Whoops, There It Is!

The group alleged to have planned to blow up the PATH train tunnel apparently got the map on the Department of Homeland Security’s website:

The tunnel terrorists got their maps of the region’s vital underground passageways off the Department of Homeland Security’s Web site, sources said yesterday.

Maps of the city’s tunnels — including subways, PATH tubes and the Holland Tunnel — were found with the group’s reputed mastermind in Beirut, and were e-mailed to other members of the group, officials said yesterday.

. . .

Homeland Security did not comment on the report that its own Web site was used by the terrorists.

Osama Not Only Paid For This Lap Dance — He Encouraged It!

Alleged Al Qaeda ringleader encouraged to teach economics courses in order to maintain “secular, fun-loving” cover:

The alleged ringleader of the tunnel terror plot lived the life of an international playboy — on orders from Al Qaeda.

Assem Hammoud, 31, even fooled his mother, if Lebanese police and U.S. anti-terror officials are correct.

His mother, Nabila Qotob, said Hammoud drinks alcohol, had girlfriends, traveled widely and showed no similarities to Islamic militants.

She also said Hammoud taught economics at a local university.

To prove her son was no jihadi, Qotob showed off photos yesterday of Hammoud with his father and lounging shirtless on a speeding motorboat in Germany.

There were also very un-Islamic pictures of Hammoud with three smiling women — none of them wearing veils — on his arm during an undated stay in Canada.

“His morale is high because he is confident he is innocent,” said Qotob, who said she had recently visited her son in jail.

But Lebanese police, who arrested Hammoud on April 27, said in a statement that the suspect claimed he had been ordered to maintain a fun-loving, secular lifestyle to hide his Islamic militancy.

“He did just that with perfection,” the police statement said.

I, Uh, Ran Into A Wall

The only thing worse than losing three fingers in an ill-advised fireworks experiment is having to lie about it later:

An off-duty firefighter lost at least three fingers on his right hand when he lit a powerful firecracker in the kitchen of his Brooklyn home — and it blew up as he tried to toss it out a window, a police source said yesterday.

But Michael Decker of Ladder Co. 118 insisted he accidentally cut himself and refused to discuss the nature of his injury.

The police source said Decker, 33, lit an illegal “blockbuster” firecracker in his home Saturday night. The explosive is banned in the United States.

The source said it was not clear if he’d face criminal or departmental charges for possessing illegal fireworks. In cases where a person has been maimed, criminal charges usually are not filed, the source added.

A shotgun was also found in the firefighter’s house, the source said.

Decker left Lutheran Hospital yesterday with his hand heavily bandaged to the wrist.

“I cut myself,” he said. “It hurts.”

Asked about the firecracker allegation, he insisted, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” but acknowledged, “There are a lot of fireworks in the neighborhood.”

He did not respond when asked if he’d lost fingers — only raising his bandaged hand in front of his face.

It’s Way Too Hot . . . And You’re In Everyone’s Way . . . Plus, You’re An Idiot

A $1.4 million Jews for Jesus proselytizing campaign may or may not be money well spent:

Jews for Jesus is a worldwide group based in San Francisco that adheres to an evangelical Christian theology but is made up of believers with Jewish lineage. It is sending 200 missionaries to the city for July, its biggest campaign in New York in its more than 30-year history. It is the finale of a five-and-a-half-year effort to conduct campaigns in every city in the world outside Israel with more than 25,000 Jews.

“This is the largest outreach we’ve ever had,” said David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus, who outlined a multipronged effort that involves street evangelizing and an extensive media campaign.

During previous summers in New York, a small group of Jews for Jesus missionaries concentrated on Manhattan. This year the group plans to make its presence known in all five boroughs, as well in Westchester and Rockland Counties, in northern New Jersey and on Long Island. There are also campaigns aimed at Russian-speaking Jews, Israelis and Hasidic Jews.

With a campaign budget of roughly $1.4 million, Jews for Jesus has already sent out mailings to 400,000 Jewish homes in the area and DVD’s in Yiddish about Jesus to 80,000 Orthodox homes. It has launched a marketing campaign with radio spots and subway and newspaper ads featuring the slogan “Jesus for Jews.”

