A Lazy Day At The After-School Special Scriptwriting Boiler Room

And just like that, my latest after-school special script dawned on me:

Students and parents at a Brooklyn high school where a teen was removed from class for dressing as Adolf Hitler on Halloween marched in protest of the costume yesterday — and were joined by the teen.

Walter Petryk, 16, and his parents strolled with about 50 people from the Leon M. Goldstein HS community to the nearby Holocaust Memorial Park.

“They called it a walk of tolerance and respect, so I figured I would go and show my tolerance and respect for other people’s views of my costume,” Petryk said.

Backstory: What, That’s Not Funny? and So I Guess That’s Not Really Funny After All.

In A Newsroom Where People Obviously Live Under A Rock, Reporters Are Increasingly Writing Really Idiotic Trend Pieces

I can’t believe the wire services are just now figuring out that this happens:

In a city where you can get just about anything delivered to your door, New Yorkers are increasingly ordering takeout marijuana from drug rings that operate with remarkable corporate-style attention to customer satisfaction.

Among the legions of home-delivery customers is Chris, 37, a salesman in Manhattan. He dials a pager and gets a call from a cheery dispatcher who takes his order.

“These are very nice, discreet people,” said Chris. “It’s better than going to some street corner and getting ripped off or killed.”

The corporate model was demonstrated late last year when the Drug Enforcement Administration busted a ring dubbed the Cartoon Network, which processed 600 orders a day.

Laura Branigan “Most Inspirational”? Only In The Twisted Mind Of The Marathon Runner

Now playing on that marathon runner’s iPod is Laura Branigan*:

For many of the nearly 37,000 participants in the ING New York City Marathon yesterday, iPod-fed adrenaline helped them kick through those grueling final miles.

“I had my go-tos ready for the end of the race,” a 37-year-old physician, Natalie Poppito, said. While scrolling through an 80-song play list that was custom made for the marathon, Ms. Poppito touted “Gloria” by Laura Branigan and “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes as most inspirational.

Although headphones were noticeably absent from top finishers, Ms. Poppito was one of the many marathoners yesterday who relied on favorite motivational music as the source of that extra burst of energy.

“Music is a huge part of the runner’s routine,” a 40-year-old owner of a chain of health food stores in Arizona who was stretching out in Central Park after the race, Kevin Easler, said. Just two weeks before the race, Mr. Easler’s iPod crashed, engendering what he called “a really anal and uptight planning process.”

Mr. Easler, who said he listens to hard rock and punk music while running, immediately went out and bought a new iPod. When he brought it home, he found the new iPod required an upgraded operating system, which, of course, his computer couldn’t support. “I had to buy a whole new computer and refill my entire music library just before the race.”

For others, music provided a clock of sorts. “My goal was 4 hours and 15 minutes, so I put exactly 4 hours and 20 minutes of music on my iPod,” a 27-year-old elementary school teacher from the Upper East Side who had just finished her second ING New York City Marathon, Erica Selkowe, said. Using her empirical knowledge from 2005, Ms. Selkowe paced the early parts of the race with easy-listening pop and R&B, saving her Beyonce and other upbeat dance music for the home stretch. “I couldn’t sleep last night so I worked on my play list until midnight,” she said.

*Actual lyric:

Gloria, you’re always on the run now
Running after somebody
You gotta get him somehow
I think you’ve got to slow down
Before you start to blow it
I think you’re headed for a breakdown
So be careful not to show it

You really don’t remember
Was it something that he said
Are the voices in your head
Calling, Gloria

Hrm . . .

The “Sports Authority Bus Terminal” Is The Obvious Front Runner

Naming rights for the Port Authority Bus Terminal are up for grabs:

The Port Authority wants to sell naming rights to the hulking Midtown bus terminal.

Sports fans sometimes cry foul when teams sell companies naming rights to their stadiums — such as when the Houston Astros embarrassingly played at Enron Field.

But PA officials doubt that even the most ardent preservationists would bemoan the loss of “Port Authority Bus Terminal” from the cityscape.

And money earned by changing the name to Verizon Terminal or Nike Bus Station, for example, could be used to further renovate and improve the long-lackluster facilities, sources said.

Millions of dollars in upgrades have been made to the station since it was a glorified homeless shelter in the 1970s and ’80s. But it would take assistance from the private sector to make the terminal — used by 200,000 people each day — a destination in its own right, sources said.

I Really Wish You Wouldn’t Have Told Me That

The question is which local markets they are referring to:

A Staten Island woman has been charged with illegally importing the heads, limbs and torsos of wild African animals — including a monkey’s arm and the hoof of an antelope — to peddle to local markets.

Mamie Manneh, 38, was arrested earlier this year after a JFK customs official found hacked-up animal heads and haunches in a shipment from Guinea. The contraband animal parts were stashed in a shipment of smoked fish.

A search of Manneh’s home revealed more limbs — including a monkey’s arm — in her garage, authorities said.

Manneh was charged with importing unauthorized goods and pleaded not guilty to the charges in April. She appeared last week before Brooklyn federal Judge Raymond Dearie to request time for her lawyer to get her medical records in order.

(Rejected post title: “Monkey Business.”)