised in the kind of family where we were always told that if you’re going to try on a dildo harness, never be quoted for attribution:

“I thought it was really informative,” said Orlando Rodriguez, CC ‘09, and the only student who volunteered to try on a dildo harness.

Five-year-old is “accidentally” served a Long Island Iced Tea at the Battery Park City Applebee’s, gets rocked, mother sues:

He ordered apple juice at Applebee’s — but the restaurant allegedly put so much yippee in his kiddie cup, the Manhattan 5-year-old ended up in the emergency room after a bizarre boozy bender of clowning, shouting and stumbling.

Now the boy’s mom, Cynthia Pereles, is suing the chain eatery and a downtown franchise for serving her son, Seth, a Long Island Iced Tea — a walloping cocktail of white rum, gin, vodka, triple sec, coke and sweet-and-sour mix.

“I’ve never seen him act like that before,” Pereles said of her son’s behavior during a July 2 visit to the Applebee’s on North End Avenue in Battery Park City.

Pareles, 33, said Seth, who’d been pestering the waiter, gagged when he took the first swig of his “juice” while he ate dinner with two cousins.

“I thought he was just being a pain in the neck,” Pareles said. “He sipped it again and said ‘Uch, uch. That’s nasty.’”

As her child’s behavior became erratic, Pareles said, she eventually took a sip and tasted alcohol.

Pereles said she confronted the staff about the drink, and that the manager admitted the restaurant somehow gave Seth the cocktail.

The mother is suing the independently owned restaurant and the Applebee’s parent corporation for $75,000.

And just to be clear, there is nothing funny about a drunk five-year-old. Nothing funny at all:

“He was laughing uncontrollably, his eyes were glazed, and he started licking the wicker bread basket,” Pereles said. “He was not Seth . . . He said, ‘Mom, I can’t listen to you because of that nasty drink.’”

The panicked mother, who says she never even lets her son drink soda, left the restaurant. On the street, Seth “was hollering, yelling people’s names, laughing hysterically and bending over.”

A police officer approached and advised her to fill out a report and call an ambulance. As a precaution, Seth was strapped into a stretcher and taken to Beth Israel Medical Center. “He crashed in the ambulance. He was so tired,” Pereles said.

Doctors found alcohol in his blood and Seth had to be hydrated, his mom said.

“He was the joke of the hospital,” Pereles recounted. Nurses giggled as Seth tried to take off his shirt. Staff came from all over “to look at the boy was who drunk.”

And the psychological scarring is severe:

Since the incident, Pereles said Seth has had trouble sleeping and has nightmares in which people die or he feels trapped and spins uncontrollably. He calls them “Applebee’s dreams.”

“He says ‘I don’t want you to die, I don’t want to die,’” she said.

Seth began seeing a therapist and has sworn off apple juice.

(It’s not the worst thing in the world to swear off Long Island Iced Teas forever, is it?)

In the New York Press, Brett Selmont tags along with a coke dealer on New Year’s Eve, the busiest night of the year:

After we drop some cash and drugs, Mr. White and I head to the West Side for a penthouse party. Again a friendly doorman lets us right in with a “good evening” and we ride up the elevator to the penthouse. Inside, there are floor to ceiling windows with a panoramic view of the city, and a baby grand on a small stage in the corner. It feels like Billy Joel might start playing at any moment. Several expensively-dressed people mob Mr. White, offering him drinks. A few girls give him warm hugs and kiss his cheeks.

The next half hour is a chaotic struggle of attempts to arrange deals. The party is large and people are scattered about trying to find this or that person who wants coke. Mr. White gets dragged through every room in the place. After he makes his deals we eat some shrimp cocktails and knock back some Dom Perignon. His phone starts ringing off the hook, so we’re off again.

. . .

We left the [Williamsburg loft] party, which was still running, at about six. Mr. White’s eyes were red and narrow. He’d been working since noon — 19 hours of dealing with people and drugs. He wouldn’t tell me how much he’d made, but I knew he’d sold around 100 grams, maybe more, which meant he’d made that night what he’d usually gross in a good week. I figure it at seven or eight grand. All I know is he worked his ass off and at the end of the night he didn’t look too happy. As we got into his car, his phone rang again.

Are there really this many people still doing cocaine? Didn’t anyone see Traffic? Did they learn nothing from Less Than Zero? Did Grandmaster Flash’s exhortations not to do it register in any way at all?!

Bonus Point: Drugs and Terror: The Important Role of Prevention.

The rat — that sweet inflatable rat you see in front of union wrath-incurring job sites — may not be around much longer after the National Labor Relations Board ruling that deemed it confrontational and beyond the pale of normal free speech:

The inflatable rubber rat, bucktoothed bane of strikebreakers and emblem of union wrath, may be headed for retirement. The National Labor Relations Board is now considering a case that could make it harder to employ one on a picket line.

At issue in the case is whether the rat is the equivalent of picketing, which can be restricted under federal law, or a form of free speech, which enjoys far fewer limitations. The case, which was filed three years ago, is slowly percolating through the system, but the labor board is poised to make a ruling. If it decides the rat is, indeed, a form of picketing, it could have a chilling effect on its use.

“It’s going to inhibit the rat,” said Alvin Blyer, the director of the Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island region of the board. The board’s national office will eventually rule on the case.

For those unfamiliar with the rat, consider this description provided in a ruling by Steven Davis, an administrative law judge for the board who heard the case in his Brooklyn court in March:

“The rat presents an imposing figure,” the ruling says. “The rats here were 15 or 30 feet high. The body of the rat is gray with pink eyes, ears and nose. Its sits on its haunches with its front paws outstretched and claws extended. Its mouth is open, baring its teeth.”

. . .

In his 30-page opinion, Judge Davis ruled against the rat.

“The union’s use of the rat,” he wrote, “constituted confrontational conduct intended to persuade third persons not to do business with Concrete [Structures Inc., which filed complaint against the Laborers' Eastern Region Organizing Fund, the body that puts out the rat].”

He continued: “A rat is a well-known symbol of a labor dispute and is a signal to third persons that there is an invisible picket line they should not cross.”

The union has appealed the judge’s ruling, and its lawyer, Lowell Peterson, said he was confident the rat would survive, even if the labor board decides against it.

“Ultimately, I think the rat will be vindicated, if you will,” he said. “Their theory that there’s something magical about the rat is wrong. There’s nothing magical about a rat — it’s just ugly.”

If the rat was banned, the union’s lawyer promised to use a skunk instead.

The rat in question: