Yankee Photo Day

Before the Yankees embark on their 2010 season in hopes of walking down the Canyon of Heroes again, the Bronx Bombers first line up for photo day. Click above to see the Daily News' photo montage video.

Hey Daddy: Sammy Kaye, 1941

The song "Daddy" was featured in the 1941 B-movie, Two Latins From Manhattan, starring Joan Davis. The hit recording was by Sammy Kaye's group

Hey Daddy

JULIE LONDON: DADDY
Uploaded by mrjyn.
I finally found a contextual excuse for this Bobby Troup song sung by Julie London

Hey, Daddy, I want a diamond ring, bracelets, everything
Daddy, you oughta get the best for me
Hey, Daddy, gee, don't I look swell in sables?
Clothes with Paris labels?
Daddy, you oughta get the best for me
Here's *'n'amazing* revelation
With a bit of stimulation
I'd be a great sensation
I'd be your inspiration
Daddy, I want a brand new car, champagne, caviar
Daddy, you oughta get the best for me

A Possible Way To Acquire Data That Matters

The chancellor will speaking at this conference on the subject of making data that matters. Eva won't be there, but she certainly can attest to the fact the time the chancellor spent on her behalf allowed her to acquire data that mattered.

One Way To Get Special Access

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Could the above have led to the following? Can't be, but anything's possible.
An excerpt from the daily news' best reporter, Juan Gonzalez

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein often lauds a small group of Harlem charter schools founded by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.
But few New Yorkers are aware of the access Moskowitz has to the chancellor or the special support he has bestowed on her program, whose four schools enroll just 1,300 of the city's more than 1 million public school students.
Since Moskowitz launched her first Harlem Success Academy in August 2006, Klein has attended at least 13 events for her schools, including several fund-raisers and private meetings with her, 125 e-mails between them show.
The e-mails, obtained by the Daily News under a Freedom of Information request, provide a glimpse into the close relationship - one that would make most principals green with envy.
They show that in addition to Klein's visits, Moskowitz:
- Secured the chancellor's help last year in landing a $1 million donation from a private Los Angeles foundation.
- Got Klein to intervene on her behalf in clashes she had with his subordinates.
- Boasted to him of organizing parent "armies" to advocate for Mayor Bloomberg's educational policies - and of flooding politicians with thousands of pro-charter school postcards.
The News requested e-mails pertaining to the efforts of Harlem Success to get more space in school buildings. The space issue is contentious in many city neighborhoods, and Moskowitz may be the best-known advocate of more public space for charters.
The e-mails clearly show Moskowitz had Klein's ear on the issue, even complaining to him about his aides.

Just Stand Up

A great song for a graduation

Mary J. Blige Webcast

Love watching how into it those girls in the first row were. Also some of the older folks. I think that's my nephew Jamie at the twenty minute, fifty second mark :)

NYC's Dynamic Duo Skates In Winter Olympics

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With his private, "the hell with going green," jet on hand and with his education czar a redundancy as the system privatizes, Mayor Mike took time to strut his stuff in Vancouver. As it is, it comes easy for Joel to follow directions.

Johnny Damon: It's Cold Outside

University Of Andy: Christmukkah

Welcome Back Javy Vazquez

Welcome back,
Your second half 2004 was your ticket out.
Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about.
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they're turned around.
Who'd have thought they'd lead ya (Who'd have thought they'd lead ya)
Here where we need ya (Here where we need ya)
Yeah we tease him a lot cause he got rocked in the A.L.C.S. loss to Boston, welcome back,
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

Brian Explains It All 3

Will The Real New Yankee Nick Please Stand Up

What Was A-Rod Thinking?

when he gave this up:

Yankee Fans

The news of Kate and A-Rod's break up caused a record 2197 hits over at Knickerbocker Village

