When Things Are Going Really Well We Are A Cabinet Of Curiosities

The Staten Island Museum doesn’t need anything fancy like a cohesive theme:

The little museum two blocks from the Staten Island Ferry terminal, formally known as the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences, is celebrating its birthday, and its status as just about the only general-interest museum left in the city, with a weirdest-hits show, an homage to the age-old notion of a museum as a cabinet of curiosities.

In the main room of the exhibition, which opened last week, a pickled star-nosed mole shares shelf space with the first blue grosbeak nestling found in New York City, a jar of squid eggs and a four-headed chicken born on a Staten Island farm in 1914. All the items are organized, Mr. Johnson said, according to a rigorous scientific principle: “People like looking at dead things in jars.”

. . .

The curved brown object that was originally labeled a musk ox horn is actually an ironstone deposit from a local cliff. The thing that looks like the innards of a baseball is a hairball from a cow’s stomach. Another horn was labeled “tusk from wild boar which I shot in Louisiana swamp but not until he had killed my dog” and signed Charles Roome Parmele. Mr. Johnson offered no information on Mr. Parmele.

Much of the exhibition is assembled from castoffs from larger museums in other boroughs. A slab rich with dinosaur fossils was trash-picked decades ago from the American Museum of Natural History by a Staten Islander who worked there, Mr. Johnson said. “He had this in his backyard for many years,” he said.

Who Loves Bush Tax Cuts? This Guy!

Who are these people, what do they do and are they that un-self aware that they’re willing to be quoted in the paper about how great the Bush tax cuts were? Dogs — no, seriously, dogs:

The pampered pooches of Manhattan have an increasingly popular way of dealing with the stress, and expanded girth, of apartment living — their own personal trainers.

The city now has at least two companies that specialize in taking dogs running for up to 45 minutes at a stretch, helping them to burn off fat that can result from too little exercise.

“Sometimes when you come home from the office and you’re exhausted, you just don’t want to bring your dog to the dog run,” said Therese Virserius, 33, who pays Manhattan-based Running Paws $35 a session to propel her 81-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback, Maya, up and down the East River.

After a typical 45-minute jog with her doggie drill sergeant, Maya immediately plops down on the couch for a well-earned nap, she said.

When Hair Salons Are Like Crack

Isn’t this how dealers reel in their customers? It sounds like an after-school special:

Yet, even as many Manhattan women cringe as prices at their longtime salons rise, they are loath to move on. Switching stylists can be an emotional experience, akin to a breakup. And just as in romance, a clean break is not always easy.

Merle Rubine, an adjunct professor of media and film studies and a former network television producer, said she doesn’t want to leave her longtime stylist at Vidal Sassoon. But as the price of her partial highlights has climbed to $190, she has been freer about expressing her unhappiness.

“My stylist feels terrible,” Ms. Rubine said. “I feel terrible. Everyone feels terrible. Does that mean that he’s going to open his own place and do a partial for $50? Probably not.” So her solution is to live with longer hair, and take longer between appointments.

And Tell Dana Tyler That You Take It All Back . . . No One Will Suspect A Thing!

Incontinent cemetery worker story . . . now with added chutzpah:

A Brooklyn man who complained that an 80-year-old cemetery worker urinated on his grandmother’s grave says he was attacked by two thugs who or dered him to shut up — or else.

And, he claims, one of the goons identified himself as the cemetery worker’s son.

“You are a f- – -in’ punk. You are the f- – -in’ guy who got my father fired . . . I will kill you and bury you right by your grandmother and will pee on your grave,” one of them allegedly told Itomor Khaimov during the attack Tues day night.

Police confirmed they are investigating the attack, which occurred at around 10 p.m. near the corner of Bay Parkway and 63rd Street in Bensonhurst.

. . .

Khaimov said the men, one black and one Hispanic, approached him near Bay Parkway and 63rd Street. When he yelled for help, he said, the black man grabbed him from behind and covered his mouth.

“He grabbed my whole face and said, ‘If you don’t shut up, I will twist your head off,'” he said.

“The Hispanic guy said, ‘We want you to go to the New York Post, Fox 5 and Channel 2 to tell them that [you] lied about everything. Nothing ever happened.'”

One Way To Take Care Of The Dropout Problem

A Rod Paige type of turnaround* ought to do wonders for Bloomberg’s chances in ’08 (or ’12!):

The city’s fiscal watchdog has sounded the alarm over a “significant and sustained” rise in the number of students discharged from public high schools, suggesting the increase could be artificially improving the graduation and dropout rates.

In a recent letter to the schools chancellor, Comptroller William Thompson Jr. noted that the steady climb began following a change in the way the city Department of Education defined discharged students in its annual reports beginning in 2002.

The change involved omitting a disclaimer that said a student could be considered discharged only after the student was confirmed to have been admitted to a new school outside the city public school system.

A spokesman for Chancellor Joel Klein acknowledged the omission but said the confirmation policy stood firm. And advocates who keep close tabs on the discharge policy said they believe the city has become more diligent in tracking discharged students.

Still, Thompson called the change “troubling,” saying that not confirming a student’s enrollment elsewhere “could artificially inflate the city’s high-school graduation rates.”

*See, for example.