Remembering Robert “Rosebud” Butt

Charles Foster Kane wasn’t asking for his boyhood sled at all. He just wanted a stiff drink to go out on.
Maybe not, but today we remember Robert “Rosebud” Butt, the inventor of one of Long Island’s most ubiquitous namesakes: the Long Island Iced tea.
Here’s the history, from Wisconsin’s The Journal Record:
In 1976, a bartender named [...]

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An honest mistake

The lesson here: If you find a mysterious spray can, don’t press the nozzle.
A worker at a Valley Stream Wal-Mart was suspended from work this weekend after finding a spray can, discharging it, and painfully discovering it was filled with pepper spray.
The fans in Wal-Mart circulated the gas, sending eight people to the hospital.
From the [...]

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Music in the workplace, way beyond iPods

It starts out with a pretty positive claim, that incorporating music in the workplace can make the environment fun, and therefore more productive. But when LI Biz Blog read the rest of the press release it received from author Dr. Russ Riendeau’s public relations flacks this morning, we couldn’t help but chuckle.
Evoking overexaggeration best likened [...]

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A real-life Clockwork Orange

When young Alex, in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel, A Clockwork Orange, is brainwashed so that every time he hears his beloved Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony he gets violently ill, you don’t really feel bad for him, seeing as he is a particularly evil murderer.
But, for a real-life, non-evil person, not being able [...]

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Scrapbooking scandal has artists scrapping

The front page of Saturday’s Los Angeles Times tells us this: There is a wacky world out there, where scrapbooking is beyond serious and a Ronkonkoma woman is the art form’s Public Enemy No. 1.
Kristina Contes was the queen of scrapbooking, an art form where people create collage-based journals based on personal experiences, likes, frustrations, [...]

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Reuters apes LIBN

Pity the poor pornographer. Reuters reported today that the Boogie Nights of the mostly California-based DVD grunt and groaning business is waking up spent in a cold and lonely dawn. Now, with a climactic proliferation of porn sites on the web, unshaven guys in bathrobes can get exactly what they crave any hour [...]

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Huntington’s silly use of time

Consider this your local government working overtime.
According to an Associated Press Story, the Huntington Town Council will tonight tackle the problem of Silly String. Apparently, the gooey strands often sprayed during town parades get stuck on fire engines and ruin paint jobs.
So the council will move to ban the substance altogether during parades and fairs.
Could [...]

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This news is for the dogs

Why bother writing a witty and irreverent intro to an announcement as zany as this since the writer of the following press release has given us so much to chuckle at.
We’ll just say, congrats Cinder.
The release:
After 56 (human) years of service, Suffolk County Fire Marshal dog “Cinder” will be given a retirement send-off Monday at [...]

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A Plastic Surgeon for under $10

Charles Leonard Inc., a Hauppauge-based distributor of office and art supplies, has picked up some national attention for its latest device, The Plastic Surgeon.
Clamshell packages, which secure things from razors to toys, are nearly impossible to open. They are too thick for the average scissor to cut, and slicing them open with a steak knife [...]

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Menorah envy

While Suffolk County is doing its best to make sure no municipal holiday displays are vandalized this season, one Nassau city is facing a decoration dilemma of its own.
It’s a holiday story that is sure to warm your hearts. The City of Long Beach put up a seasonal display including a 20-foot menorah and a [...]

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A fur-friendly dating site

If three times makes a trend, then Long Island is only one announcement away from being labeled a hotbed for alternative Internet dating sites.
First there was Wine Lovers Meet, a locally bred dating site for vino lovers.
Now comes PURRsonals.com, another Long Island-made dating Web site, this time looking to help cat lovers find furry [...]

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When avarice is a good sign

Did William just lock in the Johnson deal, netting the company a much-needed $1.2 million in extra revenue for the year? Well, you better reward him with a hefty bonus.
However, if he shows little interest in the gift, it might not mean he’s monkish. Rather, it might mean he’s stoned.
Brookhaven National Laboratory says, based on [...]

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Long Islanders are good folk

We’ve seen this in the movies: Someone showers a crowd with money, causing a frenzy as people bump, poke and tear at each other while they fill their pockets with as many bills as they can.
But not on Long Island. Yesterday, drivers on Nicolls Road in Stony Brook got a Halloween treat when bags of [...]

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But what do you really mean?

What Would Jessy Do?
A Hauppauge-based maker of publicity products, Positive Promotions, is in a bit of a pickle over a silicone bracelet it printed for a school district in Waco, Texas. The bracelet read, “I’ve got BETTER things to DO than DRUGS.”
Confused? Because it seems like that’s a pretty encouraging message for adolescents to broadcast [...]

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Independent Long Island … whatever that means

Now what I’m about to tell you may shock you, or, if you’re like me, you’ll have not one clue what it means: We have a new governor and his name is Most Rev. Dr. Cesidio Tallini, BS, PhD hc, CPC, RH-INHA, APP, AMBCS, MMPR, OEMTDV.
Confused? It gets even more mind boggling.
Tallini is the founder [...]

