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The USS New York-constructed with WTC Steel

A Navy assault ship built with steel from the World Trade Center, The USS New York, sailed up the Hudson River Monday morning, stopped beside the World Trade Center site and issued a 21-gun salute. From there, the ship will dock at Pier 88. The official commissioning will take place Saturday. And what an impressive vessel.The USS New York is 684 feet long and can carry up to 800 Marines. Its flight deck that can handle helicopters and the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Approximately 7.5 tons of World Trade Center steel was melted at the Bradken Inc. foundry in Amite (a-MEET), La., and used in the New York’s bow. The commissioning of this ship will coincide with a 9/11 memorial which is opening at the Intrepid Museum.

Memorial For 9/11 Victims Opens At Intrepid Museum

A new memorial for the innocents murdered on September 11 was unveiled at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Saturday. Two large pieces of steel from the World Trade Center now rest on the pier, along with a plaque in honor of the victims.  Governor Paterson said the tribute embodies the spirits of those who sacrificed. “It is an honor, a solemn honor to be here today and hope that this gesture that the intrepid is making will serve in many ways to enlighten those who still suffer.” The governor also said he hopes the memorial will offer families a place to grieve.

2009 WILL FEATURE A BERNIE MADOFF FLOAT

The 2009 the 83rd Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is fast approaching. This year it will be held on Thursday, November 26th from 9am to noon. The parade is one of those free things to do in New York that make this city so special. But get to the parade route early and stake out a good place to view. Most arrive before 7:00am to even be close to getting front row seating along the route. Dress warmly as the average morning temperature at this time of year here in New York is about 40 degrees. Think layers, that way you can remove them as the sun appears and the day gets warmer. Stake your position, settle in and enjoy!

THE PARADE ROUTE

The 2009 parade begins at 9:00am at 77th Street and Central Park West and meanders its way down to Macy’s flagship department store at Herald Square, 34th Street and 6th Ave. It will begin at 9:00am outside the American Museum of Natural History, between 77th and 81st Sts. at Central Park West. It heads south on Central Park West alongside Central Park. On this stretch of the Parade, the balloons are held close to the ground, to avoid trees and crosswinds. At Columbus Circle (on the southwest corner of Central Park), the parade turns onto Broadway. Once on Broadway, the balloons are raised to their full height and the parade continues southeast, through Times Square, to the Macy’s building at Herald Square (where Broadway intersects with 34th St. and the Avenue of the Americas). The Parade will end as it takes a right turn onto 34th St, and another right onto 7th Ave, where the balloons and floats are then disassembled and trucked off. Plan on the entire parade lasting it’s usual three to four hours. As always, though, the length and the duration of the parade will depend on where you view it from. If your viewing place is closer to the beginning of the parade route, plan on about 1 1/2 hours. At Macy’s, plan on it lasting closer to 2.5-3 hours.

The Best Public Viewing Areas:

Central Park West:  West side of street from 70th Street to Columbus Circle/East side of street from 70th to 65th streets

Columbus Circle: West side of street

Broadway: East and West side of avenue, between 58th & 38th Streets

34th Street: South side of street between Broadway & 7th Avenue

I DON'T SAY BLESS YOU, I SAY GOD BLESS YOU BECAUSE I'M NOT THE LORD.

The New York Comedy Festival started on Wednesday and continues through the weekend at 10 venues around the city. In addition to the headliners below, there are panels with the writers of “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon ” and “The Colbert Report ” and special shows at Carolines and Gotham Comedy Club. One of the highlights of the festival will be Dane Cook’s New York stop. He’ll play the Madison Square Garden as a part of the New York Comedy Festival on Thursday. Here’s some other highlight performers:

ARTIE LANGE

The Howard Stern sidekick and bestselling author of “Too Fat to Fish”

Friday night at 7:30. Beacon Theatre, 2124 Broadway at 74th Street

BILL BURR

The “Chappelle’s Show” regular, with guests Paul Virzi and Joe DeRosa

Friday night at 8, Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St.

TRACY MORGAN

The “Third Rock” funnyman is also the author of a hilarious new book, “I Am the New Black”

Friday night at 8, Carnegie Hall 57th Street at Seventh Avenue

MIKE EPPS

The “Def Comedy Jam” alum just hosted the BET Hip-Hop Awards.

