Man nets 23rd arrest for posing...
 NEW YORK (AP) -- A man so fascinated with the city's public transit system that he's turned his life into a train wreck is in trouble again.
Darius McCollum, who became a New York sensation when he commandeered a subway at age 15, was arrested Saturday after police found him in a secure area of Manhattan's Columbus Circle station wearing clothing that resembled a transit worker's uniform.
The arrest marked the 23rd time the 43-year-old was arrested on charges of pretending to be a transit worker.
Over the years, he has donned MTA uniforms and cheerfully collected fares, cleared trash from tracks, put out underground fires.
But he's also driven MTA buses and trains, including a time in 1981 when he made headlines as a teenager by taking the controls of a subway full of passengers and piloting it to the World Trade Center.
Hardly just a youthful prank, it was the first of many forbidden rides. By the mid-1990s, frustrated Transit Authority officials posted thousands of wanted posters in trains and stations so riders could report McCollum sightings. But most riders who ran into him found him simply friendly and helpful.
On Saturday, officers of the NYPD's Transit Queens Task Force spotted McCollum as he entered a secure area. He was wearing a hardhat and the typical blue T-shirt and pants of track workers, and carried a flashlight and gloves with a Transit Authority logo.
Police said he...
Read more 06.15.2008.
Curtis and John's Excellent Adventure
 BEHIND every window in every converted warehouse or factory in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where artist work spaces are slowly flowering, there could be a photographer or a painter putting the finishing touches on a modern masterpiece, or a mad scientist plotting humanity’s downfall. In one cramped and dank little space on Ingraham Street, two young Bushwick residents have commandeered the Internet itself to make it do their satirical bidding.
At 12:15 a.m. next Monday, the Cartoon Network will introduce a comedic adventure series, “Fat Guy Stuck in Internet,” as one of the cable channel’s late-night offerings for grown-ups. The television show, the creation of John Gemberling and Curtis Gwinn, lampoons every fantasy adventure movie from “The Goonies” to “The Matrix.”
As the show’s title implies, “Fat Guy” is set inside the World Wide Web because, as Mr. Gemberling said, “It’s this kind of repository for everything,” a digital playground where he and Mr. Gwinn’s pop-cultural obsessions can run amok.
An Abbott and Costello for the Internet age, the taller, clean-shaven Mr. Gwinn, 33, and the shorter, burlier Mr. Gemberling, 27, met eight years ago at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Chelsea, where they attended improv classes, performed in shows, and bonded over their mutual love of video games.
The two, who now live and work in Bushwick, came up with the idea of a Web-based comedy series around the end of 2004, after Mr. Gwinn bought ...
Read more 06.15.2008.
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