Can Anyone Explain Why This Isn’t Already A Reality Television Show?

The next Music Under New York class is announced, and it’s a beaut:

Coming soon to a subway platform near you: an insect goddess, a flamenco guitarist and a beatboxer who plays rap music on the flute.

Introducing 21 new sub way stars — musicians who recently won MTA auditions to perform for straphangers, part of the annual Music Under New York program.

“I’m the insect god dess that’s come to lift everybody out of their boring day!” announced Meghan McGeary, who kicked off the 20th year of the program by singing and playing drums in the rock-opera duo Dagmar 2.

Wearing a gold bustier and matching high heeled boots, an aviator cap with goggles and a gold- trimmed set of green mesh wings, McGeary sang a quirky song about a guy who can’t get out of bed in the morning – and the “insect goddess who plunges from the ether to rescue him.”

. . .

Flute beatboxer Greg Pattillo turned heads with his unusual use of the classical instrument, which he uses to play everything from Sesame Street to raps like Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life. “Flute has such negative connotations,” he lamented. “I’m out to make flute cool again.”

The 21 winners were whittled down from 500 who sent tapes to MTA officials. Seventy finalists auditioned before a panel of MTA officials and fellow musicians.

The winners are allowed to perform in the subways for life, including selling their CDs. They include a country singer, Japanese tap dancers, a man who plays the kora, a West African stringed instrument, and a duo that plays the erhu, a Chinese stringed instrument.

When The Lamb Realized Where She Was, She Bolted, And When The Falcon Came To, He Asked Where That Building Came From*

Authorities confirm that in three separate incidents yesterday, dumb old nature had to had its ass saved by man:

The collaring of a lamb that likely escaped from a Bronx slaughterhouse was one of the wildlife rescues undertaken by city agencies yesterday.

The female lamb was spotted strolling along 133rd Street in an industrial section of the South Bronx at about 11 a.m., police said.

An employee of a local moving company, Julio Rivera, said he cornered the lamb, which his colleagues nicknamed “Kimon” — after their boss — in a parking lot adjacent to the moving company. The lamb had tags attached to its neck and ears.

“She was marked for death,” Mr. Rivera said.

The lamb was rescued by police and handed over to the city’s Center for Animal Care and Control, which has already found it a home with an animal protection agency, Farm Sanctuary, a spokesman for the center, Elizabeth Keller, said. Employees there renamed the lamb “Lucky Lady,” Ms. Keller said.

. . .

In Manhattan, a falcon and a hawk were rescued in separate incidents, police said.

Park rangers at about 10 a.m. rescued a baby hawk that had been nesting on a building on West 55th Street, authorities said.

. . .

About an hour later, a local business owner came to the rescue of an injured falcon on Third Avenue, authorities said.

At about 11:20 a.m., a crowd of about 20 people gathered around the fallen falcon, which likely had collided with an HSBC Bank building, the owner of Baranzelli Silk Surplus, Ward Bitter, said. Concerned about the bird’s safety, Mr. Bitter said he brought the falcon into his store, wrapped it in soft cotton fabrics, and placed it in a box.

*Like many, we find it impossible to understand the behavior of animals without anthropomorphizing them.

The Advance Knows What Advance Readers Like

“Price is Right” local angle? You betcha:

“It’s not going to be the same,” said Cheryl Booker, 44, of Stapleton. “I liked him because he always made the show look like so much fun.” The debonair Barker, 83, is retiring after 50 years of working in the television industry. The beloved game show’s final episode featuring Barker airs at 11 a.m. tomorrow on CBS, Channel 2.

. . .

A replacement host has not yet been named.

Barker’s biggest fans say he’s irreplaceable. “No one can fill his shoes. No one can fill his personality,” said Marianne Mancinelli, 62, of Ocean Breeze. (Barker did say earlier this week that he would be willing to stay on as host if a replacement can’t be found.)

Ms. Mancinelli, a devoted viewer of “The Price is Right,” recalled the simple joy of watching Barker demonstrate the “Hole in One . . . or Two” game and the excitement of seeing contestants capture both “showcases” — a rare occurrence in the finale to each episode. Her one lament: She never had the opportunity to be a contestant.

“I wish I could have gone on that show,” she said.

Staten Islanders of all ages and genders recalled watching Barker and “The Price is Right” at one time or another during their lives. Many recall older relatives religiously tuning into the show every afternoon, while others remember playing along with parents and grandparents. For some, like Frances Bollak, 30, of New Dorp, the show harbors fond memories of loved ones.

“The show reminds me of my mother because she loved him,” said Ms. Bollak. “He will be absolutely missed.”

Would the Times deign to cover the fallout from Barker’s departure from, you know, like the Upper East Side? They should. Because people watch — everybody watches. That story is there.