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Topless car wash?

Raising money with a charity car wash has never been this easy.
Over the weekend, drivers in Shirley were corralled by two young ladies who stood alongside the road, brandishing an intriguing sign. It read: Topless car wash.
Could it be true? That can’t be legal?
But it was. When the drivers pulled off of the road and [...]

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Not quite Fido

The Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals got a call today from one pet owner who suddenly became afraid of his pet.
You would too.
The Rocky Point man had the organization take away his African baboon spider, a type of tarantula, because it was rearing up on its hind legs into a [...]

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Financial Ed for babies (twentysomethings)

Hey, twentysomethings, the world is calling you morons.
Our sister blog in Colorado turned me on to a story in Investment Times about a company that is trying to teach people in their twenties about the importance of financial planning … by using cartoons.
The Pennsylvania company, FeelSmartAbout, created a cartoon series about Jack, a 23-year-old sous [...]

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WBLI wants to throw Lohan a shindig

Local radio station WBLI-FM is offering to throw a party for our region’s brightest startlet (based on the amount of attention she receives): Linsday Lohan.
The station, according to mega-popular celebrity news blog TMZ.com, said it will foot the bill to host a party for 4000 of Lohan’s closest friends. But there’s one catch. No booze. [...]

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Brilliant marketing … or dirty pool

Google, perhaps the aorta of the Internet, crowned blogger Ted Demopolous the dullest person online ….
Bull.
The LI Biz Blog received a press release that claimed the above, that Internet mega-company Google did indeed bestow the dullness honor to Demopolous because a Google search for “dull person” comes back with his blog, Blogging for Business, at [...]

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Suozzi shears

Hopefully, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi has a steady hand. If not, I’d hate to be a sheep in Old Bethpage today.
At 1 p.m., the Nassau leader will shear a sheep at the Old Bethpage Village Restoration in order to promote all of the Memorial Day activities scheduled to take place at the restored village [...]

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Forget Paris, what about Iraq?

The city manager of Long Beach, Edwin Eaton, is fed up with the media’s and the public’s obsession with celebrity lives, especially when military deaths are occurring overseas.
So Eaton issued a order insisting all city flags fly at half mast, permanently, to honor the soldiers who have died in Iraq.
From the Associated Press story:

“While our [...]

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A little color from the Steamroller’s visit

Gov. Eliot Spitzer visited Hauppauge today to watch Steve Levy sign a bill that reforms how legislative districts are redrawn. It was a packed house, full of television cameras, reporters, legislators, Spitzer’s aides and larger-than-life News 12 personality Scott Feldman.
You’ve read the story, now here’s a few vignettes I left out:
The Steamroller moniker for the [...]

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AM New York re-exposes an urban legend

I don’t think it’s a slow day for news, with Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell dying and a deputy attorney general resigning on this warm spring day. But Newsday spin off AM New York decided today would be a good day to recycle and old urban legend in the name old fashioned redundancy.
The Web site [...]

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A case for checking your statements

Just because it’s automated, doesn’t mean it’s infallible.
LifeWatch Inc., a Long Island provider of personal medical alarms, messed up an old woman’s bill. Martha Levin, who is 95 years old, authorized the company to bill her four times a year, and she set up an auto-pay system so she would never have to write a [...]

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Grab a spoon: The Soup Nazi’s headed for Centereach

Last week, Long Island Business News looked at a dark time in Yaphank’s past, a time when Nazis gathered in the bucolic region. Thankfully, that was long ago.
Today, the only Nazi you’re going to find here serves soup instead of hate.
The Original SoupMan, Al Yeganeh, who inspired the famous “Soup Nazi” episode of the tremendous [...]

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There’s a new bulletproof king on LI

DHB Industries used to be the king of Kevlar on Long Island, before alleged fraud involving top executives caused the maker of bulletproof vests to clean house and move its ops to Florida.
But that’s fine, there’s another master of bulletproofing here; Unique Autosports in Holbrook. LI Biz Blog first wrote about Unique in February, when [...]

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Smoke screening

On June 1st, ironically on Donut Day, the Long Island Film Festival will present the East Coast screening of “Totally Baked: A Pot-U-Mentary,” a comedic documentary of about the issue of marijuana legalization.
Also, Howard Stern show sideman Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling will give a detailed seminar on bong making … just kidding, I guess [...]

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LI pols post phone sex hotline by accident

This is why irony is a word.
Of all the hotlines out there, a few Nassau politicians had to mix up the phone number to a sexual predator locator service with … a phone sex number.
Nassau Legis. Peter Schmitt and a few county government colleagues, sent out fliers to constituents that announced a new joint initiative [...]

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Now this is one hell of a ‘whoops’

A movie theater in Holtsville turned a tranquil family night at the movies into a gore-fueled fury, complete with a parental mob.
Last night, a crowd of parents took their children to the Island 16 multiplex to see the PG-rated film, The Last Mimzy. But when the previews ended, instead of a sci-fi spectacle meant to [...]

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