Saturday at 8 p.m., Beacon Theatre, 2124 Broadway at 74th Street

PATTON OSWALT

The star of the recent movie “Big Fan” makes his New York Comedy festival debut.

Saturday at 8 p.m., Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St.

ANDY SAMBERG

Expect the “SNL” cast member to bring some friends along for the show.

Sunday at 8 p.m., Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St.

BILL MAHER

The “Real Time” and “Politically Incorrect” host discusses issues of the day.

Sunday at 7 p.m. Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Broadway at 66th Street

ANYONE SEEN MY BROOM?

The Bronx Bomber’s victory ticker-tape parade celebrating their historic 27th World Series win is scheduled to begin on Broadway at Battery Place at 11 a.m. Friday.  Metro-North Railroad has kindly announced that it will be adding trains to accomodate fans heading down to the Yankees ticker-tape parade in lower Manhattan.  NY Waterway is also adding ferries, including the famed Yankee Clipper, to provide Yankees fans with the fastest and easiest way to reach the festivities.

WHERE'S EVERYONE GOING? THEY HAVEN'T PLAYED DREAM WEAVER YET!

The most infamous musical flop in the long and sordid history of Broadway is being revived. Jeffrey Seller and Kevin McCollum, the guys who successfully brought us Rent, Avenue Q and West Side Story, are the producers behind this revival of Stephen King’s novel about a pretty high schooler with a mild case of social anxiety disorder and cool telekinetic powers that help her to act out every high school nerd’s wet dream about prom night. Despite the seasoned producer’s pedigree, one has to question whether they’ve been dipping into the pig’s blood when nobody is looking.

Here’s what a little publication called Time Magazine wrote in 1988, about the first effort to bring this novel to the stage…

Just a few days earlier, Choreographer Debbie Allen had been counseling the young performers of Carrie about how to handle sudden stardom. But as the disheartening word spread backstage, the ensemble members realized that they might have to learn instead to handle sudden unemployment. Last week, less than 72 hours after it opened as the Broadway season’s most opulent American musical, Carrie closed. Stephen King’s 1974 novel about a tormented teenager with psychic powers became a best seller, then a multiple Oscar nominee as a 1976 movie. But onstage it set records of a different sort: losing more than $7 million made it Broadway’s biggest failure ever. Said President Rocco Landesman of Jujamcyn Theaters, which invested $500,000 and provided a house for the show: “This is the biggest flop in the world history of the theater, going all the way back to Aristophanes.”

I don’t know about you, but I read that and cringed. I wonder what Seller and McCollum see that we don’t? Perhaps an intervention is in order by those who love them?

WHERE IS EVERYONE? ON LUNCH BREAK AT THE FOUR SEASONS.

“Carnegie Hall Stagehand Moving Props Makes $530,044″ That’s the surreal and disturbing headline of this Bloomberg News story. Half a million bucks for moving pianos around Carnegie Hall… Does anyone else see that as a sign that the end is near? I wonder what robber baron Andrew Carnegie would have to say about all this? He started out working 12 hour shifts in a cotton mill working at $1.25 per week. Hell, what would Dale Carnegie say?

• Dennis O’Connell, who oversees props at the New York concert hall made $530,044 in salary and benefits during the fiscal year that ended in June 2008.
• The four other members of the full-time stage crew — two carpenters and two electricians — had an average income of $430,543 during the same period, according to Carnegie Hall’s tax return.
• Artistic and Executive Director Clive Gillinson earned $946,581 in salary and benefits.
• Chief Financial Officer Richard Matlaga made $352,139.
• General Manager Anna Weber received $341,542.

I want the stagehand’s union, The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, involved in my next salary negotiation! Remember when they walked off their Broadway jobs and closed 26 shows for three weeks in 2007? These guys don’t screw around and they certainly punk’d Carnagie Hall management, who signed off on the salary negotiations. And guess who comprises the Carnegie Hall board of directors? Drum roll please… Sanford Weill, former chairman of Citigroup, former World Bank president James Wolfensohn and Sallie Krawcheck, President of Bank of America’s wealth-management division. You can’t make this stuff up.

