Respect Authority

Some mornings the papers are so rife with bizarre news tidbits that I’m forced to question whether the world really is going to shit. If this is indeed the case, at least we’ll go down with some humor:

THE NYPD ISSUED a report Wednesday charging managers and developers of high-profile skyscrapers, and other city buildings, with taking additional steps to guard against terrorist attacks. Because we all know construction firms are offering that new “anti-airplane” protection these days.

SPEAKING OF AIRPLANES—and in this week’s “miraculous ending to otherwise awful airplane-related tragedy”—a Yemenia Airways jetliner flying from Yemen to Comoros Islands with 153 people on board crashed yesterday after hitting bad weather. Rescue teams retrieved several bodies from the Indian Ocean, including one survivor, a 14-year-old girl, who clung to wreckage from the plane for 13 hours! Details have since emerged that the airline has been cited multiple times for safety violations, which (seriously… Yemenia Airways?!) should come as no surprise.

JUST WHEN I thought I was downright cool for having lived on Malcolm X Boulevard (well, cool meets “new way in which to make my mother apprehensive about me living in New York”), Queens is renaming the corner of 205th Street and Hollis Avenue “Run-DMC JMJ Way,” after the eponymous rap group’s DJ Jason Mizell (aka Jam Master Jay), who was shot in a recording studio in Queens seven years ago. Ironically, considering the lyrical motive, the new name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

ABOUT FIVE YEARS too late, a federal advisory panel voted Tuesday to recommend a ban on Percocet and Vicodin, two of the most popular prescription painkillers. The panel also voted in favor of the FDA reducing the highest allowed dose of acetaminophen in over-the-counter pills like Tylenol, but against reducing the number of pills in a bottle. ..So this is like when they “solved” the Nyquil problem by putting bigger bottles behind the counter, which certainly didn’t keep me from waking up in Vegas last weekend with a bucket of quarters and a massive headache.

THE SOUTH WILL indeed rise again, but only in the sense that grow and rise are synonyms. According to a new report from Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Mississippi is still the fattest state in the nation, but Alabama is totes catching up. Nonetheless, at an obesity rate of 32.5%, Ole’ Miss is a five-time champion. Personally, I think it has something to do with Sonic.