Since today yet another snowstorm is blanketing the East Coast, here are some sunny pick-me-ups:
1. Earlier this week in Iraq, as an instructor at a terrorist training school was showing his students how to wear a suicide vest, he accidentally blew himself up, along with at least 22 other potential bombers. When the New York Times interviewed various Iraqi citizens about this event, many of them couldn’t stop laughing.
2. When I saw this photo of KD Lang and Tony Bennett embracing, at first I thought they were a long-time gay couple getting married.
I was wrong, but I still think they’re both wonderful.
3. It’s been entertaining to watch the turmoil surrounding that contestant on The Biggest Loser whom many people feel lost too much weight. Do these people watch The Bachelor and worry that some of the winning couples might not really be in love?
4. Last week I had a piece in The New Yorker, which celebrated the particular lunacy called New Jersey. Some folks felt I went too far. But this week the Mayor of Trenton was convicted of bribery, fraud and extortion. Since 2000, the mayors of Asbury Park, Camden, Hamilton, Hoboken, Newark, Orange, Passaic, Patterson and Perth Amboy, among others, have also been convicted of various crimes. Come on, Ho-ho-kus, Metuchen and Teaneck, catch up!
5. It must be challenging to grow up in Mianus, Connecticut.
6. Soleil Moon Frye, once the star of Punky Brewster, has named her new baby Lyric Sonny Roads Goldberg. He joins his siblings Jagger Joseph Blue and Poet Sienna Rose.
7. On long car trips, children sometimes count cows or out-of-state license plates. In Manhattan, I like to count men wearing peacoats with the collars turned up. If they’re also wearing turtleneck sweaters, chances are that they’re fantasizing about being either A) Daniel Craig, B) Billy Bigelow in a production of Carousel, or C) a rugged guy in an Old Spice commercial, wearing a knitted cap as he strides along a wharf.
8. You know that it’s “a significant weather event” when Channel 2’s intrepid weather stud, Lonnie Quinn, takes off his jacket and does the weather report with his shirtsleeves rolled up. Sometimes he even reports from his Mobile Weather Lab, which seems to be a mini-van with a flat-screen TV in the back. Lonnie used to be an actor on a soap. I think he’s waiting for President Obama to call him on the air, and ask, “So Lonnie, tell me about this icy rain.”
