Fordham Student Charged With Murder

Fordham student Anastasiya Andreyeva, 25, has been charged with second degree murder after allegedly stabbing Aleksey Kats (spelled Aleksei in some reports), 30, in his apartment in Gravesend, Brooklyn on early Monday morning, according to The Daily News.

Kats lived with his wife Elina. The Gothamist reported that Andreyeva and Kats’ wife were lovers and that “the three had been engaged in an ongoing threesome.” Andreyeva’s lawyer, however, has “strongly denied” this claim, according to The New York Post.

Various reports have stated that Andreyeva has had a history of psychological problems and has been ordered by the Brooklyn Criminal Court to undergo psychological testing.

See further coverage of this story by The Observer.

See also: Newsday, CBS

Elephants and Tubes

photo courtesy redxdress 

Tonight at 8 p.m., on CNN, you can watch the righties field questions from YouTubers. While chances are that it will be as anticlimactic as the Democrats’ version, there could be a few funny moments. I’m personally waiting for Fred Thompson to ask for an explanation of what, exactly, YouTube is. Seriously, though, is anyone else finding these Republicans to be a hell of a lot more entertaining than the Dems? Mike Huckabee! Ron Paul! These guys are characters! Not necessarily characters I want running my country, but hey, you can’t have it all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a great Thanksgiving, everybody. Don’t be too gluttonous and try not to offend any relatives. Who are we kidding? Do both. That’s what holidays are for, kids.

And here are a couple oldies but goodies:

Bonds Indicted

After a four-year investigation into the usage of steroids by athletes in Major League Baseball, Barry Bonds was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to a federal grand jury about knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.

Bonds’s 10-page indictment cites 19 instances during the slugger’s 2003 federal grand jury testimony in which it is believed Bonds lied under oath about his relationship with the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), a supplements lab whose owner (Victor Conte), vice president (James Valente), and client (Bonds’s trainer Greg Anderson) were all handed prison sentences on charges of distributing steroids.

In what has seemed like a single continuous and never-ending season of baseball revolving around steroids, the federal government can finally fry its biggest fish. Though such high-profile athletes as Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi, and Gary Sheffield have been exposed as steroids users, definitive proof of the game’s most notorious cheater had yet to be collected. Now, with an official knock on Bonds, and the home run record few consider truly his despite this summer’s events, perhaps the baseball world will finally be able to lay the subject of steroids to rest and get on with the game.

Only time will tell if steroids will ever be successfully weeded out and whether fans, who turned out in record numbers to make this past baseball season the most lucrative in history, even care, enough to tune out until equality is restored anyway. Regardless, Bonds’s indictment provides the closure many have been seeking throughout these witch hunts; with the game’s greatest suspected villain on his way out, the subject of steroids should follow suit shortly.

Seventh on Sale

If I wasn’t dead broke, this: http://nymag.com/shopping/features/40632/, is definitely where I would be headed this weekend. They’ve got all the greats at this enormous sample sale- Marc Jacobs, Diane von Furstenburg, Chanel- all for a very small fraction of their original price. You don’t need to feel guilty about your splurges either- all proceeds will benefit AIDS victims worldwide. Tickets are $20, a small price to pay for the steep savings. If you’re into scoring designer gear for dirt cheap, you probably don’t want to pass this one up.

A-Rod’s back?

After New York Yankees’ third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, opted out of his contract on Oct. 28, the Yankees and Yankees’ fans around the world thought they had washed their hands of him. But now, he might be back.

According to an article in The New York Times, Rodriguez and his wife, Cynthia, met with Hank and Hal Steinbrenner on Wednesday to discuss a 10-year $270 million to $275 million contract that would include a $25 million bonus if he surpasses Barry Bond’s homerun record as a Yankee. The Times article said that after the meeting, Rodriguez told his agent, Scott Boras, to sort out the verbiage of the contract. Looks likes the Central Park tanning, canoodling with strippers A-Rod will be back in the Bronx come April.

As a lifelong Yankees’ fan, I think it’s ridiculous that the Yankees would even consider a new contract with A-Rod. Even though he had a superb season as a Yankee, he has yet to help the team win another World Series, which was one of the main reasons for bringing him to the team in the first place.

Rejecting the Yankees and then asking the organization to take him back shows that he realizes that no other team would offer to him a contract like the one he is negotiating right now. He is clearly thinking about himself and only himself; he doesn’t care about what is in the best interest of the Yankees. He just wants more money.

