Locked out? Don't let this happen to you!

PSA For the Locked Out: Call a Locksmith

A 30-year-old man lost his life last night after locking himself out of his apartment. Sometime between 8:15 p.m. and 8:40 p.m., Paul Reilly fell five stories, landing on his back in the courtyard behind the building where he lived on 65th St. and 1st Ave. in Manhattan. Reilly, who had apparently gained entrance to the building but was locked out of his apartment, attempted to climb out a hallway window, over to a window in his apartment. "It was just an accident. He fell," a friend told the Daily News.

The New York Post describes a slightly different scenario, with Reilly attempting to scale the back wall, before losing his footing and crashing downwards into the courtyard. A neighbor in the building next door to Reilly told the Post, "I heard a clunk, a huge clunk. Then I heard some guy saying 'Oh, s- - -! Oh, s- - -!' really loud."

Reilly was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell, where he was pronounced dead around midnight.

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Ethan says the mounds at the African Burial Ground aren't real graves...

but someone put flowers on them today.

this blog is about promoting my preferred brand of cigarettes

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

Is it Wednesday yet?

Trailer: 'TR Warszawa Macbeth'

The correct record:

The Moral Washington: Construction of a Legend (1800-1920s)

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John McRae, "Father, I Can Not Tell a Lie; I Cut the Tree," 1867 engraving after a painting by G.G. White

George Washington's reputation as a man of moral fortitude reveals more about America's view of morality than it does about the man himself. Washington was an exceedingly bland heroic leader, embodying an eighteenth-century ideal of republican virtue that emphasized duty, sacrifice and honorable disinterest. Flamboyance and daring were emphatically not required. Washington's virtue was admirable, but not overly interesting.

Perhaps this is why the most famous example of his fortitude of character is, in fact, just fiction. The story of Washington and the Cherry Tree, a tale which still lingers through probably every grammar school in the U.S., was invented by a parson named Mason Locke Weems in a biography of Washington published directly after his death. Saturated with tales of Washington's selflessness and honesty, A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits, of General George Washington(1800) and The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes Laudable to Himself and Exemplary to his Countrymen(1806) supplied the American people with flattering (and often rhyming) renditions of the events that shaped their hero. Weems imagined everthing from Washington's childhood transgression and repentence to his apotheosis when "at the sight of him, even those blessed spirits seem[ed] to feel new raptures" (Weems, 60). According to historian Karal Ann Marling, Weems was struggling to "flesh out a believable and interesting figure ... to humanize Washington" who had been painted as "cold and colorless" in an earlier, poorly-selling biography. While it is likely that some readers of the time questioned the authenticity of the tales, Weems' portraits soared in popularity in the early 1800s.
More than a century later, Weems would be vigorously debunked by a new corps of biographers intent on resurrecting the real truth of Washington's life.

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uh, just for the record...

The story of Washington and the Cherry Tree, a tale which still lingers through probably every grammar school in the U.S., was invented by a parson named Mason Locke Weems in a biography of Washington published directly after his death. Saturated with tales of Washington's selflessness and honesty, A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits, of General George Washington(1800) and The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes Laudable to Himself and Exemplary to his Countrymen(1806) supplied the American people with flattering (and often rhyming) renditions of the events that shaped their hero. Weems imagined everything from Washington's childhood cherry tree transgression and repentance to his apotheosis when "at the sight of him, even those blessed spirits seem[ed] to feel new raptures" (Weems, 60).