Shocker: Angelina's mall fight was PR stunt

If you're not keeping up with your 'Jersey Shore'-related news, Staten Island's favorite serial-quitter of reality shows got into a tussle in the Hot Topic of the Staten Island Mall this week.

The biggest shock about this incident - besides the fact that Angelina shops at Hot Topic - was that the whole thing was a PR stunt (according to the Staten Island's intrepid mall cops).

Wow, didn't see that coming.

Radar Online got all the juicy quotes from Angelina's mom:  

"Angelina and her girlfriend got jumped at the mall by two teenage girls," said momma Trashbags. "The security guards did nothing to help them and told her, 'This is a publicity stunt, we have no time for this."  

McMahon's karate stunt: neat trick or low blow?

The McMahon campaign has taken of the gloves, and kicked Mike Grimm right in the nut sack.

The Advance did some deep investigative work to find out that Mike Grimm's ex-wife was given a preferential front row seat in Tuesday night's Battle Royale debate between Grimm and Mike McMahon.

"Observers saw four Team McMahon placeholders, who had arrived early to stake out front-row seats, give them up just before the debate began to Grimm's ex-wife, Susan Kim, her father and two brothers. The four took seats directly in front of the podium at which Grimm would stand."

Add to the mix that the Kim family are taekwondo experts who own a chain of karate schools.

The apparent goal: to make Mike Grimm shit himself in fear.

The official Hipster Survey

Some people said that the hipster died with the '00 decade. And we said, 'Oh yeah? Prove it!'

Well thanks to the City University of New York now we can.

The departments of sociology and anthropology have combined in this painstaking effort to create a demographic profile detailing where, when, and if the hipster actually exists. It's all compiled in this neat little survey.

You see, unfortunately the U.S. Census does not have a category for 'hipster' under ethnicity so that whole ten-year data collection is basically useless.

This is the only way we can honestly quantify hipsters.

Here's the plan: gather enough data of Staten Islanders, compile it, hire a statistician, average it up, and presto. We have a hipster index for Staten Island.

We can then compare our hipster index with other neighborhoods in New York City by using the internets to survey those areas.

OK Greenpoint, let's see what you got? If everyone cooperates we'll email other blogs and get them to pony up.

Survey is below:

From Tottenville to Taliban

There's a Jihad on the South Shore.

A former Tottenville High School student was arrested in Hawaii on Friday on charges that he repeatedly tried to fly into Pakistan and join the Taliban.

Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, a 21-year-old guy from Prince's Bay, is being transferred to Brooklyn where he will face further proceedings.

According to the New York Times the case is "based on numerous statements Mr. Shehadeh made to F.B.I." concerning his intended travels to the Afghan region.

The feds implicated Shehadeh and "several other individuals in connection with a plot to travel overseas and wage violent jihad against the United States and coalition military forces."

He even tried to enlist in the Army at the Times Square recruiting station.

What has Mike Grimm done for Staten Island?

The midterm Congressional election on Staten Island is a competition between a politician who has served the borough for the past decade and a mystery man who recites Sarah Palin talking points.

Last night on NY1, Mike Grimm and Mike McMahon slowly devoured each other in a preview of Tuesday night's discussion at Wagner College.

Both candidates landed a few jabs, there was only a modicum of policy discussion, and the event set a precedent for the closing weeks of what is purportedly a battle for the future of Staten Island's soul.

But it's not. It doesn't matter. Tuesday's debate will likely revolve around the same nonsense that we were subject to in the NY1 preview: all spit and no substance.

Mike Grimm overreacts to NPR debacle

This one comes thanks to the people at Rap Scholar.

Juan Williams, the always reliable Alan Colmes-ish liberal foil on Fox News, was fired from his NPR gig after saying some pretty ignorant and flat-out dumb stuff about Muslims, or Mooslims as they're called on Staten Island.

"When I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Replace "Muslims" with "black people" and "plane" with "dark alley" and you'll see how far we've come with race relations in this country.

Anyway, NPR may have over reacted in firing Williams, but not as much as Mike Grimm, Staten Island's next Congressional representative (according to all the mail we're getting).

Grimm wants NPR de-funded by the government, so they can solicit ads from Goldline or something.

CMJ: Punk's not dead, it's old and pathetic

It smells down here. I'm at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, downstairs at the bar - and it stinks.

It happens to be the venue where washed-up punks come to watch their favorite retro acts during the CMJ Music Marathon. It's between sets and their body odor is awful. I should get out of here.

Once an opportunity for college-aged independent rock bands, CMJ was the place they went to showcase their stuff for the industry folk, with the hopes of scoring a record deal. But that's not gonna happen.

Today everything is niche-ified. For the blog crowd. Wanna hear a one-man electronic act that sounds like four records played in reverse on an incessant loop while random projections run on a movie screen in the background? That's next door. But for now, we're at the '90s punk show.

Geeking out to 'The Social Network'

'The Social Network' - a Page 6 version of Mark Zuckerberg's rise from dorm room geek to billionaire baller – is a compelling, though highly clichéd, picture of Silicon Valley via 'Girls Gone Wild.'

The film chronicles the meteoric rise of the now-ubiquitous social networking site Facebook. Through its evolution, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (West Wing), along with director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac), have brought us a hackneyed morality tale - one in which the losers inevitably win, but at a cost that renders them impotent and alone.

Before they even role the opening credits, a smug and condescending Zuckerberg (a curly-haired Jesse Eisenberg) chides his girlfriend in a Cambridge pub until she finally relents to his overbearing verbal assault.

Girls won’t like him, she says, but not because he’s a geek. It’s because he’s an asshole.

Wu Tang Clan covered across the Pond

Thanks to the good people at ACanofSoup for sending us this.

Below is a stellar performance of Wu Tang's "Protect Ya Neck" by a London street busker and one-man-band, Lewis Floyd Henry.

The Soup (a good read on any day) supplied a great critique of NYC busker culture:

"When I see La Suena del Inka on the L platform, rocking pan flutes and a baritone 12-string uke (!), something larger stirs in me. There’s a multiculturalism there that the dum-dums of the rat race aren’t likely to expose themselves to, even with the aid of the Internet – there’s a spirit, something beyond the tunes."  

Wu Tang put us on the map in the early '90s. Their brand of spitfire verses, and cryptic soul samples signified a culture of its own - specifically underground hip-hop in the boroughs including Brooklyn, Bronx and Staten. It was an untapped market of creative genius. And it's nice to think of an SI export as multicultural on a London street corner.

The 'culture' attributed to our borough in the past few years has been decisively exploitative and of the outer-boro whitebread (or tanned) variety. But this is a passing fad. The authentic will always outlast the artificial. They will know us for something other than our vapid guido aesthetic.

Video:

Reporter mistaken for psycho killer on Facebook

Oh, the internets.

This episode of epic fail is brought to us by a local "link farm" outlet, the Facebook page of Staten Island, New York.

The page, which is "not associated with, sponsored or authorized by, any County Government," has more than 11,000 likes and regularly posts random links about local news.

They are also heavily skewed to the right, sharing 'news' about: Sarah Palin, 'Obamacare,' and insightful nuggets about November's local Congressional race, like this one:

Election 2010: "Last week, the campaign for one-term incumbent Rep. Michael McMahon crossed that line from rough-and-tumble campaign tactics to bald-faced deceit."

Way to be non-partisan.

But the site really fucked up on Sunday, when the anonymous farm put up this story about Eric Belluci, the guy who (allegedly) killed his family and fled to Israel.