"It still puzzles me how a city with as many topless clubs as Houston could fail to appeal to a bunch of sportswriters travelling on expense accounts, but there you go. Who knew they were all such aesthetes?"

---------------------------------------------------

Internet Bad Joke Warning

The next joke you are about to hear is really bad. It is so bad, that this warning is required before it is presented so that those of you who are used to a higher standard of comedy can ignore it. Please do not blame the management for the quality of this joke.

---------------------------------------------------

The sportswriters' expense accounts were probably not topless. :-)

The article's author also includes the following assertion:

"I am from Staten Island, and I have lived in New Jersey," Reali explained. "I know bad smells. This was right below Secaucus."

Not as bad as Staten Island?

"Nothing approaches Staten Island," Reali said with conviction.

Any comments? Righteous indignation?

Well, I lived in the part of Staten Island that was (thankfully) not downwind from the Fresh Kills landfill. If you were downwind from it - and much of New Jersey was - then yeah, it was pretty damn awful.

For the benefit of you former Staten Islanders out there, the current plan is to turn Fresh Kills into the largest park in New York City by covering over the landfill (check the SI Advance web site). (For those of you out there unfamiliar with Dutch, "Kill" means creek.)

On a second note, the first new Staten Island Ferry boat debuted yesterday, the Guy Molinari. I had the pleasure of riding it on the way home, and it isn't bad, but it lacks the character of the older boats (American Legion, Herbert Lehman and John F Kennedy).

Of course, the foulest thing to arrive on Staten Island was the arrival of a village idiot in Tottenville about three years ago. :-)