It Has Hair On It

The Times (not unironically) profiles some of the great Queens weekly newspapers — and if anyone at Silvercup is paying attention, it’s a great idea for a television series — pitch it as Lou Grant meets Taxi:

[Times Newsweekly publisher and editor Maureen E. Walthers] has had her share of run-ins with the news media world of Manhattan, dating back to the single day she spent in a journalism course at Columbia University. Ms. Walthers hadn’t gone to college; she came to The Ridgewood Times as a divorced mother in her 40s. But she was already an experienced reporter when she sat down for the class, which began with a searching question: What is the most important principle in journalism? The students said “integrity,” “justice,” “truth.” Ms. Walthers was the last to answer. She said, “advertising.”

“They were all looking at me as if I was some sort of crass individual,” she said. She went back to Ridgewood and bought the paper 20 years ago.

“I have a very simple philosophy,” she said. “The stringbean farmer wants to read about the stringbean crop.”

Last Tuesday, a day remained until deadline and things looked grim.

The managing editor, Bill Mitchell, was thinking of running a story about a police forum attended by no one except a reporter from The Times Newsweekly. (“You’re not going to get anything in terms of residents storming the Bastille. The story here is there’s nobody here,” he reasoned.) The sinkhole was still a contender, but it was already three-day-old news. “It has hair on it,” Ms. Walthers said.

Mr. Mitchell left the office hoping for something to break on Wednesday. An exploding manhole cover? A graffiti bust? If worse came to worst, there were photographs from the previous weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in Sunnyside.

Either That Or We Bring Back Whoopi For Sister Act 3 (Is There Some Way To Get Margaret Cho On Board . . . Is Margaret Cho Chinese?)

If it were a movie pitch you might say it was Stand and Deliver meets The Joy Luck Club meets Animal House:

Workers at Church of the Transfigur­ation on Mott St. see their greatest success in children of immigrants, who often were born in the United States and stand with one foot in their Chinese past and another in their American future. The church’s Sunday school classes teach the Catholic faith to area children, and some non-Catholic parents see it as a chance for free babysitting, said Sister MaryAnn Scherr, a nun overseeing religious education at the church.

. . .

Every Sunday morning, Scherr and her team of religious educators teach Catholic catechism to parish children. It is a task fraught with complexities, as often these children know very little about Christianity.

“When people come to us, they often come with no religion at all,” Scherr said. “Some of the parents don’t see the value of the religion program.”

Down one flight of stairs from John Hum’s class, Jennifer Yau teaches first graders about books of the Bible, and routinely struggles with non-attentive students.

“This is boring,” said James, a tiny six-year-old boy with an untucked collared shirt, one leg up on his chair, the other dangling above the floor. “I don’t know it.”

“There is no, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s not an option,” said Yau, visibly at wits’ end. “I’m trying to teach you guys something and you’re not really paying attention, so I’d appreciate it if you would.”

. . .

Overall, progress is being made, Scherr said.

“We can have as many as 30 people we baptize each year,” she said. “Many are men.

“We try not to be people who just work to get certificates,” Scherr said. Too often, she says, immigrants believe their participation in church activities will guarantee them citizenship, or at least a green card.

“If they want to really be baptized, then we work with that,” Sherr said. “It’s not completely our job to doubt sincerity.”

As Chinese immigrants come into the city, they bring with them their own ideas and customs. In the Chinese province of Fujian, where most of Chinatown’s newest residents emigrate from, it is perfectly O.K. for someone to spit on the floor, even when inside, since most floors there are dirt, Scherr said. The church staff has tried to limit spitting and educate immigrants on American social conventions.

Even If You Can Go Home Again, You Won’t Want To See What Your Crazy-Ass Mother Did

I have to say, this would make for a totally outrageous third act:

Estranged from his father, a gay Brooklyn man came home yesterday to make peace, only to make a horrifying discovery: His mother had been hiding his dad’s corpse in the family’s apartment for three years, police sources said.

. . .

Her horrific secret was exposed when her 38-year-old son, Paul Iversen, knocked on the apartment door early yesterday. He had not been home since he came out of the closet well before his dad’s death, the sources said.