Don’t Worry — That’s Just 20 Minutes Of War In Iraq

If authorities can first figure out how to kick out a bunch of auto mechanics, Queens’ eminent Iron Triangle will be the domain of a lucky developer who only has to invest more than $3 billion to get the project going:

The envisioned transformation of Willets Point from a scruffy haven for scrap yards and auto shops into a residential, retail and convention megadevelopment will cost “north of $3 billion,” a city official said yesterday.

The estimate was given by Robert Lieber, president of the city’s Economic Development Corp., which is gearing up to submit the Willets Point development plan to the governmental approval procedure known as ULURP — uniform land use review process.

“It will be a lot,” Lieber said when asked about the costs during the City Council’s first public hearing on the mammoth redevelopment plan announced May 1 by Mayor Bloomberg.

That drew laughs from a dozen Council members who participated in the hearing by the Council’s Economic Development and Land Use committees and scores of spectators, most of them representing Willets Point’s landowners, businesses, workers and Queens civic officials, including Borough President Helen Marshall and her predecessor, Claire Shulman.

Lieber added, “This is a big project, you know, you’ve got 60 acres of land to develop, with very large density of what we’re going to do, but you know it’s not unrealistic to think that this would be a project that is north of $3 billion . . . in excess of $3 billion.”

. . .

Lieber said the developer, or team of developers, that will bid to build the Willets Point of the future will “bear the bulk of the costs for this.”

“It’s very early on in the process,” Lieber added. “I don’t think we’ve come up with a specific budget yet or figured out what the costs are — what the city is going to pay.”

He ventured a “guesstimate” the public costs might be in the $100 million-to-$200 million range.

Location Scout: Iron Triangle.

“The Incomparable Metropolitan Museum Of (White) Art”

When you come to New York, be sure to visit the Met. Because everybody loves the Met:

The group had swelled to 20, including a handful of New Yorkers who had missed the previous day’s meeting. Among them were a former Brooklyn schoolteacher, an Upper East Sider who called himself Boy Howdy, and a German immigrant who now lives in Park Slope. Kelso tried, with limited success, to get everyone’s attention as they gazed around the spacious lobby.

“We’re going to look at the sculptures, some of the most amazing work done by our race,” Kelso announced. Two nearby security guards exchanged worried glances, but said nothing. Kelso reminded the restless group to stay together and not to use flash photography. “We have no contingency plan if we get separated,” he added cheerily to a companion, and the group promptly split up in different directions.

The group made its way through the crowded galleries of European sculpture and decorative arts. Kelso, a self-proclaimed artist and art buff, occasionally paused along the way to explain that “this painting is worth $2 million,” and that piece of art, “is one of only 41 works by the artist.” The white supremacists didn’t stand out from the hordes of other tourists crowding the galleries, and their hushed comments, half-heard snippets about shooting Arabs or speculation about Muslims being thieves, were swallowed up with noise.

As he walked the halls, the man from Brooklyn told anecdotes from his days in the New York City school system. “It’s a zoo,” he said as a few others listened curiously. The animals, he implied, were all the black and brown kids who force schools to “teach to the lowest common denominator.” This, he said, was the problem with forced diversity. The discussion morphed into a brainstorming session on how to create public whites-only schools without being accused of outright racismperhaps, the ex-teacher suggested, by creating a charter school that specializes in something he believed that black kids wouldn’t be interested in, such as Latin. His small audience nodded in approval at the scheme.

The group continued its journey, pointedly bypassing the African, Asian, and Latin American wings. No one was interested.

In the European and American galleries, however, every object or image was interpreted as a symbol of white accomplishment, from sculptures of Zeus to paintings by Winslow Homer. Kelso paused in front of a tempera painting of a blond, blue-eyed woman wearing an opulent red gown and pearls in her hair. The artist was Piero del Pollaiuolo, a 15th-century Italian painter. Kelso called everyone over to admire the Aryan beauty, hinting that perhaps the artist was making a statement about racial purity, something the members of Stormfront are especially passionate about.

. . .

Kelso made sure to stop and admire the famous 21-foot-long oil painting, “George Washington Crossing the Delaware,” by Emanuel Leutze. (Online, Kelso calls it a “great white treasure.”) No one, meanwhile, pointed out the black oarsman pictured alongside the great Revolutionary War general.

The Stormfront tourists also paid particular attention to Civil War art, especially artist Winslow Homer. A favorite work portrays several oppressed but hopeful Confederate soldiers who, “continued to carry on a hopeless fight against overwhelming odds,” according to Kelso. The scene seemed to strike a chord with this group of white people who say they, too, are oppressed and carrying on a discouraging fight against a society corrupted by non-whites.

. . .

Eventually the group disbanded — one to the airport, a handful to Central Park, a few young men in search of Little Italy and some beer. Kelso, as always, headed back to his computer to spread the Stormfront message.

Some of the others posted their own remembrances. A 29-year-old Pennsylvania man claimed that he’d gotten lost during the field trip and had happily come across some Nazi relics at the museum. He only regretted, he wrote, that he’d been unable to insult any non-white people while he visited the city.

Definitely bad PR for an institution that has been criticized over the years for lacking diversity!