Outdoorsy fun for the New Year’s holiday

So, as Miss Ella once sang, What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?

Many of you, of course, will ring in 2013 with champagne and dancing at one of the clubs in Miami Beach or downtown Miami — and many of these same people will wake up with a hangover Tuesday only to wonder why they spent $2,000 to be in the same space as R&B/hip-hop act Drake and a DJ at the Fontainebleau or depressed that they spent $1,500 for a VIP table at the Catalina’s Studio 54 party to hear ’70s disco when they could have played Donna, Gloria and the Village People at any old time on iTunes for a few houseguests.

Clubbing not your thing? Good thing you live in South Florida, where going outside generally makes sense at this time of year. Here are some suggestions for activities, with an accent on the great outdoors and even a little fitness thrown in for good measure.

King Mango Strut

The annual spoof of the Orange Bowl Parade — or whatever some politician wants to call it now, as in ‘La Gran Naranja’ — has been “putting the ‘nut’ back in ‘Coconut Grove’ since 1981,” its ads tout. This time around, being an election year should provide plenty of fodder, and not just the silliness going on in West Kendall and Brickell, where some people are still waiting to cast a vote in the presidential race. (Obama won, go home.) The snarky parade pokes good-natured fun at the people and things behind the events that made the news snap during the year. This year’s grand marshal will be Clint Eastwood’s chair, fresh from the Republican National Convention.

This year’s parade takes place at 2 p.m. Sunday in downtown Coconut Grove on the corner of Commodore Plaza and Main Highway. The wacky participants turn left onto Main Highway and then left onto Grand Avenue at CocoWalk. Get comfy along the street and prepare to giggle. Call the Mango Hotline at 305-582-0955 for information.

The orange rises

You can go traditional and watch the ball rise in downtown Miami at the Bayfront Park Amphitheater New Year’s shindig, La Gran Naranja. The free event features music and the midnight countdown for the climb of the Big Orange along the side of the Hotel InterContinental, followed by fireworks. Be there at 301 N. Biscayne Blvd. Call 305-358-7550.

Just want the fireworks part? Miami Beach’s New Year’s Eve Party offers a free fireworks celebration at midnight on the beach near Ocean Drive and Eighth Street, if you can tear yourself away from Carl Cox at Mansion and Calvin Harris at Liv. Call 305-673-7400.

Bike It

Shark Valley, on the Tamiami Trail about 35 miles into the Everglades, is a real South Florida experience. Cycle amid gators — and we’re not talking the University of Florida variety. Alligators, wading birds and turtles frolic freely in the greenery along the 15-mile round-trip bike path. A multilevel observation at the midpoint offers a nice break spot for a boxed lunch or photo ops. There are no shortcuts, but you can opt for a tram tour. Call 305-221-8776.

Other leisurely bike rides around town include the shaded 13 or so miles of the Old Cutler Trail in South Miami, and you can pop over to Pinecrest Gardens for the Sunday Green Market, one of South Florida’s best farmers markets. North Dade residents aren’t too far from the restored Hollywood Beach Broadwalk for some nice ocean views while cycling or strolling.

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From Exorcist to The French Connection, William Friedkin's Finest Secrets Revealed

William Friedkin earned a Best Director Oscar for his riveting 1971 film The French Connection and earned another nomination for changing the face of horror with The Exorcist. Now, with his latest controversial film Killer Joe out on Blu-ray, the legendary director revisits some of his greatest films for ETonline and reveals the secrets behind them; discusses his thoughts on Hollywood's remake fever; and gets candid about what frightens the man who helmed one of the scariest films ever made.

Related: The Uncomfortable Sexuality of 'Killer Joe'

On the Possibility of an 'Exorcist' Sequel/Prequel, and the Real-Life Case that Inspired the Film:

"[I've been asked often], and I won't. … I've said everything that could be said about demonic possession and exorcism. I have not even seen any of the sequels, not even [William Peter] Blatty's [Exorcist III]. I would not do a prequel or a sequel, absolutely not, under no circumstances and for no amount of money. But if I could find something new to say about demonic possession, I would do a film about that. I believe, for example, the only thing that explains this kid in Connecticut is demonic possession. … "You can go and look for every goddamn reason on Earth – [James] Holmes, the kid in Colorado [that opened fire during The Dark Knight Rises screening], all of these people, Charles Whitman [the 1966 University of Texas tower sniper] – it's the devil, man. Whatever that means to you. There is a force of evil in the world."

