The police have arrested one of the fiends involved in the dastardly thefts of computers, video game consoles, a sock monkey and a pet hamster named Star from a Staten Island school for autistic children has bee arrested. The Advance reports, “Emil Sorensen, 21, of Elm Park, is accused of being the lookout in the crime, which was carried out on a weekend… Police say he admitted his role and copped to selling some of the stolen goods — a Nintendo Wii, a laptop and jewelry.” Unfortunately, “Star’s fate is unclear.” The burglary rocked Eden II School For Children With Autism last month : School director Joanne Gerenser said, “It just felt personal. That hamster was of no monetary value to anybody but the kids … I felt that it was really malicious,” that the students were traumatized, “One of the students told us that she didn’t sleep the night before because she was afraid,” while another said , “I miss the sock puppet.” Sorenson, whose Myspace page “lists as his interests ‘videogames,’ ‘weed’ and ‘making money,’” was found via a police tip and now the cops are zeroing in on his cohorts. The Advance adds, “After the theft made headlines, Best Buy donated several Wii consoles, games and a camcorder to the school, spurred on by a group of concerned citizens who formed the group Staten Island for Eden II. The school also received several pet hamsters as gifts, and $100 from a freshman at Manhattan’s Xavier High School who’d been saving the money for video games of his own.” Awww.

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Hamster, Sock Monkey Thief Nabbed On Staten Island

After thieves stole computers, electronics and an aquarium (with fish) from Brooklyn preschools one young charge demanded retribution. “I want the cops to get the bad guys and beat them up and just get them and put them in jail,” five-year-old Christine Stephen told NY1 . Two other similar institutions in the area, David Foster Preschool Academy and Little Stars Daycare, were also targeted. In addition to items of obvious value, the burglars left with other stuff including books, phones and a microwave. The theft of a glass aquarium was particularly perplexing. “We’re talking about a fish tank, a 10-gallon, with fish with plants and a light and it’s gone,” puzzled a head teacher at the Montessori School. Police are searching for the perps, who the school’s director believes escaped through the roof. They have another similar case on their hands, in which a gang of thieves took computers, video game consoles, a pet hamster and a sock puppet from a Staten Island school for autistic kids .

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Brooklyn Preschool Burglars Grab Kids’ Fish Tank

        The iPad has arrived and its owners are getting their greasy fingerprints all over the sleek display. Or they are showing off their wares—see this recently Tweeted video of someone outside the SoHo Apple Store. We hear that the lines at the Upper West Side and 14th Street moved along; the 14th Street store’s lines were “depleted” by 11 a.m., which really does suggest that waiting basically two days in advance of the iPad launch is something for real, hardcore fans who have the time . Engadget has an “unboxing” video , Gizmodo has a running review and The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a report from the 5th Avenue store, behind the scenes , “Yes, the retail staff didn’t get to touch iPads until this morning, so for the first couple of hours they will be catching up” and ” Yes, they are carrying small blue chamois cloths to polish fingerprints off of the display units. Frequently. ” The Twitter universe is, naturally, gabbing about the device — reneritchie : “IPad keyboard much better and faster than I expected. But the sucker is heavy. No wonder they always show it on laps”; danwarne : “Kid dressed up as an ipad just walked past at san francisco apple store #ipad”; AMCAC09 : “If you’re in #NYC, check best buy on W.23rd & 6th Ave. there’s plenty of #iPad w/out waiting queue. #Apple cc: @NYPlaces” Incidentally, an Apple salesperson at the UWS store told us the same thing—that Best Buy might be a good place to get an iPad (but keep in mind that Best Buy’s quantity is limited.)

