Sure, Tom Cruise commandeered a D train in a Mission: Impossible PR stunt, David Blaine spent the week in a tank of saltwater hoping his skin wouldn’t bubble off, and a vampire teen was on the loose in Queens, but can anyone really doubt that the most fascinating person in the city last week was deli cashier Sylvia Garcia? Power Girls hoping to unlock the secret of how a 32-year-old illegal immigrant at the Union Square march managed to make both the Times and the Post might consider ditching the goody bags and adopting her reporter-magnet strategy: walking around with a sign reading I LOST MY JOB TO BE HERE TODAY. No one lost his job at the high school where a bloodthirsty teen went on a rampage, but one parent filed a lawsuit. “She just bites like crazy—she just eats your flesh,” said one victim. No wooden stakes were plunged through hearts in the city last week, though an errant steel rod falling from the construction site of the new Times building did manage to penetrate the sunroof of a Pennsylvania family driving up Eighth Avenue, miraculously bouncing off the mother’s skull with hardly any impact, like a Bob Herbert column. Justice was served for two former fatties this week: Rush Limbaugh was able to convince much of the media that even though he had turned himself in to Florida police on the charge of fraudulently obtaining prescription drugs, he had never technically been arrested or admitted guilt. And a 9-0 Supreme Court decision freed up Trimspa spokesdoofus Anna Nicole Smith to gorge on her dead hubby’s millions. The Empire State Building marked its 75th birthday with the traditional saving of a would-be suicide. “He said, ‘Why don’t you let me die, you bastard?’ ” recalled hero security guard Jamel Lee (a different guard foiled professional daredevil Jeb Corliss’s stunt-jump earlier in the week). It was the third anniversary of President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” PR stunt—which somehow went unfoiled and has yet to cause anybody to lose their job—the passing of which coincided with the deaths of two city servicemen in Iraq.

Related:

• Archive: “It Happened Last Week”
• Table of Contents: May 15, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!