“When he was a top federal prosecutor, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey routinely billed taxpayers for hotel stays whose cost exceeded government guidelines, according to a report the Justice Department released on Monday…. As governor, Mr. Christie, who was the United States attorney for New Jersey from 2002 to 2008, has pushed to cut government spending and waste, making him a rising star in the Republican Party.” Well, you know, maybe he didn’t realize it was wrong back then. Now he knows better!

Good morning. An investigation of 18,000 British asses has revealed some shocking new details that are absolutely rocking the field of Female Ass Studies: Evolution has resulted in a “plumper, rounder and [more] squishy to the touch” ass in almost half of the asses surveyed. These enhanced asses — known in the technical jargon as “tomatoes,” due to their resemblance to the fruit of the same name — offer scientific proof that “the effects of plentiful attractive food have taken their toll and spherical derrieres have given way to the tomato and the more unfortunate potato rear,” notes ass authority Dr David Holmes, of Manchester Metropolitan University. While the majority of women are afflicted with these distressing ass conditions — and only 1 in 10 has managed to retain the coveted “necatrine” ass, the characteristics of which experts have diagnosed as the “cartoonesque perfection of two bowling balls pushed together” — there is still hope; absolutely coincidental to this landmark study, which appeared as news in a major British paper, retail chain Asda is “launching a range of ‘Wonderbum’ dresses designed to enhance and cover each modern bottom shape.” Wrap those tomatoes tight, ladies!

by Patrick Hipp

If it weren’t for slavery, New York City wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today — that is to say, the mess of New York State. After a detour during the mid-late 1700s, when the country’s founding fathers were drafting the United States Constitution in the sweltering provisional capital of Philadelphia, Alexander Hamilton lobbied fiercely for his second home, New York City, to become the official capital of the new union. Had compromises not been necessary to satisfy the slave states — namely, a capital a little closer to home — New York City could be a federal district today. And maybe it should be anyway.

The independence of New York City is as old as the Constitution, but it’s still never gained the traction needed to pry a city away from the grip of a state government. Measures have been introduced every so often throughout the city’s history; most recently, Queens City councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. has offered up bills twice with the aim of creating an autonomous city-state for the country’s largest metropolis. The issue: that (according to our Mayor) the city gives the state $11 billion dollars more in taxes than it receives back in services and government aid. Smokers know this better than anyone; the most recent tax hike — which brought cigarettes up to a national high of around $13 a pack — was pushed through in Albany to close a budget gap. In a state of roughly 20 million, a voting block of 8 million is more than considerable. In fact, if the state government wasn’t consistently deadlocked and ineffectual, New York City could control the entire state by sheer magnitude of representation and economic influence. Staten Island has tried itself to secede — from the city, though, not the state — as recently as 1993, when a referendum was introduced on whether the borough should become its own chartered city. New Yorkers, as a rule, don’t think much of Staten Island (if they think of it at all), and it’s not likely that many would mind it leaving the city. While there’s a similar animus between Upstate New York and New York City, the state can’t be as blithe about our leaving because we’ll take our tax dollars with us when we go.

But to be the 51st state or the 2nd federal district? If we were to take Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties with us (they pay roughly $8 billion in taxes and receive $5 billion back, a deal New York City would love to have), the population of whatever-we’re-going-to-call-this-thing would be just over 11 million, making the city-state the 8th largest state in the union, just barely behind (and probably not for very long) Ohio. As a federal district, New York City would, like Washington, D.C., be represented by a non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives and have no representation in the Senate, which is a shame since — as a federal district — Congress controls Washington, D.C.’s government. So forget being a federal district, unless some deal can be worked out where New York City gets the same proportional representation as anywhere else (that isn’t Washington, D.C.).

So: the Gotham State. New York City would no longer be so nice they named it twice, since if upstate were to agree to the secession of the city from the state, there’s no way in hell they’d let us keep the state’s name in the divorce. However, proposals have been floated in recent years with the hopes of allowing the westernmost parts of New York to secede from the state, creating a West New York (“New Canada” might be more appropriate) free from the influence of Albany and New York City. But hey, we don’t want to be associated with Albany either! Inevitably, the secession of the city would give rise to more secessionist sentiment in Western New York, leaving Albany forever isolated from the state’s two largest cities: New York City and… Buffalo.

It’s in Albany’s economic and political interests to keep New York City happy, then, so why the hell don’t they?

In the wake of the mid-term elections, one thing is clear: as New York City goes, so does the governorship. Cuomo gave his winning speech from Midtown, while Carl Paladino gave his concession speech from his stomping grounds, Buffalo. And this CBS News graph gives a pretty stark picture of the way New York state votes.

