Good Thursday morning. One more day until Friday. Almost there. When do summer Fridays start, anyway? After Memorial Day, I guess – unofficial summer kickoff and all.
While summer brings a welcome change of pace (and by that I mean somewhat slower), I don’t look forward to it with the same excitement and anticipation that it used to when I was young.
Summer vacation then meant a welcome break from school, long days at the public pool, hanging out with friends, and spending time with my grandparents in Brooklyn (mom’s parents) and Rockaway (dad’s family).
I was unabashedly spoiled by both sets of grandparents, with whom I established a variety of highly specific rituals.
My father’s father, for example, (the former NYPD officer and onetime pre-NBA competitive basketball player), took me to the beach and for long walks on the boardwalk, during which he bought me treats – most memorably a very sticky marshmallow-caramel concoction that came wrapped in wax paper. I have never been able to either replicate it or locate it for sale anywhere.
Maybe I dreamed it?
My mother’s mother, who owned and ran a dry cleaning and tailor shop with my grandfather, also rarely passed up an opportunity to purchase something for me. Their brick home on a dead-end street not far from Avenue J was a short walk to the shop, and that took us past a corner store that sold all manner of enticing items – including, displayed just inside the door – comic books.
As a kid, I was a big fan of Archie comics. But, as a voracious reader, I didn’t really discriminate. I would read anything – X-Men, Spider-Man, Superman, the back of a cereal box. And as a voracious reader, comic books didn’t hold me for long.
I would read them, re-read them, and then re-read them again. And then I would pore over every inch of print – including the advertisements at the back for baffling things (to me at the time, anyway) like X-ray glasses and sea monkeys.
Ah, sea monkeys. I yearned to send away from them. They looked so friendly in their cartoon depictions – sort of like a cross between a mermaid and an elf? There was a mom sea monkey with blonde hair, a cheery dad sea monkey, a brother and a baby. All relaxing in front of their underwater castle.
No matter how much I begged my mom to be allowed to raise sea monkeys – the ad says they’re so easy to take care for that even a six-year-old can do it! – she said no. She must have known the sort of disappointment I would have been in for, because, as I am well aware now, and no doubt scores of false advertising victims are as well, sea monkeys are nothing more than….brine shrimp.
To be clear, brine shrimp get a bad rap. It’s not their fault that they were the focus of a highly successful viral marketing campaign. Though they don’t look like humanoid mermaids, they can be highly entertaining pets (assuming you can see them). They are vigorous swimmers and they don’t eat all that much. Nor do they need to be walked or picked up after.
Apparently, you can still procure sea monkeys to this day. Their eggs and free-dried and packaged up and shipped around the world. Just add water, and poof! Instant pets. Happy National Sea Monkey Day, everyone!
It will be cloudy (again) with a slight chance of showers (again), and temperatures will top out in the low 70s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump tentatively agreed to face off in two summer debates months before the Nov. 5 election, upending the traditional campaign calendar.
CNN announced that the rivals will meet at 9 p.m. ET Thursday, June 27, at its Atlanta headquarters for a debate moderated by “State of the Union” co-hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.
“President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms,” Biden Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said.
Biden, trailing in polls, is hoping to shake up the race and mitigate political risk. Trump, already lowering expectations for his rival, is eager for onstage clashes.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she “would never recommend” Biden share the debate stage with Trump, shortly after the two agreed to two debates before November’s election.
Biden mourned fallen police officers at a memorial service yesterday, praising the efforts of law enforcement officials and saying that his administration’s efforts had helped lower crime rates in communities across the United States.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, the Silicon Valley investor Nicole Shanahan, said she had given another $8 million to their campaign as it carries out the expensive endeavor of gaining ballot access nationwide and tries to get Kennedy onto debate stages.
A gunman shot Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, who is known for defying his fellow leaders in the European Union, multiple times at close range yesterday, in the most serious attack on a European leader in decades.
Slovakian Deputy Prime Minister Tomáš Taraba said he believes Fico will survive the assassination attempt and is “not in a life-threatening situation at this moment,” though he underwent several hours of surgery.
Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok told reporters that the gunman shot Fico five times. A suspect was arrested, officials said; a motive was not immediately clear.
Fico, 59, has played a pivotal role in Slovakian politics in the years since it gained independence in 1993 and has served as prime minister longer than any other leader.
The House Oversight Committee shuffled its schedule, bumping a hearing to hold Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress so some of its members could instead attend former President Trump’s hush money trial.
The House approved a trio of bills aimed at supporting law enforcement during National Police Week — legislation largely opposed by Democrats, as leaders on the left decried GOP attempts to downplay the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Congress gave final approval to a $105 billion bill designed to increase air traffic controllers, add more safety inspectors at aircraft factories, and require airlines to automatically pay refunds to travelers whose flights are canceled or significantly delayed.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman lashed out against a pro-Israel political action committee that has launched a $1.8 million ad campaign against him in his contentious Democratic congressional primary.
When he gives the commencement address at Morehouse College, Biden will have his most direct engagement with college students since the start of the Israel-Hamas war at a center of Black politics and culture.
A union representing about 48,000 academic workers in the University of California system said that campus leaders mishandled pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and voted to give the union’s executive board the ability to call a strike at any time.
After hundreds of anti-Israel protesters swarmed campus buildings and set up barricades at the University of California, Irvine, local law enforcement agencies responded and students were ordered to “leave” the “area” immediately.
A group of New York University student protesters walked out of their commencement yesterday and demanded that university leaders divest from Israel.