RIP Gene Barry

see more about gene at knickerbockervillage

The Hanukkah Homeboy

Happy Hanukkah: Jason Hirsh A Possible 2010 Yankee

from the yankee lohud blog
from wikipedia

The Astros drafted and signed his younger brother Matt (6' 5"; 235 lbs.), another Cal Lutheran right-handed pitcher, in the 30th round in 2005. Matt went 1-2, 5.61, in 2005 at Rookie-level Greeneville. Released by the Astrons on June 12, 2006, Matt signed with the St. Louis Cardinals in September 2006.
Hirsh is Jewish. He didn't find that to be an issue with the 2007 Rockies, even though as The New York Times put it, "Christianity rocks in Colorado's clubhouse." Hirsh said, "There are guys who are religious, sure, but they don’t impress it upon anybody. It’s not like they hung a cross in my locker or anything. They’ve accepted me for who I am, and what I believe in." Hirsh was featured in the 2008 Hank Greenberg 75th Anniversary edition of Jewish Major Leaguers Baseball Cards, licensed by Major League Baseball and published in affiliation with Fleer Trading Cards and the American Jewish Historical Society, commemorating the Jewish Major Leaguers from 1871 through 2008.[47] He joined, among other Jewish major leaguers, Brad Ausmus, Kevin Youkilis, Ian Kinsler, Ryan Braun, Gabe Kapler, Jason Marquis, John Grabow, Craig Breslow, and Scott Schoeneweis.
He married Pamela Clark in 2007, and as a wedding present bought her a new Jeep Grand Cherokee. In July 2009 the couple was expecting their first child.
Hirsh makes his offseason home in Burbank, California.

Happy Holidays From The Five Amigos: Destroyers Of Public Education And Basically FOS

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The Final Call Of The 2009 World Series

Claudette Colvin: The "Real" Rosa Parks 2

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Author Phillip Hoose
On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders.
Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the bus segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South.
Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.

Claudette Colvin: The "Real" Rosa Parks

claudette-colvin
The images above feature Claudette Colvin. The images of her taken on a bus was part of a municipal bus decoration project done in her honor by school children of Portland, Maine.
an excerpt from the nytimes

From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History, By BROOKS BARNES
On that supercharged day in 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., she rode her way into history books, credited with helping to ignite the civil rights movement.
But there was another woman, named Claudette Colvin, who refused to be treated like a substandard citizen on one of those Montgomery buses — and she did it nine months before Mrs. Parks. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his political debut fighting her arrest. Moreover, she was the star witness in the legal case that eventually forced bus desegregation.
Yet instead of being celebrated, Ms. Colvin has lived unheralded in the Bronx for decades, initially cast off by black leaders who feared she was not the right face for their battle, according to a new book that has plucked her from obscurity.
Last week Phillip Hoose won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The honor sent the little-selling title shooting up 500 spots on Amazon.com’s sales list and immediately thrust Ms. Colvin, 70, back into the cultural conversation.
“Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn’t the case at all,” Ms. Colvin said in an animated interview at a diner near her apartment in the Parkchester section of the Bronx. “Maybe by telling my story — something I was afraid to do for a long time — kids will have a better understanding about what the civil rights movement was about.”
Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. Somehow, as Mrs. Parks became one of Time Magazine’s 100 most important people of the 20th century, and streets and schools were named after her, Ms. Colvin managed to let go of any bitterness. After Ms. Colvin was arrested, Mrs. Parks, a seasoned N.A.A.C.P. official, sometimes let her spend the night at her apartment. Ms. Colvin remembers her as a reserved but kindly woman who fixed her snacks of peanut butter on Ritz crackers.
“My mother told me to be quiet about what I did,” Ms. Colvin recalled. “She told me: ‘Let Rosa be the one. White people aren’t going to bother Rosa — her skin is lighter than yours and they like her.’ ”
Ms. Colvin said she came to terms with her “raw feelings” a long time ago. “I know in my heart that she was the right person,” she said of Mrs. Parks.
Unlike Mrs. Parks, whose protest was carefully planned, Ms. Colvin was just a 15-year-old who couldn’t stomach the Jim Crow segregation laws one second longer.
Ms. Colvin was riding the bus home from school when the driver demanded that she give up her seat for a middle-age white woman, even though three other seats in the row were empty, one beside Ms. Colvin and two across the aisle.
“If she sat down in the same row as me, it meant I was as good as her,” Ms. Colvin said.
Two police officers, one of them kicking her, dragged her backward off the bus and handcuffed her, according to the book. On the way to the police station, they took turns trying to guess her bra size.
At the time, the arrest was big news. Black leaders, among them Dr. King, jumped at the opportunity to use her case to fight segregation laws in court. “Negro Girl Found Guilty of Segregation Violation” was the headline in The Alabama Journal. The article said that Ms. Colvin, “a bespectacled, studious looking high school student,” accepted the ruling “with the same cool aloofness she had maintained” during the hearing.
As chronicled by Mr. Hoose, more than 100 letters of support arrived for Ms. Colvin — sent in care of Mrs. Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery branch of the N.A.A.C.P.
But Ms. Colvin was ultimately passed over.
“They worried they couldn’t win with her,” Mr. Hoose said in an interview from his home in Portland, Me. “Words like ‘mouthy,’ ‘emotional’ and ‘feisty’ were used to describe her.”

