Some weeks, anything seems possible. For a brief moment, according to the cute doctored photo fronting the Post at least, it seemed that Yankee die-hard Rudy Giuliani was abandoning his presidential bid to buy the Chicago Cubs. (He wasn’t.) Mayor Bloomberg, asked at a fund-raiser if he was entertaining his own plans to run for the White House, answered coquettishly, “Absolutely not. And anybody who’s running will say exactly that.” (He isn’t.) The actual president, George W. Bush, celebrated Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death with a surprise trip to Iraq and “took a sigh of relief” when Karl Rove was cleared as a suspect in the Valerie Plame investigation. His red-letter week was tarnished only by news that his daughter Barbara, who seems to enjoy her visits to Manhattan like a sailor on shore leave, was moving here full time (and apparently scoping out potential jobs—including one at the Cooper-Hewitt—on Craigslist). In defiance of the administration’s immigration paranoia, the city’s usually assimilated international fútbol fans celebrated the World Cup with pints at the unlikely hour of 9 A.M. in bars suddenly dedicated to the athletic ambitions of their homelands. Jacob “the Jeweler” Arabo could be slinging bling from Sing-Sing if he’s convicted on charges of laundering coke money. New York’s crime rate dropped again, even as one man, in a thirteen-hour span, somehow managed to stab the only three tourists in town who weren’t watching the World Cup. A U.S. Open–bound Tiger Woods proved that it’s possible to sneak into town aboard a 155-foot yacht, as long as you park it in Westchester. Hillary Clinton’s mission impossible—rationalizing her vote to go to war in Iraq while blaming Bush for the whole thing—earned her boos at a liberal conference and a lecture from John Kerry. Bill Clinton proved that even a poor boy from Hope, Arkansas, can grow up to make $7.5 million a year giving speeches. And Andrea Schwartz, an enterprising young lady living in midtown, showed that anyone can become rich while working from home—if she’s willing to import hot women from Brazil and charge $1,500 an hour for a threesome.

Have good intel? Send tips to intel@nymag.com

Related:

• Archive: “It Happened Last Week”
• Articles by Mark Adams