“I want to see Dad,” Paul Iversen told his mom, the sources said. “I want to make everything right.”

The elderly woman — who almost never allowed anyone into her Bay Ridge apartment — opened the door, sources said. “He’s in the bedroom,” she told her son.

Paul Iversen walked through the filthy apartment and to his horror found the skeletal remains of his dad, Frank Iversen, 75, in a fetal position under a pile of bed covers and clothes, the sources said.

And here’s the kicker:

At the 68th Precinct stationhouse, Joanne Iversen told cops that she and her husband had made a pact to hide the death of whoever passed away first so the surviving spouse could continue collecting Social Security benefits.

“He died of natural causes,” she told cops, the sources said. “It was three years ago.”

Detectives questioned the woman for several hours, but released her last night without filing charges. Cops were investigating whether she illegally obtained Social Security checks since her husband’s death.

A police source said Joanne Iversen had told another estranged son she had buried her husband years ago.

Tenants in the Bay Ridge Parkway apartment building between Ridge Blvd. and Third Ave. said they noticed Frank Iversen, a quiet man who had worked as a painter, hadn’t been around in years. But his wife always told them he had moved upstate.

“I always wondered if he was dead in there,” said neighbor Bonnie King. “Frank just disappeared. There was no explanation.” Other residents said there were clues, but no one put it all together.

“There were odor issues in that apartment,” said Carole Clements, 64. “We complained a lot, but I would have never guessed there was a body inside.”

And We Can Have Him Study Criminal Justice — Or Theatre Even!

Was this ever an idea for a film script? If not, someone should get on it:

John A. (Junior) Gotti could be headed to the Midwest — and to college — after his latest trial on racketeering charges dead-ended yesterday, buffing his contention that he put a life in organized crime behind him.

“If they let us alone, I’ll leave. I’ll take my family and I’ll go [to the Midwest],” vowed Gotti, who spoke of his desire to further his education.

. . .

In the latest trial, prosecutors tried to prove Gotti was part of a racketeering conspiracy because he has continued to receive mob money and benefit after 1999 from property and other assets he accumulated with proceeds from his crimes.

His defense lawyers say Gotti paid a large fine when he pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1999 and was permitted to keep his assets, regardless of where the money originated.

The Gotti camp clearly saw yesterday’s mistrial as a victory. “We’re just thrilled right now,” said his sister Victoria. “Today’s a humongous step. This win meant a lot to us.”

Insert Law & Order Donk-Donk Here

I can almost hear Jerry Orbach say it — “Some strange characters hang out in this neck of the woods”*:

The body of a man clad in a kinky black leather mask and decked out head to toe in S&M gear was hanging from a chain-link fence on Hudson Street yesterday — as many passers-by ignored it, thinking it was a Halloween display.

The slightly built, fair-skinned mystery man may have been choked to death by a dog collar around his neck, it’s other end strapped around a 3-foot-tall fence post, police sources said.

The 40ish, tattooed man was found kneeling, braced face-first against the fence in front of 424 Hudson St. at around 6:45 a.m.

In a bizarre twist, the body had been there for at least an hour, dismissed by some who walked past as a quirky seasonal display in an area scattered with S&M and gay bars.

“The body was covered with a black suit and he had a mask on his face,” said deli owner Indra Patel, who first spotted the strangely posed corpse when he opened next door around 5:30 a.m.

“I thought it was a dummy. It looked like a dummy, because every year they do decorations like that. I was wondering why they put up the [Halloween] decorations early.”

Patel said at least an hour went by before a woman walking her dog realized the sidewalk exhibit of a man wearing a pair of leather spiked gloves, chaps and a vest was a real person and called police.

Cops were investigating if the man had committed suicide or died during some sort of bizarre auto-erotic sex game.

. . .

Another witness, Kevin Samuel, 50, a porter for a building across the street, said he had looked at the body several times but it just never clicked that it might be a real person.

“I’m staring at him and I think, ‘Is that a prop or a real person?’ His legs looked like he was twisted on an angle and that he fell in it [the fence]. It looked like he was stuck there and couldn’t get up, like he lost his balance,” Samuel said.

*OK, OK — being Jerry Orbach is harder than it looks!