In the fashion industry, East Elmhurst resident Melissa Gardner has made quite a name for herself cause she’s got sole.

Though the rest of her body has been featured in television commercials, her most lucrative feature remains her own two feet, which are just the right shape to merit employment by several major shoe brands.

Melissa’s petite footsies wouldn’t pass muster for print advertisements, however, where larger-footed ladies rule the roost. But for live runaway shoes, where buyers scope out seasonal offerings, Melissa’s size six feet and glamorous looks have what it takes to make any shoe look great.

"You have to wear a six," she explained. "I don’t know why, it just the way it is." Recently, Melissa modeled the new Easy Spirit line for crowds of buyers. In the past, her feet have given life to shoes made by Candies and Kohl Han.

Surprisingly, Melissa does not consider her feet to be all that lovely. She said, "I don’t have any weird calices or corns or anything, but I don’t even know if that matters any more. I’ve seen some ugly feet in this business."

Her feet also take her around the borough, where she has lived since leaving a "really small, very small" town in South Carolina and where she completed her undergraduate education at St. John’s University.

Despite her connections to the fashion world, Melissa says she favors the bargains at the Goodwill on Steinway Street for much of her attire. "I like it because it’s nonprofit and cheaper, but there are a lot things you can find there that haven’t been worn – sometimes they even have the tags on it," she explained. "And that way you don’t look the same as everyone who shops at the brand stores."

Melissa can also be found on television, where she is featured in commercials for a Con Air hair device . The spot has a Josie and Pussycats theme, and Melissa plays the drummer. Sometime next year she’ll be playing a teenage daughter in a commercial for Mazzola Cooking Oil. Sounds like things may be heating up for our East Elmhurst "Model of Queens."

With billions of dollars and almost 50 years leading up to the AirTrain’s debut this week, one would think that those involved would have had ample time to prepare for the press conference to announce the recent "innovation in aviation."

Think again.

The arrival of the light rail system brought in the bloopers as soon as it rolled into the Sutphin Boulevard station.

Seconds after the train arrived, Mayor Mike Bloomberg got tripped up when the open train doors briefly closed on him as he exited.

He shrugged the incident off saying, "The ride was great," as he led an entourage that included Governor George Pataki and Beep Helen Marshall.

Then, as the stampede of dignitaries made their way to the podium where they were to speak, misfortune struck again.

The big blue curtain that was in place to shield pols and Port Authority bigshots from the small sea of press and photogs was almost toppled.

Oops.

Next, the Borough President described the preceding events as part of a "very horrible day."

Port Authority Vice Chairman Charles Gargano tried to save Marshall by explaining to the crowd that she was most likely referring to inclement weather outside.

But the real show stealer came hours after the press had gone and travelers were riding aboard the AirTrain coming from and going to their flights or jobs.

The AirTrain experienced a shutdown of two hours after its doors failed again.

"A minor glitch," explained a Port Authority spokesperson.

For a few days recently, President George W. Bush appeared completely unelectable – at least according to Google, the largest Internet search engine.

Web-based pranksters worldwide, it seems, teamed up to trick the supposedly omniscient search engine into dismissing as doomed Bush’s hope for re-election.

For a few days, Google users who entered the search term "unelectable" turned up the official White House biography of Bush as the first-ranked result.

For simmering liberals who dispute that Bush was ever officially elected, this Google stunt must have felt like perfect vindication.

How did it happen? Self-published pundits on the internet, known as "bloggers," duped Google into associating the term "unelectable" with Bush by creating hundreds of hyperlinks to the president’s web bio, all bearing that same word.

In aggregate, the pattern convinced Google to summon Bush’s biography whenever a user searched for "unelectable."

The trick seems to have backfired, however – if you search for unelectable now, a cartoon about Howard Dean from the Village Voice pops up.

Happily, earlier versions of this Google satire still work. Ever try searching for "weapons of mass destruction"? Try it, if you are feeling lucky.