Bloomberg News story about wages at Carnegie Hall

IS ANYONE ELSE FURIOUS??

You don’t have to be an economist to know that people in New York City are struggling. And if you’re anything like me, when you hear about country club memberships, private planes, fat executive bonuses, limousines and corporate boondoggles at companies like AIG, Bank of America, GM, Chrysler, Citigroup, you immediately start fantasizing about finding these guys and stringing them up by their toes in the middle of Grand Central. You then calmly pass out eggs and rotten tomatoes to the ordinary citizens hurrying by, struggling to make ends meet in an economy that’s been devastated by the Peter Principle (from our friends at Wikipedia…The Peter Principle is the principle that “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.” It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. This principle states that “in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties.”) In many cases, these guys gorging on the company “teat” are the same geniuses who drove their companies into the dirt to begin with. My second thought is always, “Is anyone else out there pissed about this crap?” AIG alone has been responsible for eroding the stomach linings of many hard working taxpayers who see what’s going on there as an affront to how a free market economy is supposed to work. You mean, you can screw up and then change the rules? Take for instance their retention program in their Financial Products group. It was a two-year program that began in January 2008, before its government rescue, designed to keep skilled employees from leaving and jeopardizing its derivatives portfolio . You know how many people in this country suffer through shitty jobs working for misguided companies without ever being offered a lump sum payment just so they don’t resign? These knuckleheads claimed they were forced to pay out $165 million in retention bonuses just to keep people from jumping ship (yeah, right!). They then promised to try to recover much of the money when word got out and all hell broke loose, but they’re falling miserably short. My question is: where the hell would these people have gone? Other employers wouldn’t be lining up to hire the geniuses who presided over one of the biggest corporate car wrecks in modern history. And there weren’t any jobs out there anyway! Especially in Financial Services. WTF? The world needs ditch diggers too. Well it looks like Obama’s administration may finally be responding to the public rage over the pay of executives at companies that received billions of dollars in federal bailouts. O has ordered his administration to see to it that the companies that received the most aid slash the compensation to their highest paid executives. I’ll believe it when I see it, but the plan calls for the seven companies that received the most assistance to cut the annual salaries of their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. The executive’s total compensation — including bonuses and retirement contributions — will drop, on average, by about 50 percent.

New York Times article on the Treasury Department announcement…

PLENTY TO DO IN THE BIG APPLE WHEN YOUR A*# IS BROKE.

When I first moved to New York after college, I was given the advice to enjoy my time in New York living paycheck to paycheck. A New Yorker friend from college advised: “It’s a great city to be super rich or dead broke. It’s the middle of the pack that gets screwed in Manhattan.” I eventually found those words to be true. It was the eighties and Charlie Sheen’s words in Oliver Stone’s heavy-handed morality play, Wall Street were dead on. Fifty grand does not get you to first base in the Big Apple.

Although Manhattan is currently one of the most expensive cities on the planet, the good news is that there is a whole plethora of things to do if you’re on a tight budget. In this wonderful video, The New York Times’ Frugal Traveler discovers that New York is really a city of small, manageable neighborhoods, and it’s not expensive if you know where to go. And as we all know, it’s one thing to have a wonderful day because you shelled out the big bucks to do so. But it’s an entirely new sensation when you enjoyed the hell out of yourself and it cost you close to nothing (… you somehow feel like you made money).

The New York Times Video: The Budget Conscious Weekend in New York

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLEASE WELCOME TONIGHT'S DISTINGUISHED SPEAKER, CARROT TOP

You are robbing yourself of one of the quintessential New York experiences if you don’t check out the speaker program at the 92nd Street YMCA. It’s one of the most profound examples of the diversity of life in New York City. There’s something for everyone and the guest lecturers range from Morley Safer to Howie Mandel and Elie Wiesel and the topics run the gamut from “For The Love of Chocolate,” to” Charting Your Hormone Options” to “The Future of Islam.” Talk about a great first date. Or surprise your spouse and don’t tell him/her where you’re going. Image the “brownie points” you’ll accumulate when the cab pulls up to the 92nd Street Y… What a way to spend an evening!

The 92nd Street Y Schedule of speakers