Our miserable little ice chip of a mayor: "the department of buildings didn't crash, the crane crashed."

He started out his press conference defending the construction company, saying that construction fatalities happened all over the world---he came thisclose to saying construction fatalities are just the cost of doing business, and was clearly annoyed at being challenged about how many we have had.

The New York we know, aside from the big tourist attractions, is disappearing--all the nicer old buildings are being torn down for the crime of being too short, so blue glass condos, like the "Azure", the building with the crane, can be built--each one with a red plastic bank branch on the ground floor. All at breakneck speed. I can see three such cranes from my window.

Wonderful Town is dying, to be replaced by dangerous but dull CondoMallopolis. And our flinty little billionaire mayor is at the helm.

EXCELLENT JOB, BLOOMIE!

GRAND ALLUSIONS Now come on, we all know Hillary's been waiting for SOMETHING to dislodge that upstart Obama. Not the A-word, as far as we know, but SOMETHING. Rev. Wright Redux, another BitterGate, anything, and when Obama tripped up, Hillary would be "positioned" to slide right in.

Even mentioning Kennedy assassinations, this week of tragic weeks, is insensitive. And she knows these people. But it isn't the first time she's brought up the RFK tragedy in context with staying in the race. She's gotten used to flinging historical references to great movements, epochs, and watersheds in combination with her name and ambitions: her campaign and the Suffragettes. Her campaign and Abolition. Her campaign and Zimbabwe. Her familiar usage of these great events as if they were furnishings in her own state house shows her outsized ego. Yes, the first woman to get this far as a presidential candidate is historic. But history isn't hers to play with.

CURSE YOU, DARKNESS!

After the board election (and why should you the reader be even faintly interested in the nasty internal politics of somebody else's apartment complex? Because the complex is subsidized by your money, you, the taxpayer, you. YOUR MONEY!!!!, and is trying to cash in, without giving you any of YOUR MONEY back, employing tactics that would do a Rove or a Corleone proud, most instructive to students of Machiavelli and anyone else requiring proofs of the duality of human nature. That's why),

We thought a relative peace would reign. No more fliers slipped under our doors with headlines like:
Well, we haven't had more of those, but we've had something better: a newsletter from our state senator, declaring his devotion to us. Very exciting! He's never felt the need to communicate with *Muttonchop City residents by you-the-taxpayer-funded newsletter before. But here he is, with the *Muttonchop City Report, a First Edition:

It's a little hard to read, I apologise, and also for the obsessive/compulsive nature of the little bits of paper taped all over it. This is the last item in the newsletter, which spends two thirds of itself advertising the funds Senator *Neville (I thought I'd give him a name that's in the air recently) has obtained for our fair complex. The first line is: "Acting in response to an alert given him by Muttonchop residents.....

The "alert" would be a letter-writing and calling campaign by *Muttonchop Rights, Incorporated, Copyright, the pro-priva----well, it's a dirty word, I can't say it, but it ends in "--atization" group. That's the group started by personal injury lawyer, too-rich-to-live-at-Muttonchop-City, has-a-second-home-in-the-Hamptons, *Toby Mugg:and the other lawyers, real-estate agents and brokers who make up the core of *Muttonchop Rights.

Senator Neville knows how to count votes. That's what made it worth his while to risk playing quite the fool:

So Senator Neville co-sponsored the bill because he was "led to believe" it was a 7.5% flip tax, NOT a 75% flip tax! MmmmHmmm. His name was placed on the bill by evil gremlins. But NOW he knows better.

So you the taxpayer get to pay for Senator Neville's apologia for signing on to a bill that would return some of your tax money to you--the taxpayer.

*all names, appearances and search terms changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.

MUTTONCHOP CITY ELECTION RESULTS!

So how did the good guys do?

Oh, why even ask.

Here are our two candidates, *Vincent Piano, co-founder of our little anti-priv***z**** (ends in "atization")group, Muttonchop Ethical Housing, and *Nora Kerrigan, steadfast and even pugnacious ex-nun, drowning their sorrows at *the Eire Inn, the Muttonchop City pub.

Vincent is ordering his usual: apple pie with chocolate ice cream. He's also partial to Dewar's. Nora likes a good spicy Bloody Mary but I have unaccountably given her a martini.

The third person is Hannah Goldman, our main writer and incendiary device thrower. She could be drinking the martini; I left some ambiguity between drinks and hands. In fact, she likes her bloody Mary spicy but more important, large.

Hannah and Vincent initially loathed each other; she is a feminist, atheist, activist, red-diaper anthropologist, and he is a nineteenth century, courtly, Roman Catholic . He is Cyrano without the nose.

Now they are closeasthis. They collaborate: Vincent writes elaborate, impenetrable disquisitions; Hannah brutally edits them into Hannah-style bulleted lists, with footnotes, and always the admonition:

"MUTTONCHOP RIGHTS IS TRYING TO (FILL IN THE BLANK)--DON'T LET THEM!

*all names, appearances and search terms changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.

One Lump Or Two?

Happy Mother's Day, Snarkomom!

There is no tasteful way to render a jar of testicles. So I just forged ahead. Bill's are in there somewhere, along with Charlie Schumer's and the entire New York delegation. Because would you want to face the disappointed Senator after voting against her? Didn't think so.

I can't tell you how weird it is to be drawing cartoons about Hillary that a year ago would only have appeared on right wing end-time sites:

I still want to be a Hillary's Hellcat!

MUTTONCHOP CITY SUNDAY UNFUNNY

Nuclear Hillary

It's a good look for her. She is become destruction.