Expensive Habits
• The Times comes out with some shocking numbers about “frequent fliers” — the addicts that keep entering and quitting rehab. The state spends $50 million a year treating just 500 of these patients, some of whom spend 100 nights a year in detox. [NYT]
• There’s a changing of the guard at ground zero: Governor Spitzer has named two new leaders of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. One is, somewhat fittingly, David Emil, the former owner of Windows on the World. [amNY]
• Yes, we’re all kinda thinking it, and someone had to be the first, but … Dear Daily News, it might be just a tad — maybe a day or so — early for a cackling op-ed titled “Do you still love those precious guns now, Virginia?” [NYDN]
• The three-day nor’easter is going down in weather history. Eight inches of rain fell here in NYC — four times the record for the date; some New Jerseyites had to be evacuated by boat after the Raritan River flooded. [NYP]
• And, that silly old couple that traveled to Arizona by yellow cab with their cats, and whose cutesy made-for-TV story we stoically resisted so far, arrived in Sedona. And now they’re out of our jurisdiction, so that’s that. [Gateway to Sedona]
in other news
This Week, It’s Jim Jones Versus Jim Jones
There’s a new documentary out on the Jonestown massacre called Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple, and it’s at the Quad on West 13th Street this week. At the same time, there’s also a new album, released yesterday, from the unfortunately monikered Harlem rapper Jim Jones. One Jim Jones led the biggest mass suicide in history. The other Jim Jones has his track “We Fly High” — with its ubiquitous call to arms, “Ballin’!” — blasting out of nearly every car stereo in the city. Is the new Jones overtaking the old one? We consider …