I'm back, again.

Jesus, do I still have the right to call this a blog? Sorry to my regular readers (hi Mom, Heather, Beth, Alexia) for not posting for so long. I went to London for work for a few days, and then still didn’t have time to get a cable box for days after. I finally got a brand spanking new one, though. After the requisite trip to the Time Warner DMV (which was as much a pain in the ass as I’d expected – some woman was screaming at a poor customer service guy and had to be calmed down by security), I walked out with a shiny new box, several channels I didn’t have before and a $25 a month break on my bill, thanks to the nice lady at the DMV –er, TWC customer service window. Yay!

Anyway, I’m obviously behind, and a LOT has happened in my absence, so I’m going to do this in bullet form. And it’s still going to be overly long.

So let’s get to it:

• The mess in Albany finally got cleaned up! It’s about time, clownz. So apparently Espada has decided to be a Democrat again, and has been rewarded for his assy behavior with a promotion (taking over the Senate leadership position from Malcolm Smith.) What? Whatever. An edition of “In The Papers” noted the New York Post’s “Sleazy Does It” headline, which pretty much sums up the whole affair.

• We have a winner of the NY One music video star contest! It turned out to be the KO Chicks after all. Check out their awesomely low budget video (and irritatingly catchy tune) here:

• I know this is more than a week old by now, but if you haven’t seen it, you must check out the In the Papers from Friday, July 3, in which Pat gets a little risqué! Pat read a newspaper item about that poor teenage girl who heard her mother’s cries from her bedroom and then burst in to “help” her, only to find that the cries were actually sounds of a more, uh, amorous nature (the mom was hanging out with her boyfriend). Pat read from the story, in which the teenage girl claimed she thought her mom was being harmed by a “bad guy”, and then wryly noted,
“But he wasn’t a bad guy – it sounds like he was actually pretty good!”

• This is a true story: Weekend before last, my boyfriend and I decided to take a walk over the Brooklyn bridge back into Manhattan, since it was such a warm and beautiful night. But we decided to make a pit stop before setting out. We happened upon a Marriott Hotel in Downtown Brooklyn and decided to do it there. And that’s when we stumbled into some parallel Alice in Wonderland universe. First, there were the little people. Hundreds of them. Dwarves/little folks in the lobby. At the bar. Hanging around outside. EVERYWHERE. It was clear this was some kind of convention.

But that’s not all. There was also some low-rent beauty pageant going on, so there were also tons of tall, extremely thin women in extremely spangly evening gowns. Everywhere you looked, you either saw a very tall pageant contestant in full regalia or a dwarf/little person. Anyway, I’d have known about this convention if I’d watched “In the Papers,” in which Pat read from a New York Daily news story about how the Little People of America had decided to have their annual convention in New York City.

But in his report, Pat made the mistake of referring to the convention attendees as “midgets.” Obviously he did not watch Tara Lynn Wagner’s report about how one of the convention’s agenda items was a campaign to get the FCC to ban that word. Oops!

• And finally, Friday’s morning edition featured Roger Clark on a skateboard. Just when you think they can’t find new ways to humiliate him, they manage to find some new, ever more embarrassing thing for him to do.

This week is bound to be more tame – Annika Pergament in the anchor’s chair this morning, which means Pat’s on vacation. Boo!