As school President Linda Mills gave her speech, a few dozen pro-Palestinian supporters, some with their hands painted red, walked out. The group continued to stand outside Yankee Stadium and chant as people filed out of the ceremony.
NYU is requiring students it says violated policy during recent protests over the war in Gaza to complete written assignments on character, morality and ethics.
Westchester County prosecutors are giving anti-Israel protesters who were busted during a campus demonstration at SUNY Purchase a choice: Enroll in a crime prevention course or face jail time.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has named Jerrel Harvey, a former New Jersey political operative and staffer who ran the communications shop for Gov. Phil Murphy’s 2021 re-election campaign, as her new strategic communications advisor.
Hochul announced that starting next year, all employees in the state will get 20 hours of paid “prenatal personal leave” during any 52-week calendar.
Hochul’s office this week announced that police departments and sheriffs’ offices outside New York City will receive $127 million for crime prevention tools and other new technology.
Nearly four years after the last hearing of the state Assembly’s Standing Committee on Oversight, Analysis and Investigation, Republicans want new sessions to examine how New York City is spending $4.3 billion in funding to address the migrant crisis.
State Sen. Kevin Parker had to be restrained by onlookers after he aggressively shoved Albany lobbyist Michael Carey. A spokesperson for the New York State Police said it’s investigating the altercation.
Orange and Rockland county residents can ride ferries and buses to Metro-North train stations at discounted rates under a Metropolitan Transportation Authority pilot program that begins May 25 and runs until Nov. 11.
New York State is preparing to spend an estimated $3.7 million to demolish a state-owned building on in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, a decade after a local Assembly member stepped in to stop the sale of the derelict property.
A $105 billion omnibus bill that would set new air travel standards and funding for the Federal Aviation Administration would include $350 million for a novel grant program to ban the toxic foam that’s often deployed in airports, including those in New York.
OCM has approved a chemical for cannabis extraction without notifying the processor whose facility has been shut since March for using the solvent, and who alleged OCM retaliated against her company for leaking her conversation with a top agency official.
Amid a standoff with the state over whether Beth Israel Hospital will close, severely ill patients keep arriving to a hospital that cannot always care for them.
After coming under fire for calling migrants “excellent swimmers,” Mayor Adams sought to clarify the comment, saying it was based on in-person conversations he has had with newly arrived asylum seekers living in city shelters.
Adams said he visited migrant shelters in the city and asked people if they knew how to swim. He said he was “blown away” by the number of people who said yes.
“We have these capable people who know how to swim — from West Africa, from Ecuador, from South and Central America, from Mexico — and we have a shortage of lifeguards,” Adams said. “If we start planning out now, we could be prepared next year.”
Adams is summoning some of the nation’s leading experts and researchers together for a multiday event centered around a problem that has kept him awake at night since the day he took office: Rats.
City Council members are being forced to strip their desks of political signs — including Israeli hostage posters and flyers calling for a cease-fire in the Middle East — in a move by Speaker Adrienne Adams that is already drawing outrage.
A group of City Council members has joined with community groups to protest the sudden firing in April of Hassan Naveed, who was executive director of the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes.
Seventeen Council members and 14 mostly Muslim community groups signed a letter to Adams that took issue with claims from the mayor and his press office that Naveed was axed last month because he didn’t put “bringing hate crimes down first.”
Big Apple lawmakers are being forced to strip their desks clean of any political signs — including pro-Israel posters and flyers — in a controversial move by City Council speaker Adrienne Adams that has sparked outrage.
New York City’s public school system has received billions of dollars in additional funding since 2020 — despite enrollment cratering by nearly 100,000 students during that time, an analysis released yesterday reveals.
More than two dozen current New York City Housing Authority employees have pleaded guilty to a variety of bribery charges as part of a long-standing scheme related to so-called micro-purchase contracts, say federal prosecutors.
The New York City Fire Museum in Manhattan is closed indefinitely after an emergency evacuation Saturday due to concerns about its structural safety, according to its website.
A housing fight is brewing in the eastern Bronx as city officials move forward with an ambitious rezoning plan to allow 7,500 new homes to be built near a set of Metro-North stations that are currently under construction.
A window of an Upper East Side kosher restaurant was smashed in the early hours yesterday, an act of vandalism the owner believes to be antisemitic.
The live video feed linking New York City and Dublin has been temporarily shut down due to “inappropriate behavior” on both sides of the Atlantic.
Cops have identified the man who randomly punched actor Steve Buscemi last week in Midtown Manhattan.
Young men are being tricked into sending naked pictures to scammers pretending to be women — who then demand money. The consequences can be devastating.
Nassau Community College’s teachers union slapped the school with an ethics complaint for dishing out $120,000 to a lobbying firm backing a controversial casino project.
The family that has owned the Daily Gazette for more than a century has agreed to a preliminary deal to sell the newspaper to its publisher.
The Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation announced it has completed the rehabilitation of 65 Phila St., a once-derelict home the nonprofit saved in 2021. The 1851 Alexander A. Patterson House is ready for new owners and listed for sale at $629,000.
The former National Lead Industries site on the border of Colonie and Albany may become a 40,000-square-foot Asian supermarket and commercial hub.
The FBI’s top agent in the Capital Region identified predators targeting the elderly and an elevated level of organized crime activity as problems in his new role.
Saugerties businessman Joseph Karolys and his wife, Rachel, have been ordered to pay the state $8 million to clean up three Ulster County dump sites where they illegally accepted and disposed of contaminated solid waste.
The new official portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo, the first since the king’s coronation, has created a controversy.
The portrait has prompted both admiration and bemusement, but it’s far from the first royal portrait to divide opinion.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
