The Church of Scientology wants to get down with its bad self and expand the golf course next to its San Jacinto, Calif., headquarters. Sounds fun—we assume scientologists are pretty good with a 7-iron—except two residents of Sleepy Hollow trailer park are refusing to budge to make way for the construction. Although 19 of their neighbors have moved—whether happily or not—Candice Savage and Joseph Neely maintain that the park is protected by a law that requires mobile-home tenants be given a year’s notice, filing court motions to prolong the eviction. They were supposed to be out yesterday after the Church gave them $800, waived their rent, and gave them two months to leave. The things people do for the man upstairs! · SAN JACINTO: Tenants evicted from almost-vacant trailer park [The Press-Enterprise via Gawker ]
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Rude Interruptions: Church of Scientology Kicks Neighbors Out to Expand Golf Course
Domestic doyenne Martha Stewart sat down to interview Pilar Guzman, the newly seated editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living. Standard questions were asked, laughs were had. Here’s an interesting morsel: Guzman shares a Brooklyn brownstone with her brother-in-law and the two families coordinate family dinner every Sunday. [ previously; The Martha Blog]
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Interview with Pilar Guzman: Domestic doyenne Martha Stewart sat down…
No sooner did pro spiderman Alain Robert scale Burj Khalifa in Dubai, currently the world’s tallest tower, did the port city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, decide to stick it to the poor guy. Just greenlight: the Kingdom Tower, which, when complete, will stand one mile high —it takes 12 minutes to ascend to the top via elevator—and be filled with a mix of commercial, residential, and hotel space. As far as building teetering skyscrapers in the Middle East goes, developer Kingdom Holding knew exactly who to turn to: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture—architect Adrian Smith had a hand in the design of Burj Khalifa. Turns out Kingdom Tower will be the very obvious, hulking, and hard-to-miss epicenter of a larger urban development expected to accommodate 80,000 people and cost more than $26B. Architizer has a video of a scale-model tour · World’s Most Famous Spiderman Scales World’s Tallest Tower [Curbed National] · Tallest tower plan in Jeddah on track [Gulf News] · Denial by Architecture: Mile-High Tower OK’d in Saudi Arabia [Architizer]
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Globe Trotting: Mile-High Tower Twice the Height of Burj Khalifa to be Built
Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s first Broadway musical , The Book of Mormon , is currently in previews on Broadway and the South Park guys have been living in the city as the show comes together. But what have they been eating while not-exactly-mocking the Church of Latter Day Saints? [ more › ]
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Trey Parker and Matt Stone Like Their Food Fast, Dirty
A NJ Priest has been accused of extreme rudeness by two of his congregants who claim that he interrupted and rushed them through their grandmother’s funeral service. Sisters Laurie Treene and Robyn Nini say that Reverend Bartley P. Baker, of St. Leo’s Roman Catholic Church in Elmwood Park, ruined their 96-year-old grandmother’s funeral, cuing the proverbial awards show music at points: “I got about halfway through [my eulogy] and he ran up to the podium and said, ‘Wrap it up! Wrap it up!’ I was just flabbergasted,” said Treene. [ more › ]
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NJ Priest Accused Of Rushing Pallbearers, Holy Communion, And Eulogy
Harlem Reverend Calvin Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church is still on his crusade to clear the name of Afrika Owes , the former straight-A student who is now sitting in Rikers after being accused of ferrying guns to a Harlem street gang at the command of her boyfriend, who was also doing time in Rikers. But where do you draw the line between Stockholm Syndrome and stupidity? Butts suggests Owes’s actions fall within the former, and that she deserves a second chance . Just like Patty Hearst got. [ more › ]
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Rev. Butts: Prep School Gun Mule Just Like Patty Hearst
A homeless woman was found dead on the sidewalk under the scaffolding outside St. Brigid’s Church in the East Village yesterday morning. A friend of the woman told the NY Times , “She was a very beautiful person, and she had a beautiful heart.” EV Grieve walked by the scene last night and found that someone lit a candle in her memory . [ more › ]
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Homeless Woman, A Tompkins Park Regular, Dies On Sidewalk
Last night, former cast member Dana Carvey (inexplicably) came back to host Saturday Night Live . It was a nostalgia-tinged evening, opening with the semi-triumphant return of Wayne’s World; while Carvey slipped right back into his old shoes, Mike Myers seemed a bit off-key, as Garth and Wayne chatted about the Oscars and riffed on “Winter’s Bone.” Later, Carvey also reprised his beloved Church Lady, which was more successfully executed, and included an appearance by living moppet Justin Bieber, with angel halo glow to boot. The monologue was surprisingly painful however, only briefly rescued by an excellent Jon Lovitz cameo. Click through for Wayne’s World, Church Lady, a parody of The Roommate featuring Bieber, a “Bad News” commercial, and James Franco on Weekend Update. [ more › ]
A baby shower ended in bloodshed early Sunday morning after a fight broke out in the party room atop the Bethel United Zion Church in Prospect Heights. The scuffle soon spilled out onto the street and a little after midnight at least three shots were fired, striking three male partygoers. A 22-year-old was shot in the leg, a 19-year-old was shot in the leg and buttocks, and an 18-year-old was shot in the leg and arm. All three were taken to the hospital and are in stable condition. It remains unclear what caused the altercation and no arrests have been made yet. [ more › ]
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Brooklyn Baby Shower Goes Bad
Were you in Long Island on Christmas? Did you, by any chance, take communion at either the 10:30 a.m. or noon Masses at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park? Health officials are warning that you might have gotten an extra Christmas gift with that wafer: hepatitis A . For privacy reasons details are being kept nun mum, a rep only saying that ” an individual tested positive for hepatitis A who is involved in the Communion process ,” but if you are worried, the church is offering free hep A vaccines today from 3—8 p.m. and tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m..
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LI Churchgoers Get Christmas Hep A Scare