The centerpiece of their outreach, however, is their work on the streets, where members of the group, in colorful T-shirts emblazoned “Jews for Jesus” and adorned with the Star of David, hand out literature and try to strike up spiritual conversations with Jews and non-Jews alike.

Most of the people who pray with Jews for Jesus missionaries to accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior are, in fact, non-Jews, according to the organization’s statistics. But the group, which sends its monthly newsletter to 100,000 households, is most interested in engaging Jews with the Gospel.

Jewish groups in the city across the religious spectrum, many barely able to contain their loathing for the organization, have united in opposition.

Indeed, the response that many people, Jewish or gentile, have to Jews for Jesus epitomizes the derision, admiration and bewilderment that religious proselytizers can engender in this city.

To some, they are sterling examples of spirit-inspired boldness; to others, simply infuriating.

And steamy subway stations during the dog days of July may or may not be the best place or time to spread the word:

On Thursday, Shaun Buchhalter, a staff missionary in New York, offered the volunteers tips for how to engage people. “Don’t get discouraged,” he emphasized. “Each person is like a bucket,” he said. “Every interaction they have with the Gospel is another drop in the bucket.”

Later in the day, the volunteers ventured onto the streets for the first time. Avi Snyder, the group’s European director, demonstrated how it was done, briskly proffering blue pamphlets to the crowds plowing past on 34th Street and Broadway.

A man in a skullcap talking on his cellphone took one and tore it in half, tossing it over his shoulder while walking away. “Do you want another one?” Mr. Snyder asked.

I Reminisce About The Days Of Old By Flailing Around Like An Idiot At The Bowery Ballroom Air Guitar Show

At its “best,” air guitar is a spontaneous unconscious reaction to the “hot licks” and “heavy riffs” in guitar-based rock music. Tom Cruise in “Risky Business” exemplifies this. (Sorry to mention that name, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t tithing into the next astral plane back then.) The scene, ridiculous on its face (Bob Seger should have been stopped long ago!), evokes an I guess accurate (ha!) geeky-adolescent-boy-when-no-one-is-watching tone.

At its worst, air guitar is a cynical hipster meta response to the worst of the last 25 years of popular culture:

It is Thurday afternoon. Roughly ten hours from now, a shirtless William Ocean — the word air shaved into his chest hair — will shock a sold-out Bowery Ballroom with a full standing flip onto his back that crushes an empty beer can he has set onstage. He will then leap on someone’s shoulders and be carried like a conquering hero through the rapturous crowd, returning to the stage only to reveal the American-flag-print Speedos lurking beneath his sparkly pants, as his audience gleefully dissolves into a sea of pumped fists and cries of “Ocean! Ocean! Ocean!” All this will occur while he mimics the guitar solo to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

. . .

At last year’s nationals in L.A., Ocean (then representing Chicago) and [To Air Is Human author and perennial air guitar also-ran Björn] Türoque were bested in the finals by hometown hero Rockness Monster, who got obliterated in Norway by some dude from Holland. American pride is now at stake. We must reclaim the prize. The Bowery’s judging panel — the co-founder of Vice magazine, a Daily Show correspondent, an Atlantic A&R rep, and 2004 Air Guitar world champ Sonyk-Rok — will thus be brutally tough on contestants.

Ocean had anticipated this, though, and over lunch discusses his intense training regimen: loads of Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses, and AC/DC on his iPod as he runs through a workout routine of deep knee bends, splits, and stretches. He has come a long way from his adolescence, spent unconsciously playing air guitar along to the Beverly Hills 90210 theme. He is through fucking around. “I’m kind of known as the guy who goes up onstage and batters his body,” Ocean says. “I’m leaving it all on the stage. I plan on leaving on a stretcher.”

This is not irony. It is, however, absurd. “It’s kind of ridiculous, to tell you the truth,” William admits of his ascending celebrity. “CNN came to my house last night.”