Blotter
THE NEW NABOKOV
The best thing about local news stories is the follow-through. Forget the big article on the initial tragedy. Wait for the eventual secondary article where we find out, say, that the victim was married even though his girlfriend witnessed the crime. The Post recently provided a fine such follow-up with an article headlined, "Body found in Hudson likely poet's."
We've all heard about 22-year-old Dennis Kim, who'd bravely jumped into the Hudson to retrieve his notebook of original romantic poetry. "I can't let this stuff go," shouted the Brooklyn scribe. As it turns out, Kim may have been motivated by more than mere self-love. Consider the closing paragraph from the article:
"I was expecting this," said his former girlfriend, Haley Nowak, 17. "But for them to find a drowned corpse, that's been in my nightmares all week."
We noticed when the Post originally reported that Kim had been with 17-year-old Jennifer Hare when he made his dive into the Hudson. Now we find out that the 22-year-old had a former girlfriend who was also 17. Exactly how former of a girlfriend was Nowak? Was Kim so lame that he was actually dating a 16-year-old back when he was twenty-one?
If we had a notebook full of our romantic writings about underage girls, we would also go to extremes to keep it in our possession. If we lost that notebook, we'd probably throw ourselves into the Hudson just to be spared the embarrassment.
There are enough lousy poets in this city that we never felt obliged to regret the loss of Kim's future work. Now we're not so sure we even care about some dead creep who couldn't do better than using his verse to score with high-school girls. Still, it's too bad we didn't know about Kim back when we were assigning those articles on Lolita.
-J.R. Taylor
GRANDMAMA
Her friends say that not too long ago, 24 year-old Tabatha Perez was struggling to get by, living on the streets with her young son. But then she pulled it together, getting herself a job and an apartment. Things were going so well, in fact, that she could even go out to fancy nightclubs. That's where she was at about 4:15 a.m. on Wednesday-at the trendy Viva, in Washington Heights.
Inside the club, two groups of men allegedly began arguing over the proverbial woman. But much to everyone's surprise, the conflict ended peacefully with both groups leaving the club and separating. At least it was like that for a minute or two before one of the men allegedly returned, gun drawn, and started shooting. The bullets hit a bouncer, a homeless guy and Perez-in short, most anyone except the people he was shooting at. The bouncer and the homeless guy survived.
The Daily News reports that Perez' six-year-old son will likely now be raised by his grandmother-who, we're guessing, was watching him that night while his mother hit the clubs.
-Nick Stagnantti