Our new West New York would be a stronghold for Republicans, while the new New York state would be the newest battleground state. You know what’s fine about that? Everything. New York City is, as one would expect, completely blue. We love our gays and our liberals and our pot-smoking landlords and sociopathic homeless people. They matter to us. And did you notice Staten Island? (Us either!) Red as the day is long. So we’ll give them back to New Jersey, which their landmass is nearly caressing anyway, and say goodbye to the Goethals Bridge and its daily tolls. We can work out profit-sharing for the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (we built it; we’ll take it and the tolls, thank you very much), and we’ll say goodbye to the only part of New York City you can’t get to by train.

But what about Long Island? Lower Queens is clearly in the red, but you know what? It’s Queens. We don’t need to see ID in this case. You’re coming with us. Nassau and Suffolk? They’ve hated Albany as long and almost as hard as the city has. Plus, what are we going to do, rip up the Long Island Railroad and take that with us?

As far as the mainland goes, well, Yankee Stadium is in the Bronx, so we’re keeping that. We might as well keep Yonkers, Rockland, and Westchester, because, well, most of our rich CEOs live in Westchester (and Bucks County, PA, but who wants to annex that?) so we can still reap the appropriate state income taxes. New York state might want to keep our new state’s northernmost counties for the Hudson River real estate, but really, so will West New York, and really, fuck them both. They should be happy to get our run-off.

So here are your three brand-new states, born in frustration and awash in brand-new problems.

To you new West New Yorkers: enjoy freedom from the grabby hands of New York City and Albany, and hello to, well, whatever it is red states want. And enjoy Niagara Falls! (The Canadian side looks better anyway.)

To you new East New Yorkers (we hope): enjoy missing out on big city kickbacks and having to figure out new ways to avoid kowtowing to the urban libertines downstate. Now Albany is your big city! Good luck with that!

And to the new old New Yorkers (we hope; if not, to the new Gothamites): enjoy packs of cigarettes that don’t require loans, a city-run MTA (did we mention that the City of New York will be absorbing our “public benefit corporations”? Oops! Well, you already signed the papers), city taxes that are your state taxes, and in all likelihood, legalized possession of marijuana, state-wide recognition of gay marriage, and bars that are open all goddamn night. Our state flag will be the front of a pack of Parliament Lights, our state anthem will sound an awful lot like Cee Lo, and our state bird will be the middle finger. And the next time this mercurial little country of ours swings suddenly from the left to the right, we’ll still be anchored in the same place we’ve always been.

Patrick Hipp writes about New York City for a living and is finishing the novel he started during National Novel Writing Month 2007.

“Physicians have simply assumed that their quick assessment of how old a person looks has diagnostic value. We were really surprised to find that people have to look a decade older than their actual age before it’s a reliable sign that they’re in poor health.”
 — Researcher Dr. Stephen Hwang on a study showing that you need to appear at least 10 years older than you really are for it to be an accurate indication that you have health problems. As someone who looks a good 8 or 9 years more aged than long number of days I’m carrying around with me, I’m gonna consider this one a push.

Just now in Union Square I watched a well-dressed woman with wet eyes singing, “I love you, yes I do,” into the empty baby carriage she was slowly pushing across the block. I should probably quit walking down the street. It’s awful out there.

Amy Jean Porter is a cooking expert. Also you can even own her new print!

“To be sure, we all have our complaints. And while there is no other city where I could imagine living, there are many places that, for different purposes, I would rather be. But this too is a very New York sentiment.”
 — The posthumous op-ed from Tony Judt in today’s Times reads like a scholarly, world-history-considering version of LCD Soundsystem’s “New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down.” Speaking of LCD Soundsystem, and how mind-blowingly awesome they are live (were we speaking of that? we should have been), they have a live-in-studio album (God, that sounds dumb, but you know what I mean, right?) coming out tomorrow. I’m very interested in it.

“Sometimes at bars or other young-people places, guys want to talk to me. Let’s talk, totally! Eventually, though, I like to let them know that I’m married (six years on Friday) and have a kid (one year on some day in the recent past!). We’re all busy people, I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. But, go figure, instead of moving on, they sometimes like to stick around and give me their important thoughts and advice on marriage and parenting, right now.”

“The surgery wasn’t easy. The chip sits at the end of a long steel tube, which had to be threaded through a hole behind the ear. After that, the surgeons had to remove a lot of the vitreous jelly in the front of the eye to work on the deeper layers, and they had to detach a small part of the retina to guide the chip into place.”
 — That’s funny. I would have thought that inserting a millimeters-wide computer chip affixed with 1,500 diodes that convert light to an electric current into someone’s eye would be easy. And then you just hook-up the diodes directly to the person’s bipolar cells. Doesn’t sound that difficult, does it? But seriously, once you get past the, “Eww, vitreous jelly” factor, this is truly miraculous. Crazily, the three formerly blind, now bionically-sighted humans who have had the chips implanted can see infra-red light. Which, y’know, other people can’t see. So they’re like the Six Million Dollar Man. Or, maybe, Rowdy Rodder Piper with his special sunglasses.

I told myself this morning that I would only put this one up if the day desperately demanded it. You know what? It does. Let’s have a quick “awww” and move on. At least it’s the afternoon!