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iPad Is Here

A thief ransacked a school for autistic children in Staten Island and stole laptops, video games, electronics—as well as a pet hamster, a sock monkey, and a set of rubber ducks. Students at the Eden II School for Children with Autism are shaken, according to executive director Joanne Gerenser, who said kids had made missing posters for the sock monkey and the ducks. “It just felt personal,” she said. ” That hamster was of no monetary value to anybody but the kids … I felt that it was really malicious .” The Advance reports that the perp broke into the Elm Park school at some point over the weekend without setting off the security alarm. Once inside, the crook tore through classrooms and offices and grabbed the hamster—named Star—and its cage, as well as toys, laptops, phone chargers, a Nintendo Wii, iPods, Flip cameras, and other items. Police are investigating the incident. “The kids who have the hamster, they were very upset,” said Gerenser, who noted that many of the students had “never experienced anything like this.” She added: “One of the students told us that she didn’t sleep the night before because she was afraid.”

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Burglar Takes Hamster, Sock Monkey From Autistic School

Is it a weekday? Then there must be a new Paterson scandal to report! This time , Gov. Paterson allegedly used a State airplane for non-State activities last month, including campaigning in Hempstead and Rochester, the Voice reports . Paterson took the trip north on Feb. 20 to attend an outdoors hockey game in Syracuse. Paterson left the game quickly (after being booed during his introductory speech), and spent the rest of the time upstate campaigning , days before testifying about obtaining World Series tickets. Blair Horner, the legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group , told the Voice: “Generally speaking, taxpayer resources should be used for public events, not as a convening cover to pay for going to political events.” As the Voice sums up: There is no indication of any investigation underway regarding Paterson’s use of the aircraft. But it’s the timeline that’s telling — during an investigation about abuse of his privileges and just days before making statements that would later turn out to be fabrications, the Governor skirted ethics guidelines to travel upstate and stand before crowds of New Yorkers and ask for their trust and vote. A new Quinnipiac poll today found that while most voters want Paterson to finish his term and not resign (which he’s already vowed not to do ), that doesn’t mean they have to like him! A whopping 61 percent of voters dislike the job Paterson is doing; only 21 percent approve—the lowest ever measured for any elected official in any state surveyed by the university in 18 years, according to Quinnipiac . And to add insult to injury, Rush Limbaugh threw his two-cents into the Massa-resignation ring, and with his usual charm , extracted a racist joke from the situation: “So, David Paterson will become the massa…who gets to appoint whoever gets to take Massa’s place. So, for the first time in his life, Paterson’s gonna be a massa. Interesting, interesting.”

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Paterson Used State Airplane For Campaigning?

A sculpture on Pentagram Design’s office, via 1010Wins That Antony Gormley public art installation , that will most definitely up the 911 call count, is now being installed on rooftops around the city. All in all 31 statues of bodies will be placed on top of buildings near Madison Square Park, including the Flatiron and the Empire State Building. There will also be a few placed on the ground, but the ones that look like jumpers have authorities a little concerned. A spokesperson for the NYPD told WCBS , “we were notified because of concerns the public might misperceive what they see and call police. We will respond no matter what because you can have an actual jumper at the same building.” However, the Madison Square Park Conservancy, sponsoring the installation (called Event Horizon), says they do not believe the statues will confuse New Yorkers. Gormley, the man behind the madness, says while he’s installing the sculptures he’ll be trying to get them “as close to the edge of the buildings as possible.” So the next big wind storm should be interesting. The bodies will all be installed by the 26th of this month, and on view through August 15th.

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Will The Latest Public Art Installation Cause Panic?

Seems you can’t have a perfectly innocent “fire massage” party in your Tribeca condo loft without the neighbors getting all bent out of shape about it. What’s fire massage, you say? Well, judging by this surreal video taken at one of sex toy salesman Dimitri Dimoulakis’s ragers, it’s when a woman waves a wand of fire over the bare back and legs of a man, who is lying down on what looks like a kitchen counter. According to a lawsuit filed by the condo board , “The man’s pants are also pulled down to his ankles.” Well, yeah —does it seem like a good idea to leave your clothes on when you’re getting massaged by a torch? Then again, torch massage doesn’t sound like such a good idea either, but that’s what these people are into, among other things. Neighbors were outraged to find that there was also a stripper pole in the 1,800-square foot basement apartment, and Dimoulakis, who was subletting the place from one James McGown, would charge $10-$15 a head for admission to the bacchanals. The condo board claims the events often featured “pornographic elements, and [caused] horrendous noise disturbance, dangerous conditions and severe risk for the condominium.” They complained about the noise, but Dimoulakis and McGown “continued their brutal course of conduct,” and after a December 5th bash, “garbage and debris were left strewn about the building entrance, with a trail of blood from the sidewalk leading up to the basement side entrance.” (Inside, one imagines a smoldering crater in the bed and a pistol in the toilet.) Perhaps this whole thing could have been smoothed over if these two hosts had just been more gracious and invited their neighbors to their fun sex toy fire massage stripper pole Burning Man-type parties. After watching the crazy video below, we can only assume the condo scolds were just jealous:

