CONCERTS

"The live show is the new album cover," says David Tobias, singer/guitarist for Brooklyn's electro-funksters Apes & Androids. In a piece in July's Spin on the new vogue for psychadelic stage-shows, we learn that the Androids hand out kazoos to their audience so they can play along to Gary Glitter's "Rock & Roll Part 2," and that the band's friends are known to dress up like zombies on-stage and perform a dead-on impression of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Sounds like a good time. Even better when you consider who the boys are playing with—the borough's most accomplished sonic terrorists, A Place To Bury Strangers.  read more »

Bob Torricelli, the former senator from New Jersey who didn't seek re-election after his first term because, well, we know why!, has an interesting view of the reason The Record of Bergen County is having trouble, and it's not, he thinks, the troubled newspaper industry in general. News that the newspaper recently had to close its Hackensack office seemed to delight him because, as he wrote in his column on PolitickerNJ, "somewhere the Record stopped becoming a mirror of the happy suburban life and it became mean."

He's no media expert--although he may be an expert on the Record after all the ink the newspaper gave him back in 2002--but he gives the newspaper 10 years to live.  read more »

On Tuesday, The New York Press ran a short item on its web site reporting that had a strike involving Village Voice staffers had been averted. It was a small story, but the Press owned it from start to finish. Today, The New York Times ran a brief in its Arts section.

Here's a quote from Voice-legend Tom Robbins in the brief:

“We got a deal 3 o’clock this morning,” said Tom Robbins, a Voice columnist and shop steward for the United Auto Workers Local 2110. “We won a good victory for unions... We had a celebratory drink of a little Scotch and then went home.  read more »

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The writing has been all the wall for weeks and now the carnage has been unleashed: the L.A. Times is cutting loose 150 newsroom positions, and 250 overall. Pink slips come by Labor Day. This news comes only a few months after the paper let go 36 newsroom jobs through buyouts, and puts the total newsroom number at about 700, down from the 1,200 it had just seven years ago. 

Russ Stanton's sobering memo is here.  

Oliver Perez is an enigma.

While many pitchers have displayed inconsistency, Perez’s highs and lows are remarkable, not just from game to game, but season to season.

There are endless theories for Perez’s problems, ranging from the mechanical to the psychological, and many prescriptions to solve them.

He showed encouraging signs Sunday against the Yankees, striking out eight and walking none over seven innings, but he’s been so inconsistent that it’s hard to know if it was meaningful progress or just another blip. The one thread running through Perez’s numbers appears to be a simple one—if he throws even a decent amount of strikes, he will be successful.  read more »

Some of the most significant collateral damage from Eliot Spitzer's implosion involves the reputations of two of his one-time allies: former communications director Darren Dopp (the original scapegoat for Troopergate) and David Soares, the Albany County District Attorney (who is the current scapegoat).

Dopp has been on the offensive trying to clear his name, speaking at length with the New York Times, and -- just this this morning -- providing the New York Post with his version of the testimony he gave to the state’s Public Integrity Commission.

The transcript Dopp provided undermines Soares’ initial report into the Troopergate incident, which alleged Dopp acted as a rogue agent and inappropriately ordered the state police to re-create travel records for state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, who received protection from the police (as is customary for legislative leaders).  read more »

Somebody please join the Facebook group "Friends of Adolfo Carrion" -- because right now the Bronx Borough President and comptroller candidate is the only member of his group.

Now, I'm sure there will be plenty of people 'friending' Adolfo soon enough, but his lonely-seeming profile -- he's been his own best friend for more than a week now -- does provide a valuable lesson in Campaigning 101: If you're going to launch a social networking page for your favorite candidate, make sure you find him some friends right away. Otherwise, he might look kind of sad.

Are there any other pages like this out there?

Rep. Nydia Velazquez was hardly the only Hillary Clinton supporter to do something like this, but she was certainly the most vocal among New York’s congressional delegation: As the primary season was winding down, Velazquez – in an effort to prop up Clinton’s vice-presidential prospects – went before the press and declared that Barack Obama and his campaign had "a problem of connecting with Latino voters."

Clinton would solve this problem for Obama, Velazquez said, because “the Latino community sees her as a Hispanic leader.  read more »

Here’s the pitch Barack Obama’s campaign made to a bunch of New York donors recently, which basically says he’s leading John Mccain among younger, female and Hispanic voters.

That last one is interesting since. as some Hillary Clinton supporters reminded me, he hadn't done that well with Hispanic voters.

The decision of Congressional Quarterly, one of several insider publications that tracks the competitiveness of House and Senate races, to change its designation of the contest for Vito Fossella’s 13th District seat from toss-up to "Democrat favored" is causing some discussion today.

The move is understandable given the awful predicament in which the district’s Republicans find themselves. But it’s a potentially significant milestone in light of the district’s long loyalty to the G.O.P. and its status as the last New York City-based district in which Republicans can even compete at the congressional level.

It raises the question: What other districts in this area might change partisan hands this fall?

CQ lists nine other House races in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut as either toss-ups or leaning toward one party or the other.  read more »