Some Halloween costumes are too good – too clever, too original and perhaps too topical – to be worn.
A staffer close to Council Speaker Giff Miller dreamed up a doozy of a disguise for Halloween, but sadly stopped short of implementation.
The idea materialized as a bunch of Council aides were brainstorming costumes that riffed on the names of various figures in the Council. When Queens' David Weprin came up for consideration, one aide proposed dressing up as a “Weprin of Mass Destruction.”
“It was a total joke, we were just joking,” said the staffer, who asked not to be named for fear of offending Weprin, the powerful chair of the Finance Committee.
“I was trying to get somebody to dress up like a giant rocket with a mustache, but I was afraid no one would get it,” the staffer explained.
With his bushy black mustache, Weprin himself could have expanded on the WMD theme by donning a black beret and olive fatigues. It may not have been appropriate, but Weprin would have made a convincing Saddam Hussein for Halloween. 
We also wonder if council klatch considered the possibilities of costuming themselves as District 20’s John Liu (Loo). As the Councilman himself told QConf, you don’t find too many who have both first and last names meaning toilet — and he’s from Flushing.

  Albany is a town full of state politicians, few known for their dazzling good looks or fashionable modes of dress. Few of them are known for very much at all, in fact.
That’s why 20-year-old Rael Cohen, a recent transplant from the boring Capital to the bustling borough of Queens, may very well be the sexiest thing to come out of Albany in decades. 
“I miss my family, but I don’t miss the area. Albany is very unchallenging,” said Rael. The fashion trends sweeping through the Legislature, she admitted, have nothing on the cute boutiques of her new stomping ground: Astoria.
Rael moved out to Astoria in August before the start of her third year at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she is studying fashion design. Her daily commute to the Manhattan school has kept her from getting to know her new neighborhood very well, but it’s a vast aesthetic improvement on Albany, Rael said.
Back home, however, Rael got her start in modeling by doing photo shoots for local clothiers, advertisements for hair salons and few shows for local designers. Now, this upstate import has her eyes set on making a splash in the New York City modeling market.
I just think [I have] a correctly proportioned face for it,” said Rael of her own self image, “and my aesthetic is adaptable to several different looks.” Trib Celeb Photographer Steve Azzara evidently agreed, as the Queens raised lensman picked this aspiring fashion queen for a sexy photo shoot.
After completing her education, Rael may be able to create her own fresh fashion designs and then model her own creations, making this fashion industry hopeful a one-woman force. 
“But I would also use other male and female models,” Rael gushed at the suggestion. “One person doing everything themselves limits your market, its not the best business idea.” 

Helping Queens Romantics

Ever see an arresting stranger during your commute on the 7 Train or while having coffee on Steinway Street whom you admired from a distance and haven’t been able to stop thinking about since?
If you’re like most people, you probably assign the “missed connection,” as it’s called these days, to fate and move on with life.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
In today’s new world there’s a way to turn the borough’s hopeless street romantics hopeful. A website popular for its free real estate and classified listings is letting people announce their near-misses with the intention of bringing star-crossed pairs together.
Craigslist.com hosts listings in many major American cities, but there’s plenty of activity on the NYC site. There’s a separate page for Queens missed connections.
The most common listing describes glances across a subway car after which the longing begins, as in the one entitled “Cute boy on the W to Astoria – w4m – 24.”
“Thursday night at about 9:15, I was Astoria-bound,” the listing says. “You were sitting diagonally from me, listening to headphones. I was reading and I feel like I kept catching you looking at me. Or perhaps you were catching me looking at you. At any rate... you’re cute, and I was sorry you weren’t getting off at Broadway along with me.”
But not all Queens missed connections are local. One listing by a woman from California describes a charming conversation she had at an Athens airport with an Albanian man who said he lives in Queens.
“I hope that you are well and I regret that I never got your number/e-mailor – even said a proper goodbye,” the blonde former Clinton staffer wrote.
Missed connections aren’t even always about longing, as in the case of one listing entitled “To the broad sitting next to me on the train – w4m.”
You are the most annoying woman!” the listing says. “First of all, your stupid bag does NOT need a seat of its own. . . And finally, put your damn make-up on at home! Or at LEAST have the decency not to bump the person next you (me) 300 times while painting your face. . . Have some f— consideration!”

Political Connections    

He won the hearts of women across the nation as the handsome aide to a handsome president.
He later did the same as a small-but-hunky television personality on ABC who also made cameos on sitcoms and movies.
Now, his ties to the Democratic Party and small screen riches have brought him to The Queens Public Library, to which he donated some money this past summer.
George Stephanopoulos, the popular Bill Clinton aide who was once the subject of a “Friends” episode in which the show’s girls spy on him when they find out he’s a neighbor, gave an undisclosed amount of over $100 to the Queens Public Library between May 27 and Aug. 29, according to the Library.
But why Queens, and why the Library?
One Library spokesperson ventured that the Greek celebrity gave because of some tie with George Stamatiades, the famously Greek chairman of the Library’s board of trustees.
But another spokesperson set the record straight – it wasn’t Hellenic brotherhood at all.
Stephanopoulos gave his gift in memory of Dr. James Chapin, a Library board member who died a year ago.
“I think they knew each other from Democratic politics,” the spokesperson said.
Chapin, brother of late singer Harry, spent many years as a political analyst and UPI reporter.
The fact that Chapin’s widow, Dr. Diana, is the director of the Queens Library Foundation doesn’t hurt either. 

The Ghost Of The Redbirds

The opening sequence of the hit sitcom “King of Queens” features dozens of shots of our home borough, including one that is now completely outdated.
In one frame of the opening sequence, a train made up of Redbird subway cars travels across the screen on an elevated track. 
Redbirds, the famed red subway cars that have made their mark on the borough by chugging along the elevated Number 7 line for decades, are used as a symbol of Queens, according to a representative of the show.
“We wanted something that would distinguish the landscape as Queens and not some other city. Those red cars do that.”
Well, not anymore.
The Redbids were retired by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in favor of more modern cars just this past month. 
The representative did not indicate whether that opening sequence would change, saying, “That’s a tough question . . . Those cars still represent Queens, don’t they?”
True. But they are indeed retired.
Stay tuned.

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Contributors:	Q Confidential is edited by: Michael Schenkler Contributors:Angela Montefinise, Steve Azzara, Ira Cohen, Marcia Moxam Comrie, Stephen McGuire,  Michael  Nussbaum, Azi Paybarah, Aaron Rutkoff, and  Shams Tarek