east village idiot

- a hawker today at Union Square.

Poor marketing. That makes me not want to take your free paper.

So the use of quotation marks is because he has been charged with it, not convicted? Fine. But did someone actually say he “killed his wife and five others?” If not, who are you quoting? Yourselves?

I do the sudoku in amNewYork to pass the time on my commute every morning, but this morning, I got an unsolvable puzzle.

Yes, after more than a month without posting, I’m sure this is exactly what you were waiting for.

In case you were wondering what type of person reads amNewYork, consider this:

Of the 62 display ads in today’s issue, 29 of them were for services that fell into the following categories: weight loss treatments, lasik, laser hair removal, salons, cosmetics, teeth whitening, skin treatments, varicose vein removal, egg donation, cosmetic dentistry, liposuction, modelling, body wraps, fertility treatments, Botox, dental implants, and wrinkle fillers.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I lived in Los Angeles.

It’s been nearly six months since I’ve done an edition of amNewYork Watch, my once-weekly feature pointing out glaring errors in the free daily newspaper published by the bankrupt Tribune Company. I pretty much stopped reading amNewYork around that time, switching to the lighter Metro, simply because they offer two Sudoku to amNY’s one.

This morning, a hawker in Union Square was standing over a pile of copies of Metro, so I took one from him. Fortunately for you, dear reader, it turned out to be today’s amNewYork he was handing out. And at the risk of beating a dead horse and kicking a newspaper when it’s down, they’re still just as bad as ever.

Apparently, Tribune is so strapped for cash, they even cut back on spell check.

This morning, I saw an MTA employee stationed out on the corner of 14th and 1st with a giant garbage can and a stack of copies of today’s amNewYork. He had just put down a huge batch of papers on the sidewalk and picked up a fresh stack when I came up from behind him.

Should I have taken a picture of him? Probably not. He’s kind of an intimidating guy. But by the time I took this picture, it became clear what he was doing: he was taking the New York City Department of Health’s free-standing insert out of every single copy of amNewYork, throwing the insert in the trash, then putting those copies back in the amNewYork racks.

It is so on! The MTA is declaring war on amNewYork! Litter our stations, and we’ll sabotage your advertisers’ campaigns!

Okay, the guy is probably doing it because those inserts will just end up getting dumped all over the subway station. And he probably has to clean that station when unsuspecting readers open up their copies and the inserts fall out all over the floor. But the DOH paid good money for those inserts, and you’ll never get to see them, because a subway employee is working outside his jurisdiction to throw them right in the trash!

Come to think of it, this is a mind-blowing example of governmental waste:

1. The Department of Health, a government agency, funds inserts for an anti-smoking ad campaign using taxpayer dollars.
2. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, a corporation funded with government money, discards the inserts by sending taxpayer-subsidized employees to street level.
3. The Department of Sanitation, a government agency, transports the inserts to landfills in taxpayer-funded trucks where they will not be recycled.

It’s a vicious cycle. The inserts go unseen, people keep smoking, and the DOH has to run yet another ad campaign. Maybe they’ll bring back the guy who talks through the hole in his throat. It was hard to miss that guy, because he was everywhere.

So, you can blame the MTA for making you late. You can blame the MTA for subjecting you to 150-degree platforms in the dead of summer. You can blame the MTA for the extra five dollars you’re paying to take the subway every week. And the next time someone blows cigarette smoke in your face when you’re walking down the sidewalk, I guess you could blame the MTA for that, too.

Yesterday’s amNewYork proves that the paper has a clear anti-communist stance.

It must be North Korea! Why would a freedom-loving country kill millions of birds? It was probably a Freudian slip. Someone at amNewYork must equate death with North Korea. And who can really blame them?

Amazingly, it appears that amNewYork is getting better at catching its own misteaks. Err… mistakes. They actually ran a correction today.

I’d give them credit for this, but with me, they just can’t win. They shouldn’t have made the mistake in the first place.

From an interview with Janeane Garofolo in last Thursday’s amNewYork: 

Really? I thought she was talking about Cynthia Nixon. I knew that Sex in the City was part of a vast right-wing conspiracy! And Ronald Reagan? I thought she meant John Henninger Reagan, the former Postmaster General of the Confederacy. That guy was always an election thief!

Thanks to a number of readers for pointing out this example of unnecessary quotation marks in yesterday’s amNewYork:

I thought that amNewYork was about to break the news of more juicy Spitzer sex details. Regardless of whether or not I really wanted to know more about Spitzer’s taint, the article doesn’t tell me more. It doesn’t mention his taint at all, in fact. And for that, I guess I can thank amNewYork.

amNewYork has run a god-awful “Happy Hour” section every Tuesday that lists four marginally-good to completely-douchey bars in a neighborhood and their happy hour deals. They’ve managed to screw this feature up before, but now they’re just phoning it in:

And what are those “cheap drinks?” Well, the “special” on Killarney Rose’s web site boasts domestic half-yards of beer for $6 and imports for $7. A half-yard of beer is about a pint, so that “special” is pretty standard, if not a little overpriced, for New York City. Regardless, they’re definitely not cheap, and it’s certainly not a deal.