La-La-La-La-La-La, I Can’t . . . Oh Wait, What?

Too bad I had my iPod on so loud — I would have heard the news:

State Senator Carl Kruger, a powerful and at times controversial Brooklyn Democrat; a state assemblyman; and an influential lobbyist are expected to turn themselves in on Thursday to federal authorities in Manhattan on corruption charges, according to several people briefed on the matter.

I Know There’s An Obesity Problem In This Country, But You Can’t Find At Least A Couple Of People That Could Do The Same Job?

The mayor clarifies his position on immigration reform:

Hizzoner boasted on his radio show Friday that the leaders of 11 major fashion houses have pledged their support to his efforts to fix the nation’s immigration policy.

Without that change, the hottest models might start strutting their stuff on catwalks far from New York, Bloomberg warned.

“What’s happened is that some fashion people can’t get their models over here,” Bloomberg said. “So they start to cancel some of their photo shoots, because they can’t get models in or the cameras.”

The Daily News goes on to note that this is the same issue that Anthony Weiner brought up two years ago — and was ridiculed about by the mayor’s reelection team.

The Cultural McNugget

It’s like Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album set to fried chicken. Or like Shepard Fairey’s preemptive suit against the Associated Press — set to fried chicken. Mash it up, derive the derivative and claim ownership over something that no one really owned in the first place:

Abdul Haye, the self-styled Colonel Sanders of New York’s Afghan community, has declared a fried chicken war.

He has armed himself with an unwritten secret recipe that he claims allows him to fry the best bird in town. His main weapon, he says, is ownership of the trademark for the Kennedy Fried Chicken brand, which has spawned hundreds of imitators as far south as Georgia, and has become to oily drumsticks what the ubiquitous Ray’s name once was to New York pizza.

That Kennedy, named after the former president, was itself a deliberate imitation of Kentucky Fried Chicken, down to those familiar initials — and that it had its own trademark battle a generation ago — seems to make little difference to Mr. Haye, 38. A wired and wiry resident of Whitestone, Queens, he began working as a chicken fryer when he was 17, soon after he immigrated in 1989, and describes his rivals with ire similar to that he reserves for the Taliban.

“I’m declaring war against all the Afghans in New York who have stolen my name and my idea,” Mr. Haye said the other day at one of his five chicken outlets, showing off the trademark certificate that the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Washington had awarded him in 2005. He waved a thick stack of some of the 300 registered letters he began to mail last week to Kennedy outlets across the country, insisting that they pay him a monthly franchise fee, or face legal action. “Their poor-quality chicken is going to kill my reputation,” Mr. Haye complained. “I am the only real Kennedy!”

Never Pass Up An Opportunity To Make A Pointed Political Statement

I’m surprised he’s here at all — I would have assumed he was in Bermuda. Speaking of which, maybe there’s a reason your street isn’t plowed yet — no money:

Mayor Bloomberg vowed to dig New York out from under the snowy mess no matter what it costs the cash-strapped city.

“We’re going to plow the snow, clean the streets and then worry about how to pay for it,” he told reporters at a emergency news conference in a Manhattan sanitation garage.

But before that happens, let’s make sure CityTime is back on track.

See also: December 2010 Blizzard.

Backdooring Underhanded Low-Life Stealing High Entrance-Exit Turnstiles

Also, a great way to balance any tenuous budget:

Most subway riders can quickly navigate through a revolving-door, ceiling-to-floor turnstile. It’s a simple enough maneuver: Swipe the MetroCard, step straight ahead, push the bars forward.

. . .

But the cagelike contraptions can bamboozle less experienced travelers into paying the $2.25 fare twice — an apparently unintended consequence of the design that doesn’t seem to trouble the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

“These are the biggest robbers down here,” one transit worker said as he repaired a high entrance-exit turnstile, or HEET, in the Union Square station.