Ever since he came into office, Elie Mystal had this little describer right after his name: D-Amityville.

I guess we should have been writing D-God Only Knows.

Did he live on Colonial Road in Copiague? Or in a house on Klarman Court in Huntington Station, listed in his wife's name? Or a house in Palm Beach County, Fla., where the wife and stepdaughters spend their time?

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And Vito thought the DWI might be a problem!

Hardly anyone's even talking about drunk driving now.

Somewhere between the "special friend" and the "love child," the issue of Vito Fossella's .17 blood-alcohol count kinda lost its fizz. Another family-values politician, hoarse from telling other people how to live their lives, was forced to explain his own.

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It's a little surprising, all this mogul attention.

Weren't newspapers already supposed to be dead?

Rupert, Mort and Chuck - lots of things have been said about all three of them. But I don't believe I've ever heard these men described as dumb. They've all made fortunes in tough, competitive businesses. And now they're fighting mightily for the chance to own us.

They must know something, right?

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The verdict is in. The players have spoken. The victim is still in the ground.

But why such an awkward interlude after the Sean Bell case?

No immediate uproar. And no end in sight.

Just a sigh that the state trial is over -- and a widespread assumption that something more will come.

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It's Sean Bell let-down time.

After all the witness testimony, after all the demonstrations on the Queens courthouse steps, after all the press conferences and the finger-pointing and the outraged ministers and the detective union rants -- after all of it, two immutable facts remain.

A young man was shot to death the night before his wedding. And everyone is worse off as a result. Sean Bell, only the most egregiously.

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What? You thought the pope could come to Ground Zero and not meet Mychal Judge?

World Trade Center Victim 0001, the late Franciscan friar is sometimes called.

But honestly, it's impossible to think of Father Mike as a victim of anything. And no one phrase could ever sum up his multifaceted priesthood.

Fire Department chaplain. High-spirited Irishman. Recovering alcoholic. Early AIDS fighter. Charismatic presence wherever he went. Tireless comforter of the depressed, the impoverished, the angry, the forgotten, the grieving, the abused, the disease-ridden and anyone else who ever showed up at his door near Penn Station, just needing someone to talk to. In his brown robe and sandals, he was the ultimate street priest of New York, always remembering that Jesus didn't spend his days with the pure and the haughty. Mike too did his work among lowly, struggling sinners, a group that on any given day will include most of us.

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It's not the political season. It's the political-theater season.

And standing in the bright lights at center stage, the male and female leads keep flubbing their lines.

What do you mean "sniper fire," Hillary?

What's with the "bitter," Barack?

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You can't say this pope is ducking controversy.

For three straight days, Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out on the priest sex-abuse scandal -- and Thursday met with victims from Boston. All that was before he even landed in New York. God only knows what issues we'll inspire him to address during his weekend here.

When the Holy Father decided to skip Boston on this trip, some pope-o-philes knew immediately what that meant: He was trying to avoid "ground zero" of the worst embarrassment in modern Catholic history, with thousands of youthful victims and $2 billion in legal judgments already paid.

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Sounds so promising, doesn't it? And let's be frank. It's not like the Old Suburbia can't be improved upon.

Sixty years in, no one likes the endless sprawl, the awful traffic or waiting on hold for Cablevision to answer the damn phone!

So what's so new about the New Suburbia? We may soon find out. This coming week, developers Charles Wang and Scott Rechler are filing plans with the Town of Hempstead. They envision a $2-billion something-or-other on a 77-acre piece of land where the Nassau Coliseum now stands, somewhat droopily. (Old Suburbia, definitely!)

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So have you mailed your check yet to the Bernard Kerik Legal Defense Trust?

Personally, I'm waiting 'til they start accepting PayPal. And with so much of keriklegaltrust.com still "under construction," that could be a while.

You don't think Bernie's waiting for one of those mobbed-up contractors to get the programming done?

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