* The trip down to FLL was fine, thanks to Continental Airlines. It's nice when brilliant advertising actually has good service behind it. Of course, what I noticed most was that at Penn Station, where I caught the EWR AirTrain, Verizon Wireless delivered a perfect signal where AT&T Wireless was nonexistent. Newark Airport is okay, but LGA is still my favorite.

* Among numerous excellent articles in this week's New Yorker: a short piece about a thwarted documentary about Madison Square Garden. In typical fashion, Jim Dolan appears to have thrown a wrench in this project without having ever seen the movie. From what the article says, though, this film would have conveyed what Cablevision has been unable to: that Madison Square Garden has unparalleled magic as a sports and entertainment venue. On the balance sheet, MSG accounts for a miniscule amount of Cablevision's business, but it is the company's vanity trophy.

* Recent weather in New York has been terrific; the big news was not so much the heat, but the extreme dryness. Dewpoints near the coast remained below 35 and in interior New England stayed in the single digits, registering relative humidities of below 10%, exceptionally rare for anywhere east of Denver. But it's not time to put away those jackets just yet; you really can't bank on consistent warm weather until at least Memorial Day, thanks to the threat of sea breezes and pesky coastal cutoff systems.

* The summer tease inevitably brought some browsing for new summer gear. Memo to clothing retailers: John Deere t-shirts are no longer funny; their ironic hipness has evaporated into stupidity. I think they're even more stale now than hooded sweatshirts that say "Brooklyn."