When You Lie Down With Joe Francis You Wake Up With Fleas

Because of course everybody loves firefighters:

Fire officials poured water yesterday on the wildly popular calendar featuring the department’s hunkiest hunks after a video featuring this cover boy waving his God-given hose began making the rounds of gay porn sites.

“We will no longer be participating in this. There will be no more calendars,” said FDNY spokesman Francis Gribbon.

The embarrassing video of 22-year-old firefighter Michael Biserta of Brooklyn’s Ladder Co. 131 and his enormous member is featured in the 2004 Joe Francis-produced DVD “Guys Gone Wild.”

. . .

In the clip, the female camera operators goad Biserta to show them his fire pole. When they ask him to dance for them or get up on the bed, he refuses, but does agree to get in the hotel room’s shower in the nude.

Officials said Biserta won’t be disciplined because the video was made before he was hired. But officials at the department’s fund-raising arm — the FDNY Foundation — said the decision to cancel the calendar was a huge disappointment, because at $15.99 a pop, it brought in on average $150,000 a year for them.

Public Appearances Are Difficult To Pull Off When No One Recognizes You; Man-On-The-Street Interviews Few And Far Between (Like G Train Service!)

MTA CEO Elliot Sander gets the full-on Jews-for-Jesus treatment from commuters at Grand Central; exactly one citizen stops to talk:

MTA CEO Elliot Sander campaigned like a politician yesterday at the Grand Central side of the Times Square shuttle, handing commuters flyers describing the preliminary 2008 budget, which includes higher fares and tolls.

“Keep the fare down, bastards!” one man bellowed at Sander as the transit chief paused for a media interview.

One man heading from a train not only declined to take the flyer info but barked, “You’re blocking the way.”

When Sander told commuter Jean Callaham that the MTA faces $6 billion in deficits over the next four years, the Staten Islander replied that she feels she pays enough already.

“I’m angry they want to raise the fare again,” she said. “What are we supposed to do? How are we going to survive?”

The 30-minute platform campaign highlighted the difficulty the MTA may have convincing riders a fare hike really is needed since the agency has a surplus this year — and past predictions of deep deficits proved inaccurate.

That lady is everywhere:

Mr. Sander, dressed in a dark suit, began handing out leaflets at 8 a.m. to hurrying subway riders on the platform of the shuttle train to Times Square.

Very few people seemed to recognize him, and only one or two stopped for a chat. Most merely brushed past him: New Yorkers in a hurry to get on or off the train.

The leaflet was titled “The Fare Facts,” and it said that growing pension and debt service costs had made “modest increases in fares and tolls” necessary.

It did not mention that the rate increase in fares and tolls would average 6.5 percent. And it also did not mention that for the last year the authority has operated with a cash surplus of nearly $1 billion.

But the surplus was on the mind of one woman who stopped to speak to Mr. Sander. She asked him where the money had gone.

Mr. Sander told her that the authority was facing rising deficits, and he invited her to send her opinions in an e-mail message, through the M.T.A.’s Web site.

The woman, Jean Callaham, said it took her two hours to get to work from her home on Staten Island. She told Mr. Sander that the $20 she pays each week in subway fares and the $9 toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that her relatives pay when they visit her were already high enough.

Speaking to a reporter afterward, Ms. Callaham, who works at a financial services firm, said she leaves her house at 6:15 a.m., drives to the Staten Island Railway and takes the train to the Staten Island ferry. After crossing the harbor, she takes a subway to Times Square and then takes the shuttle to Grand Central. She gets to work at 8:15.

At times she has taken an express bus, which cuts the trip to an hour. But the cost is much higher.

Ms. Callaham said that when she got off the shuttle yesterday morning she mistook Mr. Sander for another public official.

“I saw a distinguished-looking gentleman standing there, and I thought it was Mayor Bloomberg,” she said. “Then he handed me this flier, and I said, ‘Who are you?'”

No, literally everywhere:

Since the MTA is crying poverty it can’t afford a p.r. campaign. So Sander greeted commuters with “Fare Facts” fliers that try to justify the “modest increases in fares and tolls.”

One rider, Jean Callaham, of Staten Island, wasn’t buying the pitch.

“I told him that I’m tired of having to pay, pay, pay. I can’t afford to ride express buses and they want to raise the fare,” she said.