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Video: Sex Toy Salesman’s Crazy Fire Massage Condo Parties

Just months after signing a revolutionary medical marijuana bill into law, NJ authorities have seized more than $10 million worth of illegal marijuana and plants, the most in the state’s history. After sniffing a skunky odor coming from a suburban chimney, cops collected more than 115 pounds of harvested marijuana in addition to 3,370 live plants. So far, three have been arrested in connection with the massive operation. “We have not seen anything to match the volume of production of this criminal enterprise,” said Attorney General Paula T. Dow. The Cliffview Pilot reports that about a month ago one officer smelled weed in the suburbs of Monroe and was then “faced with overpowering evidence that [a grower] was burning unusable parts of pot plants in the home’s fireplace.” A search revealed surveillance cameras set up around the house and four “cultivation areas” in the basement and master bedroom. CBS says that in the next few days police searched more homes, picking up hundreds of plants and pounds of product (as well as growth notebooks, fertilization notes, financial records and cash). To stay off the radar and avoid the risk of property seizure, the growers rented six nice houses in upper class neighborhoods, where they reworked the electrical system to set up hundreds of grow lamps. They also cut foot-wide ventilation holes through the floor, but the landlords never caught on: to “avoid noisy intrusions” the pot farmers were advised to pick property owners who lived out of state, Dow says.

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Biggest NJ Pot Raid EVER; $10M Worth of Marijuana Seized

Dalila Gray, the 10-year-old struck in the arm by a stray bullet, tells the Daily News that she had no idea she was hit during the Monday night shooting that left a man dead on Pulaski Street in Bed-Stuy. She said, “I didn’t feel anything,” and only cried after her mom, who noticed the hole and blood in her sweater, started crying. The girl had just stepped out of a nearby store around 8 p.m. when the gunfire began; now she’s afraid, “I don’t want to go outside.” Her mother added, “People don’t think, they don’t care. They don’t care who’s around when they start shooting.” And police say the intended target was the deceased , a 22-year-old with previous arrests.

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Stray Bullet Victim: "I Don’t Want To Go Outside"

The Mother’s Milk cheese story has aged another day! Lori Mason, chef Daniel Angerer’s wife and the woman whose milk has created the controversial cheese, takes center stage with a NY Post cover today. She tells the paper her product is 100% organic and free range, as opposed to what one may pick up at their local grocer; she declares she’s “healthier than your average cow and I’m not pumped full of steroids!” However, the Department of Health is still strongly advising against the couple serving up her cheese to strangers. While more than half of you said you would never try the stuff, there have been some curious customers showing up at Klee Brasserie. Angerer maintains he’s not selling there, however brave insiders have taken a taste. Amongst them is Murray’s Cheese VP Liz Thorpe, who tells the paper, “It was slippery, slightly crunchy and tasted like pickles.” Gael Greene also tried the forbidden fromage, saying “it is quite bland, slightly sweet, [but] it’s the unexpected texture that’s so off-putting. Strangely soft, bouncy, like panna cotta.” If the bad reviews still leave you craving the Mother’s Milk cheese, Angerer says he may be hosting private tasting parties and picnics (by the way, he suggests a nice bottle of Riesling to compliment it)—however, the DoH says, “He can’t do that either.”

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Breast Milk Cheese: The Forbidden Fromage