Syrup Blogging, Baby

Last Friday, co-workers mentioned a terrific smell wafting through our SOHO office while they worked late the night before. Like maple syrup or fresh pancakes, they said. The NY Times even had a short, only-in-New York story the next day but there might be something serious at work here.

All last week, workers at Grand Central Terminal had their smell detectors out and running. These are long, thin aerials that hang from the entrance ways to the lower section of GCT, on the subway platforms and even on small carts in the middle of the main floor. What for? They track a colorless and odorless gas that officials release to test the flow of air where thousands of people walk through each hour. So if Al Queda releases a poison gas, the people in charge can see or predict where the gas will flow.

Why not test the release of a gas outdoors and check the log of phone calls to 911? No need to make it smell like rotten eggs -- which might panic the public -- but something homey and re-assuring.

Me, I like cinnamon.

Un-Savvy Boob

Yesterday was a good day to be a reporter. Instead of writing or editing a story about trading platforms, networking or asset management, I wrote a breaking news item about a strip club. Why? The CEO of networking firm Savvis is disputing a credit card charge at a strip club to the tune of $241K.

The editor of our sister newsletter asked me to write it up so I went to work. I called Savvis three times for comment plus I sent an e-mail to the communications director. No reply.

I then called Scores, the high-end strip club that gets tons of publicity as Howard Stern's favorite place to blow off steam. I interviewed Lonnie Hanover, the club's publicist, and he couldn't have been nicer or more professional.

My favorite reply came when I asked how many dancers entertained the Savvis party of four back in October 2003. He said that he didn't recall but that "there were so many."

Sadly, my fellow editor removed one from my story, which went like this:

"On the morning the story broke, Savvis had yet to add a link to the NY Daily News story on the firm's In the News section on the company Web site."

Here's the Yahoo News story. Waters should cover it in our December issue.

Miller's Crossing

Yesterday's four-page autopsy of the Judith Miller affair was odd. It felt like a hit piece from the very beginning with an anecdote about one of the Times star reporters getting her facts wrong. The first paragraph has Miller misspelling Joe Wilson's wife's name as Valerie Flame. Nice anecdote but it subtly shows that some in the Times newsroom would like Miller gone, thank you very much.

The piece seems thorough in nailing Dick Cheney's chief of staff as the official leaker of Plame's identity but that Miller and others were told she was an analyst and not an operative. If that's true, then no crime was committed. Just DC gossip.

But what of Miller -- does she leave the Times? They certainly cannot fire her even though her reporting on WMD was erroneous and boosterish. She went to jail for 87 days, for goodness sakes. As much as they'd like to dump her, that's no way to treat a lady.

Network News

Okay, I bought a home networking kit at the height of summer and after three, maybe four attempts, it is now finally working. I'll spare you the gory details but I am now typing this from my kid's PC. Wireless, baby! After the Motorola techie helped me set-up the network and set-up some security, I asked the wrong question.

"So, I can share files between the two PCs, right?"

"Well, no sir. You'll have to call Microsoft for that."

"But it's a home network. You should be able to share files, right?"

"This unit is only for sharing Internet access. Microsoft will help you with file sharing."

Great, now they tell me. Still, it is pretty neat.

Somebody Stop Me

I am in the Ft Lauderdale Airport waiting for my flight and I have no book with me. A book dilemma this profound should be making my hands shake. Actually the book I finished -- The Other Hollywood: An Oral History of the Porn Film Industry -- is in my garment bag in the hull of some 757 and I have nothing to read. Nothing. I was going to bring a paperback but nothing appealed to me. Gods and Generals? The kid is a decent writer compared to his dad, who wrote The Killer Angels but this sequel is just leaden. Junior's book on the Mexican-American war was much better but the name escapes me.

So do I buy a book? The selection is awful, all Grisham, Grifton, Steele and Patterson. I feel my brain shrinking just looking at the covers. The bookstore does have the new Zadie Smith but I doubt I can justify $25 for a new book. I loved her White Teeth -- just amazing even if it was a touch over-praised -- and this one has received glowing reviews as well. If it were in paperback, I'd scoop it up.

Maybe I'll just tap out some notes for my novel. I have an idea about a guy who gets a vasectomy and it launches the mother of all mid-life crises. Not based on personal experience but I see a slim, comedic novel about a happily married man with three different girlfriends. Who has the time for this much madness? Me, I hope to have the time to write the damned thing. How's this for a title: Snip.

Snip by Phil Albinus. I like that.