Message: I Care

Why make like you care when you can just have your diverse, storied, veteran kitchen cabinet make like you make like you care? Shape your image without lifting a finger! Ridiculous ledes like this ensue:

A group of power brokers privately warned Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s re-election campaign this week that he must erase his image as an elitist billionaire and show that he cares about the concerns of average New Yorkers. [emphasis added]

The top secret meeting was top secret:

Campaign officials declined to comment on the meeting, saying it was a private strategy session, but several of the participants said they were led to believe that their ideas would be followed in some way. The mayor’s communications director, William T. Cunningham, who also attended the meeting, said yesterday that candidates always retold their life stories in a re-election fight, and that Mr. Bloomberg would do so during his campaign. [emphasis added]

Details of the secret meeting were scant, and few of those attended revealed much:

The meeting, described by seven participants [I could be reading it wrong, but the Times only mentions seven people being at the meeting!], provides a window into the challenges Mr. Bloomberg faces at an early but important stage of the mayoral race, when he has a chance to define his own image while his Democratic opponents are preoccupied with fighting for their party’s nomination. [emphasis added]

In fact, details were so scant, the Times only was able to uncover the most mundane, ultra-detailed details:

For some people sitting around the fold-out, cafeteria-style tables at the meeting, the mix of personalities alone was worth the invitation. As they enjoyed plain and chocolate croissants, cantaloupe and kiwi, some participants said they were amused to see Mr. Minarik, for instance, listening to Mr. Koch – who in spite of supporting some Republican politicians is still a quintessential Democrat for many upstate conservatives.

Delivery Man Update

The Post now reports (“Elevator Moo Goo Guy Ran” — I know, not at all funny) that the delivery guy who was trapped in the elevator for three days has gone into hiding, fearful of being deported (which was probably why it took him so long to pull the alarm, now that I think about it):

The Chinese food deliveryman who was trapped for 3 1/2 days in an elevator went into hiding yesterday — fearing his newfound fame may get him in hot-and-sour soup with immigration officials.

“He left the city,” one of Ming Kuang Chen’s roommates said through an interpreter. “He’s an illegal immigrant and he’s afraid people will catch him.”

After his ordeal — which set off an intensive police manhunt — Chen’s co-workers at the Happy Dragon restaurant in The Bronx said they didn’t know if he would return to work.

“He’s recovering. We don’t know if he’s coming back. We haven’t spoken to him,” said a woman working the counter.

Might get him in “hot and sour soup?” Like “hot water,” but soup? Because it’s something you order from a Chinese restaurant? Between the silly headline and the clumsy turn-of-phrase, I’m not at all happy. Not at all!

The Way Things Ought to Be

We need more old-school-frumpy condescending arts reviewers like Gia Kourlas:

When the Barnard College department of dance puts on a show, the results aren’t always pretty because the dancers aren’t always, to put it kindly, in the best shape. Aspiring performers need only audition, and when the pickings are slim, everybody seems to get in. But at Barnard Dances at Miller, seen Friday night, the standard deer-in-the-headlights incidents were blessedly few.

That’s what I’m talking about!

The Making of an Urban Legend

A Drudgetastic story that will be repeated around the watercooler all across the country — the delivery guy who was stuck in the elevator for three days:

Ming Kuang Chen, a deliveryman for a Bronx restaurant called Happy Dragon, walked out Friday night at about 8:30 p.m. with a large order of curried shrimp with onion and a small shrimp fried rice, and never came back.

Worried co-workers found his bicycle chained up in front of the 38-story apartment building of Tracey Towers, at 40 West Mosholu Parkway near Jerome Avenue, and feared the worst: At least three deliverymen for Chinese restaurants have been killed in New York City in the last five years, for money or for food.

For three days, the police searched in and around the buildings for Mr. Chen, going door to door to the 871 apartments, sending bloodhounds and cadaver-detecting dogs into nearby Van Cortlandt Park and Woodlawn Cemetery, dropping with scuba gear into the cold waters of the Jerome Park Reservoir.

And all that time, it seems he was right in the middle of them – trapped in an express elevator, where he spent more than three days in a 4-foot by 6-and-a-half-foot cab without food or water before being rescued shortly after dawn yesterday. He had made his last delivery before becoming trapped.

“I kept yelling,” a weary Mr. Chen said through an interpreter after his rescue, briefly describing his roughly 81 hours of captivity.

The offending building:

The Post headline: “Deliverance.” The Daily News headline: “Sat in hell-evator for days.” I liked the Daily News headline more until I considered the implicit snobbiness of “Deliverance.” So the tabloid-to-tabloid headline battle ends in . . . a draw! On to the next bizarre story!

Unbelievable, Inexplicable!

Who would have thought that there would be so many foreign-language newspapers in a city in which 40 percent of its residents are foreign born? The New York Times! No, really:

Near the back of a garment district bookstore and gallery, the paintings on exhibit are blocked in part by newspaper pages taped to an overhang. The pages are not on exhibit, but they will soon be seen by many as part of the redesigned Nowy Dziennik, the Polish-language daily newspaper whose offices occupy several floors in the same modest building.

“We are trying to make it more appealing to young people,” said Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, a reporter at the paper. “We have competition here, surprisingly. There are three Polish daily papers in New York.”

Many New Yorkers had no idea there was even one, much less three. For that matter, who would have imagined that there are 26 ethnic daily newspapers in New York that keep immigrants in touch with their homelands while educating them on how to survive in their adopted one?