Cleopatra panic: Well, Allen Roskoff has done it again — but, really, what did we expect? The president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club — working with a clearly talented yet mysterious, unknown designer — has created the invite for his annual Roskoff Holiday Party, and as usual, it takes a pop at various local political figures and whoever and whatever happens to be in the news. Due to the uproar in years past (angry letters and phone calls) when we’ve shown the actual invite in Scoopy’s Notebook, this year we’re refraining from displaying it in its entirety. We’ll just show a cropped portion here. So, just use your imagination (and try not to lose your lunch…) as we describe it in full. …. Picture a Mad magazine-style spoof. The theme is a movie poster for “Cleopatra.” Guess who is reclining as her majesty, the queen? Yes, Roskoff, who naturally receives top billing. The other “stars” of this production are Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and Assemblymember Deborah Glick, who are shown in Roman armor flanking Roskoff. The “film” is “funded by Chris Hughes — but not by Sean Eldridge,” referring to the Facebook co-founder and his politically ambitious husband. The film’s “producers” are listed as state Senator Dan Squadron, losing Brooklyn Assembly candidate Pete Sikora and — in a surprise appearance this year — Mary Cooley, Squadron’s former district office director. Huh? Cooley? What did she do to anger Queen Cleo-Raskoff? we queried. She was one of the nicest of the politicians’ community liaisons, we always thought. (Cooley recently moved on to the Department of Consumer Affairs, where she’s director of city legislative affairs.) “Mary apparently took Jim Owles pro-nightlife lit off a table and threw it in the garbage because it criticized Squadron,” a source told us. (Roskoff is also a nightlife advocate.) We could not confirm that before deadline. As for Sikora, he snubbed the Owles club’s request to come in for an endorsement interview. O.K., so getting back to the invite…. Councilmember Corey Johnson is shown as a cute little mouse. (Whatever. That one was apparently the mysterious designer’s idea.) Meanwhile, former City Council candidate Yetta Kurland — what would a Roskoff invite be without Yetta Kurland? — is shown as a green asp that kills Roskoff. (Again, whatever… .) Other “cast members” of this production include Brian Ellner in the role of “Gay Marriage Profiteer,” Councilmember Vincent Gentile as “Horse-hating Closet Case” — ouch! — Gary Parker as “Who?” and Julie Menin, D.C.A. commissioner, as…well, we are not even going to print it here because it’s too insulting, and not accurate, either! The invite-only party is at the home of Bill and Marie Samuels. Among those expected to attend are the few individuals who were not skewered in the invite.
Bratton won’t go at’em: Speaking of Bratton, on Tuesday we were informed that he had bailed as the special speaker at the Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce’s “Safe Streets, Safe City” event on Thursday. Shortly after Elizabeth Butson, The Villager’s former publisher, e-mailed us the news, we got a phone call from former East Village activist John Penley, in North Carolina, who told us he had sent our Scoopy’s item from last week about Bratton’s scheduled talk to Sumumba Sobukwe, a major Occupy Wall Street organizer in New York, who subsequently posted a Facebook page announcing a protest at the event. Whether that’s what caused Bratton to cancel, we may never know for sure — after all, he’s got quite a lot going on right now — but it definitely sounds plausible. We Facebook-messaged Sobukwe about it, but didn’t hear back by press time. … Also, on the subject of Bratton and Occupy…back in 2011 we extensively interviewed the guy who last month threw fake blood on him in Times Square. After Occupy was kicked out of Zuccotti Park, Diego Ibanez, 26, was one of three Occupy protesters who staged a hunger strike outside the vacant lot at Duarte Square, at Canal St. and Sixth Ave., where Occupy hoped to land a new home to keep its flagging movement alive. But Trinity Real Estate, the lot’s owner, nixed the idea, and despite the hunger strike and a brief “taking” of the lot by Occupy, it never happened. Ibanez seemed like an O.K.-enough guy when we spoke to him on the phone. But Bratton — understandably angered at the insulting action — slammed him as a “professional agitator.”