Plus, A-Rod’s potential new contract makes the Yankees look like all they care about is the publicity that comes with A-Rod breaking the homerun record. Are they even concerned about A-Rod’s abilities to help the Yankees win number 27? Have they forgotten that they desperately need solid starting pitchers who aren’t approaching the mid-life crisis stage of life?

I want to live during an era when the Yankees dominate baseball. 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000 were great. I want more tickertape parades to celebrate Yankees’ World Series Championships. The last thing I want are contracts such as A-Rod’s to ruin the Yankees.

The High Rollers of Higher Education

Vacation homes, private airplanes, extravagant trips, and luxury condos and cars are commonplace in the lives of rappers, real estate moguls, AND—university presidents?

 

According to a recent report released by The Chronicle of Higher Education, presidents of 81 private colleges across the country made more than $500,000 in total compensation (salary and benefits) in the 2006 fiscal year. About a dozen of them topped a million.

 

In the NYC area, NYU president John Sexton came out on top with a grand total earning of $849,121, just missing the top 20 mark across the nation.

 

Following the report, The Chronicle asked a few college presidents how they spend their money.

 

Lois B. DeFleur, president of SUNY at Binghamton, whose compensation totaled $344,500, said her biggest personal expense is a 30-year-old black-and-gold-striped Piper Comanche 260C airplane.

 

Penn State University’s president, Graham B. Spanier, made $545,000, and said aside from a few indulgent whitewater rafting trips, he is “too busy to have time to spend much money.”

 

Aside from mortgages and a few random splurges, donation to scholarships was a popular answer among the university presidents.

 

In case you are wondering, Fordham’s own president, the Rev. Joseph M. McShane, as a priest leading a Catholic university, did not accept a paycheck, according to The Gothamist.

See also: Newsday

Livin’ La Vida Loca

Photo courtesy sgerstenzang

On Monday Nov. 12, The New Oxford American Dictionary announced its Word of the Year for 2007. The announcement was made through the Oxford University Press Blog. (Just a hunch, but I think these “blog” things are really going to catch fire.) The word is thus: Locavore.

According the Oxford Blog:

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.

Yeah, I’ve never heard the word either, but I do like the choice. And it makes sense that in year in which “going green” became so trendy, Oxford would acknowledge a word that’s part of said movement (even if the word is not the most popular). For more information on the locavore movement, visit locavores.com. And even though most local farmers’ markets here in the city are closed for the winter, Whole Foods notes where all its produce is grown, making it that much easier to jump on the locavore bandwagon.

Most Valuable Runner(s)-Up for Word of the Year:

bacn and cougar (In reference to older women who seek younger men for romantic engagements.)

WeTube So You Don’t Have To: This is Your Brain on Paul Reubens

Now, I’m not here to make jokes about crack. I agree with Mr. Reubens on this one, crack is…well you know, wick wick whack. But c’mon, Pee-wee Herman? Really? I know his HBO Special was a big deal a while back and the kids looked up to him and all, but there is no instance where this is not at least a little bit funny.

You have to love that he’s still talking in the Pee-wee Herman voice, but due to the serious subject matter, he tones it down a bit. And you know when he got in the Pee-wee outfit he started doing to voice full boar, and the director had to say something like, “Um, Paul, maybe we could try it a little more somber. You know? Take it down a few notches? Because, we’re uh, we’re talking about crack cocaine and all.” Thank goodness the Secret Word of the Day wasn’t “addictive.”

“gay? go to hell” t-shirts the new fashion at notre dame

According to a recent “Letter to the Editor” in the University of Notre Dame’s Observer, “certain” students are wearing t-shirts around campus that say, “Gay? Go to hell.” Notre Dame is a Catholic university so this has sparked the debate about homosexuality and the Catholic church. Mary K. Daly, a sophomore at Notre Dame has this to say about the debate:

“While it is important and noble that our beloved University expresses a Catholic acceptance and ‘inclusion’ of all of its members, I find it very disappointing that it does not (openly) accept…the Church’s teaching on the homosexual orientation and lifestyle. Catholic teaching states that it is not morally wrong for a person to be of the homosexual orientation as each person, regardless of sexual orientation, is created in the Image and Likeness of God. However, the Church does teach that…for a person of homosexual orientation to act on those homosexual tendencies, to embrace the homosexual lifestyle, is morally sinful.”

Another “Letter to the Editor” in the same paper by Cinthya Maybee:

“When several of us went up to a couple of the men trying to see what their point was, their reply was that they were trying to take the attention away from the “Gay? Fine by me” shirts.”