Isn't it embarrassing the schoolchildren of Portland, Maine honor Bronx native Claudette and nothing has been done in Bloomberg and Klein's Broad Prize Award Winning public school system of New York. Social Studies and history is paid short shrift in the so-called greatest city. It is only done well by inspired and brave leaders and teachers in far few schools that risk side-stepping the all day, every day test prep mantra.
for more on Phil Hoose's award winning book

David By Nellie Mckay

a great new singer who I just heard about. (It takes a while for the generation gap to be bridged)

Look at you you're young
Havin' so much fun
Gonna be a star
Blah blah blah
And click there goes the phone
I don't wanna know
What my
Horoscope's predicting
Just pour me a drink
Cuz I need a kick
I don't wanna think
I just wanna sip
[chorus]
David don't you hear me at all
David won't you give me a call
Waitin' here not makin' a sound
David come around
Mister bushie says
I'm your president
I have lots to say
Hey hey hey
And click goes the remote
There you have my vote
Catchin' the next boat out of here
Just pour me a drink
Cuz I need a lie
I don't wanna think
I just wanna die
[chorus]
David don't you hear me at all
David don't you hear through the wall
Waitin' here not makin' a sound
David come around
[bridge]
Chaos pervades the world outside
Days offer spades of hurled outcries
Gone is the fair and five and dime
But he is there
He's so fine
Listen to her play
Has somethin' to say
Even has a rap
Clap clap clap
But click there goes the lid
Sorry 'bout the fib
I ain't got a grip on nothin'
Just pour me a drink
Right outta the can
I don't wanna think
I just want my man
[chorus]
David don't you hear me at all
David dear I'm just down the hall
Waitin' here not makin' a sound
David come around

World Series Yankee Victory Time Lapse

World Series Time-Lapse by Robert Caplin from Robert Caplin on Vimeo.

That Touch Of Minka 2

Minka is able to work her charm to elicit a rare public laugh out of Derek.

That Touch Of Minka

soon at a theater near you

The Four Amigos: Butchers Of Public Education

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No Mas Presents: Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden

from nomas

Inn celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas and artist James Blagden proudly present the animated tale of Dock Ellis' legendary LSD no-hitter. In the past few years weve heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. If our evaluation of the records of athletes like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds needs to be revised downwards with an asterisk, we submit that that Dock Ellis record deserves a giant exclamation point. Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.
Sadly, the great Dock Ellis died last December at 63. A year before, radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, had recorded an interview with Ellis in which the former Pirate right hander gave a moment by moment account of June 12, 1970, the day he no-hit the San Diego Padres. Alexander and Ilels original four minute piece appeared March 29, 2008 on NPRs Weekend America. When we stumbled across that piece this past June, Blagden and Isenberg were inspired to create a short animated film around the original audio.

Catching A Few Zzzz's At The World Series

Joe Girardi: He's A Champ, Not A Chump