Suzanne
Whitestone
Age: 17
Ht: 5’6”
Wt: 104 lbs.  

Suzanne spends her days as a veterinary technician in her Whitestone neighborhood, but at night dreams of runways and fashion magazines. 

After all it’s only natural — modeling is in her blood, she explained.

“I have five aunts, they were all models, and before that my grandmother was a model too, so, obviously, I took an interest in it,” she said.

However, this recent high school graduate doesn’t have her head permanently in the clouds – she understands that models go in and out of style faster than Madonna’s hair color.

“I would love to be in magazines, but it’s more like a hobby for me, because I have a career too.  I know what it’s like – you get older and nobody wants you,” Suzanne said.

So, for the immediate future, Suzanne’s going to stick with the critters. She can’t help it, she says, it’s just too hard to stay way from anything furry and playful!

“I want to be a vet.  I love animals, I want to learn more about diseases, and how I could help animals out.”

At home, Suzanne says she has two bearded dragons, types of lizards imported from Australia. 

As far as her stomping grounds of Whitestone go, Suzanne said she couldn’t be happier.

“It’s so nice and safe, there are lots of cops around here,” she said.

I Love Lucy  

Actress Lucy Liu said in a recent interview accompanied by a total of five assistants, “Not once, have I ever felt I wasn’t in control of my own destiny.” And the 5-foot-1 Liu said that she gained that confidence and her fiery spirit growing up in the multicultural area of Jackson Heights with her Chinese immigrant parents.

She told the reporter, “I think anyone who is first-generation is going to have an adjustment period.”  If your parents are not from America, you’re basically living in a different culture, with a different set of rules at home.

Liu, who is working on two films in L.A. — one being the sequel to the box-office hit, “Charlie’s Angels” and the other a Quentin Tarantino flick “Kill Bill,” — is also featured in a film out this week, “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.”

Liu graduated from I.S. 145 in Jackson Heights and attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan.  She later went to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she got a B.A. in Asian studies.

Isn’t It Ironic?

Remember Flushing City Council candidate Ryan Walsh? The guy who ran in 2001 on the Republican line and lost to John Liu. 

The guy who was almost knocked off the ballot after Green Party candidate Paul Graziano questioned the legitimacy of his petition signatures.

The guy who was basically dubbed guilty but was able to stay on the ballot because of a procedural technicality. 

Special Referee Lancelot Hewitt wrote in his analysis that Walsh’s designating petition “is permeated by fraud in that a significant number of signatures obtained by him or by other subscribing witnesses are forgeries, and that the invalidation of the entire designating petition is warranted.”

Remember that guy?

Apparently, the NYC Board of Elections doesn’t, because they hired Walsh as a voting coordinator for the Benjamin Rosenthal Senior Center in Flushing. Talk about the blind leading the blind.

LL Cool James?

    LL Cool J, the hip-hop maestro who gave himself his now-instantly-recognizable handle as an aspiring youth growing up in St. Albans, will be ditching his name in his next big screen role, according to published reports.

    For the first time, the rapper will be credited by his real name – James Todd Smith – for his part in Columbia Pictures’ “S.W.A.T.,” where he’ll be onscreen with mega-star Samuel L. Jackson, and  up-and-comer Michelle Rodriguez.

    LL Cool J’s self-made acronym stands for Ladies Love Cool James, a fact to which area fans can likely attest.

            In the action movie based upon the 1970s ABC show of the same name,  LL Cool J – er, Smith – will be playing a member of a team of cops responsible for transporting a high profile criminal.

A Queens Surreal Victorian Trip

    When people drive by 150-50 Coolidge Ave. in Jamaica Hills for the first time, they usually slow down.

    What makes the gawkers do their thing is homeowner Greg Petaludis’s obsession with decorating. But this is no ordinary home, and Greg is no ordinary decorator.

    The front of the house sports such distinctive features as a 30-foot pole with an American flag, a three-foot-high court jester inside an 1892 fence salvaged from a local mausoleum, two iron wind ornaments, street signs that say “Neighbors Home Watch Protected Area” and “Slow Children Playing,” the seal of the president, a bronze cherub in a fountain, a classical nude sculpture of a woman, custom iron grape vines designed by Petaludis himself, Victorian moldings, barber shop-style awnings and lots of foliage.

    Petaludis, who describes himself as an artist and designer and runs a photo restoration and mail-order video company from his basement, mixes almost as many different colors as materials and styles. Most of the materials and items in the Petaludis house are from local salvage and antique shops. 

    The inside of the house is also quite unique, somewhat of a multi-room cabinet of curiosities.

    And how does Petaludis respond to criticism about the house, which he says comes from almost half the people who pass by?

    “I don’t look at it they way you do,” Petaludis says to his critics.  “It’s painted metal and wood put together in a form imagined in my mind.”