Play Idea: Last Con Man In Manhattan

Alternate title: Con Err. Opening this summer at a fringe festival near you.

Times Readers Never Seem To Get A Satisfying Answer To That Eternal Gay Or Lavish? Question

There’s innuendo:

Graft Charges Depict Kruger’s Lavish Lifestyle

And then there’s the schoolyard version thereof:

Gay pol’s $1 mil ‘bribe’ out-rage

Homeboy’s So Proud, He Finally Got The Video Proof!

You suspected it was a problem, and now there’s video proof:

. . . [T]he Taxi and Limousine Commission sent out “secret shoppers” — actually Baruch College students, in this case — to try their luck at cadging rides to what are impolitely called the outer boroughs.

Several shoppers succeeded in their mission, which is to say, they did not succeed in persuading the cabbies to take them where they said they wanted to go.

“Make no mistake,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at the news conference accompanying the video release. “If you want to hail a cab, New York City cabdrivers are required by law to take you to any destination in New York City. Period. End of story. Every person who puts a hand in the air to hail a cab deserves to be treated the same.”

And then they attack:

The cabdriver, Mohammed Azam, 27, suggested they drive to a nearby police precinct station, Precinct 18 Midtown North on West 54th Street, to ask if he did, in fact, have to take the men to the Bronx. The police said they told him that he did, but when the men went back outside, police officials said, the driver hit two of them with his cab at the corner of West 54th Street and Eighth Avenue.

La-La-La-La-La-La, I Can’t . . . Oh Wait, What?

Too bad I had my iPod on so loud — I would have heard the news:

State Senator Carl Kruger, a powerful and at times controversial Brooklyn Democrat; a state assemblyman; and an influential lobbyist are expected to turn themselves in on Thursday to federal authorities in Manhattan on corruption charges, according to several people briefed on the matter.

Don’t Pee On My Leg And Tell Me It’s Warm

Or whatever:

Mayor Bloomberg says he knows what it’s like to get booed at a parade — but insists he got “an enormously warm reception” when he was booed last weekend.