Amateur Guitarists Everywhere Are Wondering Whether Open-Mic Nights Might Be Next

Governor Spitzer turns his finely tuned ear towards the inherent fraudulence of cover bands:

Knockoff music acts that impersonate the real performers can face fines up to $15,000 under a new law in New York.

“Music artists work for years to build names for themselves in the entertainment industry,” Gov. Spitzer said yesterday after signing the amendments to the Arts and Cultural Affairs Law. “We should not allow others to impersonate their work and profit from that deception.”

Called the “Truth in Music Advertising Law,” it prohibits copycat performances that attempt to cash in through false and misleading representations like names, billings and promotions similar to the original artists.

The measure was inspired when well-known recording artists like the Platters, the Coasters and the Drifters suffered financial losses when their acts and routines were copied without permission, according to the governor’s office.

Be Sure To Stop By Sally’s In New Haven On Your Way . . .

Islanders go to great lengths to protect the honor of their womenfolk:

A father-and-son team who resemble Ward and Beaver Cleaver more than they do a pair of thugs took a 159-mile road trip from Eltingville for the express purpose of threatening a teenager at knifepoint, authorities said yesterday.

“If you ever go near my girl friend again, I’ll slice you up,” the 16-year-old Eltingville teen told another youth in a East Windsor, Conn., supermarket parking lot Sunday night, said East Windsor Police Detective Matt J. Carl.

The teen made the trip with his father, Donald DeOrio, 48, of the 100 block of Augusta Ave., “just to threaten the guy and pull a knife on him” in response to the girl’s call that she’d had a fight with her boy friend, Carl said.

Cops reported finding six knives and a pair of black handcuffs in the car, and some clothes packed into a duffel bag.

The father and son were arrested, along with the girl.

East Windsor, a town of 10,000 in north-central Connecticut, is at least three hours by car from Staten Island. It’s about 13 miles north of Hartford, and another 13 miles south of the Massachusetts border.

The Eltingville teen met with the girl, then confronted the boy in the parking lot of Geissler’s Supermarket just before 8 p.m., Carl said.

. . .

Someone called 911, and the boy was able to give police a description of the vehicle the teens rode off in.

Cops tracked the car, with DeOrio at the wheel, on Route 140, near the border of East Windsor and Windsor Locks, Carl said.

Norman Foster . . . Perv!

If anyone has a copy of the memo instructing Cosmo staff to keep their legs closed, well, you know where to reach us:

The cascading glass escalators in the lobby of Norman Foster’s new Hearst Tower, which carry the ladies of Cosmopolitan, Town & Country, and Harper’s Bazaar to their offices, also offer a view up their skirts. Some editors were concerned enough that they warned members of their staff prone to wearing trendy mini-minidresses or ballooning short skirts to take care to keep their legs closed. “It’s the visitors that see the ‘view,'” said one editor. “A lot of tourists walk in from the streets to see the building.” Other employees were more blasé. . . . [one editor said,] “I’m not sure it’s that much of a problem considering the fact that I can probably count the number of straight men who work in the building on one hand.”

He Walks The Line Between Health Policy And Civic Boosterism

Outmigration and a more-educated population aside, you’re living longer because you walk more. Ooh-kay:

In essence, there is a health gap emerging between our massive metropolis and the rest of the country — some X factor that’s improving our health in subtle, everyday ways. In fact, a back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that once you take out those uniquely New York ways to die — AIDS, homicide, etc. — we’ve still added at least 200,000 extra years onto the city’s life-expectancy tables since 1980, making crucial advances in the same health areas the rest of the country struggles with. Like many New Yorkers, I’d moved here with some trepidation — always figuring that the stress, pollution, and 60-hour workweeks would knock about five years off my life. I was wrong — precisely wrong. But where, exactly, is our excess life coming from?

I take this question to Thomas Frieden, New York’s commissioner of public health. Frieden is a wonk’s wonk — a handsome, energetic doctor who has gained a nationwide reputation for his aggressive effort to push New York’s average-life-expectancy figure ever higher. The smoking ban of 2003? The trans-fat ban of last year? You can thank Frieden for both. These measures have already begun to lengthen life spans in the city. The smoking ban had an immediate effect: The number of deaths attributable to smoking has decreased from 8,960 in 2001 to 8,096 in 2005, a drop of 10 percent. Lung-cancer rates should begin to see the same effect a few decades from now, since it takes longer for the body to repair smoking-related lung damage.

But even Frieden admits that public policy can’t account for all the gains. When I ask what the X factor is — where the “excess life” is coming from — Frieden goes over to his desk and returns with a clear plastic statuette. It’s from the American Podiatric Medical Association and Prevention magazine: BEST WALKING CITY, 2006.

“We’ve won it a couple of years in a row,” he tells me with a grin. He’s got a bunch of them kicking around.

Just keep telling yourself that . . .

They Surf The Web, Just Like Us!

The NYPD’s vaunted anti-terror unit* collects intelligence from all the best sources, with the highest degrees of certainty:

In a show of force, the NYPD mobilized hundreds of anti-terrorism cops last night after an Internet report of a “dirty bomb” threat targeting the city surfaced, authorities said.

An Israeli-based Web site claimed al Qaeda communications accuse the United States of failing to take seriously the videotaped message last Sunday of an American member of the terror group, who vowed to attack the “spy dens” of U.S. and allied embassies throughout the Islamic world, police said.

DEBKA file — which attempts to report on the actions and chatter among al Qaeda cells — posted the story yesterday on its Web site, claiming that New York would be attacked in the coming days “by means of trucks loaded with radioactive material against America’s biggest city and financial nerve center.”

The threats were allegedly found in an exchange of messages over the terror group’s internal Internet sites.

Taking precautions against the threats, officers were mobilized and checkpoints set up throughout the city — at the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and various locations in lower Manhattan, including the Financial District — to conduct searches and monitor suspicious activity.

“While the threat remains unverified, our counter-terrorism posture has been modified to include increased deployment of radiological sensors,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

Then they refreshed their browser:

The New York City police pulled back their additional security checkpoints and radiological sensors in Lower Manhattan yesterday after determining that a report of a planned dirty bomb attack was unsubstantiated.

. . .

Mr. Browne said he did not want to overstate the importance of the site, saying the police monitored intelligence and multiple sources from around the world every day.

Still, the effect of Debka.com’s report was borne out by the relative swiftness of the department’s response on Friday.

*I feel so cheated — I believed every part of that New Yorker piece!