Photo: John Marshall Mantel/New York Times/Redux
Rudy Giuliani’s overheated twelve-point plan promising a little something for everyone was nicely in the spirit of a week characterized by hot air. Hillary Clinton felt a warming trend in Hollywood and bagged the presidential endorsement of Steven Spielberg. J.Lo and Marc Anthony, Puerto Rican Day Parade caliente surprise guests, were not among the 208 spectators arrested, who the police insisted were mostly gang members. Property-tax payers and library users were the big winners in the city budget passed by Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Christine Quinn. Governor Spitzer got fired up about legalizing medical marijuana for “life-threatening” conditions.
The FAA suffered short-term memory loss when asked to explain the seven midair near-collisions by planes close to area airports. Thirteen Haitian junior soccer players defected at JFK; they were found two days later. A trio of tweens from a Connecticut boarding school jacked a Dodge to take their stuffed animals on a joyride into Manhattan. Rapper the Game denied he’d flashed a phony badge in order to get a livery cabbie to run red lights. (“It’s rare that I have a 100 percent innocent defendant,” his lawyer averred, “but this is one.”) Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp agreed to plant the next Farm Aid on Randalls Island. Water warriors braved strong currents and Hudson River debris to swim from Riverside Park to Fort Washington. Con Ed hoped to circumvent blackouts by unveiling a gigantic new power station. (Because some like it hot, but some sweat when the heat is on.)
The city accepted bids to outfit municipal buildings with solar panels. Math scores for public-school students improved at an almost geometric rate. A Bronx superintendent found a live fifteen-inch missile in his building’s garbage. The Subway Series opened at Yankee Stadium with the Bronx Bombers way, way up and the Mets’ battery down in the dumps. And the new miracle weight-loss drug Alli hit the shelves just in time for beach season — and for the Sloan-Kettering thrift shop’s sale of Nan Kempner’s slimline couture hand-me-downs.