Another rider shouted, “Keep the fares down, bastard!” then stormed away.

Wasn’t The WTC Insurance Fund Supposed To Help Avoid This?

Things you don’t want to have happen on a gorgeous summer weekend include opening up the Sunday Post to see how much you’re cashing in on 9/11:

One of the high-priced lawyers who have sucked $47 million out of the $1 billion World Trade Center insurance fund is infamous for defending companies that manufactured Agent Orange, a pregnancy drug linked to cancer, and defective breast implants.

James Tyrrell, a partner in the law firm Patton Boggs, is hailed in legal circles as the “master of disaster” and the “devil’s advocate.”

Another lawyer, Thomas Jones, serves simultaneously as secretary of the WTC Captive Insurance Co., which manages the $1 billion FEMA fund, and as partner in the Chicago-based McDermott Will & Emery, the fund’s legal counsel.

In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan last week, 9/11 responders blasted the Captive’s mounting expenses — $75 million so far, including $47 million on law firms — and Jones’ alleged “conflict of interest.”

They charged the city-run WTC Captive is a cash cow for its employees, consultants and lawyers, and has “squandered” money that should go to 10,000 cops, firefighters and other workers with illnesses blamed on toxic exposure at Ground Zero. It has paid just $45,000 to a carpenter who fell off a ladder.

Patton Boggs, based in Washington, D.C., commands up to $850-an-hour — one of the highest billing rates in the country, according to a National Law Journal survey.

Tyrell, who works out of the firm’s Newark office, would not discuss what he charges to lead the battle against Ground Zero responders, saying his firm’s contract with the WTC Captive has a “confidentiality clause.”

The city Law Department also refused to divulge the fees paid to the hired guns. Neither Tyrrell nor Patton Boggs has done work for the city before, officials said.

Documents obtained by The Post show that eight senior partners at McDermott, Will & Emery, including Thomas, can each bill the insurance fund $618 an hour. The partners first billed a “discounted” $550 an hour, but that fee was raised 6 percent in 2005, and 6 percent again last year.

The Devil Bowed His Head Because He Knew That He’d Been Beat And He Laid That Golden Fiddle On The Ground At Tommy’s Feet

The person obviously gave up when he or she found that no one was particularly excited about a hot fiddle:

The drowsy violinist whose $80,000 instrument was either lost or stolen after he dozed off on the bench of a Brooklyn subway station was playing a happy tune yesterday.

“It’s a miracle,” said Tom Chiu, after getting reunited with his beloved 94-year-old Scarampella violin.

“I got a call from MTA Lost-and-Found last night and they told me to come to Stillwell Avenue to retrieve it.”

Still disbelieving, Chiu asked the transit worker on the phone if there were bow ties and pictures of his wife in the case.

There were.

Chiu, 36, a renowned concert violinist who performs at the floating Bargemusic in Brooklyn, said he would never let his instrument out of his sight again.

“I learned a big lesson,” he told The Post.

“You think Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights — nothing bad would happen there. I love people, but I need to guard my possessions.”

Chiu said there is still the possibility the violin was stolen from him, and the thief abandoned it in favor of the other valuables in his case.

“The zipper is broken on the case and some of my other things are missing,” he said.

How Was The Date? Let’s Just Say She Was A Little Trashy . . .

Lady, I hope you’re not wondering why you’re still single:

Debra Keneally is conducting an experiment that may make you pause before you buy your next bottle of water or cup of coffee. For two weeks, the 37-year-old Brooklynite is carrying around the trash she accumulates.

“It’s definitely getting in the way a little bit,” Keneally said yesterday, in her office at Frog Design Inc. where she’s a program manager.

She was on Day 5 and already had to switch to a larger bag to hold her discarded mail and catalogs, her plastic tomato and berry containers, clanking beer bottles, old shoe insoles, a box for new sneakers and more.

She is trying to be unobtrusive on the subway, putting the bag between her feet.

“I took the bag to Midsummer Night’s Swing at Lincoln Center, but then I left because it was too hot,” she said. “I took it on a date to Central Park.”

Keneally is following the rules of a project called “Trash Talk,” started in May by a woman in Austin, Texas, who works for the same global design consult. Another Frog Design employee in Seattle and one in Shanghai did the two-week garbage hauling stint before Keneally picked up her bag.