....October 28, 10:13 AM
 
 
 
Starting Out Early

Arlend Rexha
Home: Forest Hills
Age: 3
Height: 3’5’’
Weight: 39 lbs


How’s this for a Cinderella story: little Arlend Rexha has gotten his first modeling photo shoot after an agent saw him walking alongside his father, Ahmza, near their home in Forest Hills about six months ago.

“She just looked at him, stopped me and asked how I would like to see Arlend on TV,” Ahmza recalls.


One of Arlend’s appeals is that he looks older than his age. On the other hand, modeling quickly becomes a tedious game for a 3-year-old.

“He’s a very active child,” says Ahmza, who emigrated with his family from Albania six years ago.

“It is very difficult for him to do what models have to do.”

So far, Arlend — the only boy and the youngest of three children in the Rexha family — has had two shooting sessions. An agent at Camera2Studios assured Ahmza that he can potentially see his son not only on TV but also in newspaper and magazine commercials.

So, is the pint-sized model looking forward to fame and fortune? According to his father, the only thing he is looking forward to is his first date with kindergarten next year.

 
 
Political Prostitution?
With an evenly split electorate this year, in an election that has been described as the most important in a generation, young people are putting their bodies on the line to encourage more voting—and they are doing it literally.

Votergasm.org seems to be cutting edge in Get Out The Vote (GOTV) technique. This group, which sprung up in New York City and plans to host steamy post-vote parties in all five boroughs and across the country, is rallying would-be voters with the slogan, “One day. One vote. One-night stand.”

Participants in the Votergasm effort sign a pledge that they will withhold sex from anyone who doesn’t vote in the Nov. 2 election. To reach true patriot status, a pledge-taker must promise to reject all non-voters for the next four years. To top it off, the organizers plan election night parties all over New York where voters can, ahem, release all the months of pent up political tension.

The plan, according to the website, it to “send 100,000 first-time 18- to 25-year-old voters to the polls for the 2004 elections, and to catalyze 250,000 orgasms by the morning of Nov. 3.”

Sounds pretty good. Usually, voters have to wait until after a January inauguration to start getting screwed by the results of presidential election.

Voting Date
Never again do folks in the dating scene have to wonder if who they’re attracted to is on the wrong side of the political aisle. Democrats and Republicans have websites to steer their faithful into their own dating pools.

“We believe one of our greatest strengths is the fact that we don’t try to appeal to every single person out there,” according to www.singlerepublican.com. Mates are asked to name their favorite politician and to describe their politics: conservative, moderate conservative, very conservative, or independent.

A quick search of this site found women in Sunnyside, Fresh Meadows and one girl identified as “Puritan.”

For left-leaning lovers, there’s www.democratsingles.com. A quick search found 5 liberals looking for love. But don’t worry. There are five times as many Democrats registered in Queens as Republicans.

Down With The Hometown

Fat Joe, Jadakiss and Ja Rule give "love" back to the city.
If short on inspiration, go back to the ‘hood.

At least that is what the borough’s child Ja Rule, along with fellow rap artists Fat Joe and Jadakiss, did last week when they paid homage to the grand old Noo Yawk City by filming a video for their collaborative single, called—what else—”New York” on the streets of Queens and the Bronx.

“Every time you show love to the streets of New York, you get it back,” said Styles P, who also showed up for a cameo in the video. “They love to see somebody getting money, successful, step on the concrete and give the love back.”

Dizzy

Jazz great Dizzy Gillespie rests at Flushing Cemetery not far from Satchmo.
It appears that Flushing Cemetery is at the top of the list of the preferred final resting places for famous jazz musicians. Along with the King of Jazz, Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong, John Birks—a.k.a. Dizzy—Gillespie, who died in 1993, is buried in an unmarked grave alongside his mother.

Johnny ‘Rabbit’ Hodges, a legendary jazz saxophonist who passed away in 1970, also rests there, under a modest headstone of gray marble inscribed with his name and the words “Alto Sax.”

On Fumes

Queens is famous for many things; air pollution may be one of them? Apparently, word got all the way to the Pacific Northwest about the bad quality of the public buses operating along the borough’s routes. How else to explain the following question by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s reporter Robert Jamieson when commenting on derogative statements about Seattle landmarks by the New York Daily News writers in the heydays of Yankees-Mariners rivalry: “Were Daily News editors huffing bus exhaust in Queens?”

No, Mr. Jamieson, perhaps they overdid it on espresso from Starbucks.


Deja Vu History


With all the capo bodies coming out of a hole in the ground in South Ozone Park, that area of 75th Street may soon rival the Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, where some of New York City mobsters of a century ago found the final resting place. Vito Bonventre, Thomas Luchese and Anthony “Little Augie Pisano” Carfano, all of whom thrived during the Prohibition years, are buried there. All three were whacked during the various mob wars between the 1930s and 1950s.

Little surprise there.



Wishful Thinking
It might not be “Dewey Defeats Truman” or even “Kerry’s Choice: Dem Picks Gephardt as VP.” But it’s media bias nonetheless. It seems the New York Times assumed the Yankees would take Game 7 of the American League Championship Series (they assumed wrong, not a first) and when they printed the television calendar for the following week listed the Yankees playing the National League winner in the World Series. Wonder what their excuse is going to be now. How about, oops…

Confidentially New York . . .

You can reach us by e-mail at conf@queenstribune.com
Fax to Conf (718) 357-0972
Or you can reach us by mail:
"Confidential"
174-15 Horace Harding Expressway
Fresh Meadows, NY 11365