Coming Soon: “Muffin Top”

Fortunately we have this important story to establish an agreed-upon definition for “backfat”:

The graffiti tag “Backfat” — ranging in size from a few inches to a few feet wide — has been popping up on buildings, storefronts, awnings, even between subway tracks, all over Windsor Terrace and Kensington.

. . .

“Backfat” is a colloquial term for the rolls of extra weight that bulge along the edges of a too-tight or ill-fitting bra.

A city official who is familiar with the situation said the law is hot on the tagger’s heels.

“The police are on Backfat’s trail. It is being thoroughly investigated and we are coming close to finding him,” the source said.

Postenfreude

The Daily News is engaging in Postenfreude* again:

A Post vendor was caught yesterday tossing bundles of free promotional copies of the sad tab into Brooklyn trash cans.

“It might have been me, it might not have been me,” said vendor John Adams, 26, after a reporter watched him trash more than a hundred copies in three Fulton Mall trash cans.

The Crown Heights man said he was having difficulties giving away the rag.

He said he couldn’t leave his Jay St. spot until he’d given away all of the promotional copies, which featured an advertisement on the cover.

“It’s hard,” said Adams, who has been hawking the Post for three weeks. “People don’t want anything even for free.”

In March, at least 10,000 Posts were dumped into two Brooklyn recycling centers in a move that drew the attention ofnewspaper circulation authorities.

*Loosely defined as taking pleasure when the Post embarrasses itself. The inter-tabloid equivalent: “Newsenfreude”.

See also: Daily News vs. The Post; Tabloid Wars.

Jinx, You Owe Me A Coke

New York Daily News: “Feds rescue ‘Superman,’ nab pirating men of steal”.

New York Post: “COPS NAB MEN OF ‘STEAL'”.

The story — authorities bust a DVD pirating ring:

The feds yesterday charged 22 alleged members of an underground network with recording, printing and selling millions of counterfeit videos and DVDs in an elaborate scheme dating back to at least 1999.

“We believe it to be the largest video piracy syndicate worldwide,” said Mark Mershon, Assistant Director of the FBI in New York, announcing the arrests under a three-year undercover probe dubbed “Operation Knock-Off.”

The FBI arrested 13 accused members of two rings, including those who filmed the movies in theaters, printers who made video and DVD covers and distributors who sold copies of the flicks. Nine others are being sought.

Raids in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens yesterday uncovered evidence the syndicate was already geared up to make a killing off “Superman Returns.”

According to court papers, members of the rings recorded high-quality “masters” at theaters throughout the city, infiltrating previews and other limited showings.

Members known as “cammers” used camcorders on tripods to record the flicks, while “blockers” allegedly sat themselves in strategic positions around the theater to help prevent detection.

The distributors allegedly bought masters for anywhere from $40 to several hundred dollars each and then mass-produced them, selling copies for anywhere from $7 to $10 each.

“We had a camcorder making $400,000 a year just by delivering recordings two to three times a week,” said Scott McGaunn, a special agent with the FBI.

There’s More Righteous Daily News Outrage Where That Came From

The Daily News is keeping the fire of righteous indignation burning by pointing out that the MTA’s offer to buy back pension contributions in the new contract will amount to a huge windfall for some transit employees:

Thousands of bus and subway workers are poised to reap up to $14,000 each in a new contract pension windfall that will ease the pain of their strike penalties — but will cost commuters an estimated $110 million.

News of the surprise Metropolitan Transportation Authority payout to up to 20,000 union members follows last week’s crippling three-day strike, which cost the city an estimated $1 billion and wreaked pre-holiday chaos.

The $110 million represents a refund of extra pension contributions that up to 20,000 union members made between 1994 and 2000. The new transit contract will give workers back the 2.3% of wages they paid toward pensions for those six years — plus interest.

“It’ll probably balance out, but it’s actually our money,” said bus driver Alfred Kwiatkowski, 50, of the lower East Side.

The MTA and Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint wouldn’t comment yesterday, but some workers said the deal made last week’s strike worthwhile.

“Roger finally got us our money back,” crowed bus driver Ray Rios, 48, of Corona, Queens, a 17-year veteran who has clamored for a refund since 2000. “We’ve been wanting our money back ever since.”

