And In The Interest Of Equal Time, A Certain Fifteenth-Century Jacometto Sort Of Looks Like Al Gore*

Next time you bring the kids to the Met, enliven the visit with a game of Where’s Rudy:

Earlier this spring, Mary Carter, a professor of art education at Ball State University, in Indiana, came to New York for a conference. During a break in her schedule, she visited the Met with a friend. Carter is partial to the Renaissance, so they headed directly for the European collection on the second floor, where a helpful docent joined them. He shared a few stories about the museum’s costly purchase, in 2005, of the Duccio di Buoninsegna’s “Madonna and Child,” and then, as they stopped to look at a fifteenth-century Venetian painting of a monk, he leaned in and asked, suggestively, “Don’t you think that looks like Rudolph Giuliani?”

“Gosh, that’s uncanny,” Carter replied. Giuliani, as it happens, had just been campaigning in Indiana. “It was as if someone had Photoshopped Giuliani, but fixed it so the Byzantine conventions were right,” she said. “It was there in the eyes and the mouth. They were exactly him.”

The monk in the painting, by Carlo Crivelli, is St. Dominic, the patron saint of astronomers. He is robed, and clasps a holy book in his left hand and holds a white lily (purity, to an iconographer) in his right. (“I bet his hands even look like that,” Carter said of Giuliani.) He is mostly bald, and, instead of the old Giuliani comb-over, wears a tonsure, with a tuft of hair at the front of his forehead. His heavy-lidded gaze would not easily be confused with that of the stoic Giuliani of September 11th, say, or that of the sardonic Giuliani who faced down squeegee men and ferret owners, but possibly — and it’s a stretch — that of the forlorn Giuliani of divorce proceedings and the Bernie Kerik saga.

*No, check it out.

Mister Softee: Unsafe At Any Speed

A Brooklyn grandmother is killed by a Mister Softee truck:

A beloved Brooklyn grandmother who rarely left her home except to worship was struck and killed by a Mister Softee truck as she walked to church, police and relatives said yesterday.

From Bad Old Days To Worse Bad Old Days

Forget the bad old days, here are the really bad old days:

Twice in one week.

A 7-year-old building a sand castle on Staten Island’s South Beach suddenly found herself in the hospital yesterday after her thumb was pricked by a hypodermic needle.

Tanya Johnson of Port Richmond was sick with fear when she brought her daughter to the Sunnyside offices of the Staten Island Physician Practice — but she reassured and comforted little Sayyidah: “You’ll be all right. It wasn’t your fault.”

Only a week ago, an Eltingville woman rolled over on a sheet spread out on Midland Beach and was jabbed in the thigh by a syringe. Filomena Rago is awaiting the results of blood tests to determine whether she was exposed to infection.

Sayyidah Johnson was playing with her sister and cousin near the boardwalk and the Vanderbilt catering hall when she was jabbed yesterday, around 5 p.m., by a syringe that had lay hidden in the sand.

She was scooping sand into a bucket with her hands when the needle struck her finger, her mother said.

“It poked me,” said Sayyidah. “I saw a little dot on my finger.”

After a lifeguard cleaned Sayyidah’s wound with a swab of alcohol, the Johnsons went to the Staten Island Physician Practice, then to Richmond University Medical Center, West Brighton, for treatment. In an empty Gatorade bottle, Mrs. Johnson carried the syringe to the hospital — its bent needle apparently caked with dried blood.

It’s Never Too Early To Start Hyping Competitive Eating Matches

American dog gobbler Joey Chestnut has devoured Takeru Kobayashi’s world record in a tune-up for July’s Nathan’s hot dog eating contest:

California man Joey Chestnut wolfed down 59 1/2 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes at a Phoenix contest yesterday — shattering champion Takeru Kobayashi’s world record.

Kobayashi’s old record of 533/4 was set last year at the Nathan’s Famous annual Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest, held at Coney Island.

Chestnut placed second in last year’s world championships, consuming 52 hot dogs.

Last year: Let’s Return The Competitive Eating Championship Where It Belongs: The Good ‘Ol Girth-Loving U. S. Of A.

Officials Hesitant To Add Fuel To The Fire

Officials downplay* the threat to life and limb from Guyanese parliament members**:

Federal authorities said that four men were hoping to blow up Kennedy International Airport and a large swath of Queens by detonating a fuel pipeline and storage tanks, but oil industry executives and local officials said yesterday that such a plot was probably not feasible.

While it is true that the tanks at Kennedy Airport are connected to a network of underground pipes that run from New Jersey through Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens, an exploding tank should not ignite the pipeline, they said. The pipes, which carry jet fuel, gasoline and heating oil, have valves that can be operated from headquarters in Pennsylvania to cut off the flow if sensors indicate that there might be a leak or rupture, said Roy Haase, an official of Buckeye Partners, the company that operates the pipeline.

“It’s not like the pipeline is a stick of dynamite and the whole thing would blow up,” Mr. Haase said. He said it was more likely that the damage from an exploding tank would be limited to the immediate area around the tank.

Each of the fuel tanks at Kennedy “is its own self-contained unit” 200 to 300 feet from the nearest road, said Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

*Then again, they tend to do that until they admit that it was actually scarier than first thought; it seems to take about six months for this to happen.

**No, really — a parliament member!