Thousands of MTA workers like Rios paid 2.3% extra into the pension fund for six years so they could retire at 55 instead of 62. But when the Legislature lowered the retirement age for all MTA workers to 55 in 2000, their extra contributions were for naught.

Gov. Pataki twice vetoed bills that would have returned the money to workers like Rios, saying it was a matter for the bargaining table. So that’s what the MTA did — agreeing to the one-time payment.

And just so everyone knows, the Daily News editorial board is pissed about this:

Roger Toussaint and the Transport Workers Union made out like bandits after all by crippling New York in their lawless strike. Those many promises by top officials that a walkout would gain the workers nothing have gone up in a $110 million puff of smoke.

. . .

The surprise pension sweetener has a history that dates to 1994. That year, then-Gov. Mario Cuomo signed legislation letting transit workers retire after 25 years, rather than 30, if they contributed an extra 2.3% of their salary to the pension system. Many did. Then, in 2000, the Legislature and Gov. Pataki enacted a bill that permitted all transit workers to pack it in after 25 years at age 55.

The union argued that everyone who had been paying for the benefit should get their money back. Pataki and the Legislature rejected the request, as well they should have. The TWU tried twice more to get Albany to approve reimbursing the workers and was unsuccessful both times. Now, after devastating New York, it has won.

(A payback doesn’t actually seem like such an unfair thing, but it’s obviously important for the Daily News to keep piling on . . .)

Tabloid Wars

One of the more amusing things you see are the daily snipes the two big tabloids take at each other — not always amusing enough to point out, but amusing nonetheless. So here’s a good New Yorker piece on the recent (Drudgetastic) kerfuffle between the Daily News and the Post:

No longer can it be said that the News, traditionally the more restrained of the city’s rival tabloids, lacks a fighting spirit. The paper, reeling (or so said the Post, many times) from a lotto-game debacle that awarded cash prizes to thousands of readers by mistake, stepped up last Monday and finally played Hatfield to the Post’s McCoy. First, the News touted its own success—“daily newsad sales hit record high”—while also noting the “sorry picture of the shrinking business prospects of the New York Post.” Then, over the next several days, it ran a series of articles exposing an apparent “dump-and-pump” scheme at the Post, a “frantic, desperate effort” to boost circulation through bulk sales. The News, of course, has the higher circulation of the two.

. . .

Meanwhile, back from vacation, Mort Zuckerman reported with pleasure that the attention seemed to be increasing Scratch n’ Match participation. He also said that the News’ dump-and-pump story, which referred to “bloody shrapnel from publisher Lachlan Murdoch’s carpet-bombing propaganda machine,” was not retaliatory. “That wasn’t a response, obviously, to this latest—what my grandfather would have called mishegoss, which is a Yiddish word for craziness,” he said. “Who was that sociologist at Columbia—Robert Merton?—who said that every group has a reference group? Our reference group is not the Post—it is our readers.”

Up at Post headquarters, Lachlan Murdoch tried to play nice. “We don’t really think about the Daily News that much,” he said. But when he learned that a reporter had spoken with Zuckerman he asked, “How were the Galápagos?” He referred repeatedly to “Scratch n’ Stiff,” without winking or smiling, and accused the News, on the issue of bulk orders, of being a “pot calling the kettle black,” since the News sells a lot of bulk copies, too.

Col Allan, the editor, arrived, complaining about the “hypocrisy of these people,” and seemed more eager for a scrap. “They’re still shoving fifty papers a day in bulk into the prisons of the mentally insane on Wards Island,” he said. “I mean, give me a break.”

“I might even read the Daily News if I were stuck in a white padded cell,” Murdoch said.

Allan laughed: “Yes, very good.”

Murdoch said that he thought the nicknames had gone too far.

“It may have been a little exuberant,” Allan said. “But you’ve got to remember that the folks at the Daily News have this curious view of the world, and it really is that they feel that they can throw shit at the fan and never get dirty.”

Allan got up to leave. “If they want to attack us,” he said, “they shouldn’t do it in the business section—because nobody reads it.”