"I know that the actual case that Blatty based his novel on was real. The 1949 case in Silver Spring, MD, where the exorcism was done at Alexian Brothers Hospital in St. Louis, all of those events happened. I read the diaries of the doctors and nurses who were involved, and the patients who were in other rooms when this was going on, and the priests. I know that something happened there that was beyond the understanding of psychiatry or internal medicine, so I made that film accordingly. … It was a boy, not a 13-year-old girl [like in the movie]. I know a great deal about this 14-year-old boy -- I know his name, I know where he is now. I've never revealed it. The church keeps very close tabs on him to this day, and as far as any of us know, he has no recollection of what happened to him when he was 14. … I spoke to the relatives of the boy, especially to his aunt, and they gave me some details that weren't in Blatty's novel, which I put in the film."

On What Scares Him:

"Once I did a documentary about El Cordobes, the Bullfighter … I asked him that question. I asked him if he was afraid of death, because when you go in the bull ring you're constantly facing death, and he said, 'No, I'm not afraid of death. Only life scares me.' One of the things that scares me is losing my own self-control. Most of the things that frighten me are sort of self-generated, or the sort of thing that happened in Connecticut to happen to one of my loved ones. Not the unexplained, but the unexpected."
"There are a handful of movies that still scare me. The shower scene and a couple of the other scenes in Psycho, the first Alien I thought was terrifying, Diabolique, a Japanese film called Yojimbo, Rosemary's Baby I thought was frightening because it made it so real and possible. These I find really are terrifying examples in cinema."

On the Flaws of the MPAA Ratings System:

"I do not target Killer Joe and other film's I've made to young people, young teenagers, even. They shouldn't come and see it. But that's up to the parents. I mean, J.J. Abrams told me that his father took him to see The Exorcist when he was eight. And I asked it if it ruined his life and he said, 'Well, obviously not.' So some people are ready and some aren't, but what the Ratings Board has failed to do, which I think should be their primary mission, is to separate adult content from out-and-out filth. … The NC-17 is definitely a Scarlet Letter, there's no question about it. It's limiting. Most of the theater chains in the country won't play an NC-17 film."

Related: 'Exorcist' Director: School Shooter is 'The Devil'

On Stealing Shots in 'The French Connection' – including that Classic Car Chase:

"On The French Connection, I never had any permits to shoot anywhere. We just went out and did it, including the chase over 26 blocks in Brooklyn. We had no permits to do any of that stuff. We never would have gotten permits then. It was simply pointless to try and get permission to do what we did. We got permission to shoot on the elevated train. We did get permission to do that, but if we hadn't, I was prepared to steal that."

"We were able to steal everything, including the traffic jam I created on the Brooklyn Bridge. But I had all these off-duty cops with me, including the two cops who made the French Connection case, Eddie Egan and Sonny Gross. And they were around with a lot of their friends, and I used them in scenes, all these off-duty cops, and they were around with their badges in case there were unsuspecting cops – and there were -- who tried to flag us down or stop us."

Filming 'To Live and Die in L.A.' was By the Book:

"[Unlike The French Connection], when I did To Live and Die in L.A., I got permission for everything, including shutting down the Vincent Thomas Bridge for a few hours on weekends only, from like six in the morning to 10 or 11. So that shot over several days because we had to avoid rush hours."

If 'Sorcerer' Could Be Made Again the Same Way:

"It would be done all CGI [today]. I had a great production designer named John Box who worked for [director] David Lean. … We came up together with a way of engineering that bridge so that it was safe, that it looked lethal, but was actually very safely constructed so there were no accidents -- knock wood. But any time you attempt something like that there's always the unexpected."

"I was obsessed with [the movie] and driven to make it. I didn't do it as a remake of Wages of Fear, I did it as a new version. Like, there's a wonderful production on Broadway now of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf starring [Killer Joe writer] Tracy Letts. It's a big smash hit, and not because it's a remake -- it's another version. Any time someone does a production of Hamlet it's not a remake, it's a new interpretation with different actors. … So I thought that Wages of Fear could be reinterpreted for a modern audience, because it dealt with certain truths. These characters were four strangers marooned in a desperate situation, hiding out from retribution, who had to either cooperate or die -- and that seems to be the world's condition today. … If we don't all cooperate, like if the countries in the Middle East don't make peace with Israel, they'll all be destroyed. It's mutually assured destruction. And that's what Sorcerer and Wages of Fear are about."

Video: Matthew McConaughey Talks 'Killer' Role

What He Thinks about Remakes Today and His Own Films Being Remade:

"Well, a lot of my films have been ripped off without even accreditation. One of the Lethal Weapon films just took the chase from To Live and Die in L.A. and recreated it with some of the same people. You know, I don't have any problem with that, especially if it's well done, because I know that films beget other films. I started out learning from other films. I never went to film school. I certainly borrowed ideas from them. I mean, I didn't steal from them, but I was influenced by them, or they pushed certain buttons. I never made a film like any of the films that inspired me. … On the other hand, I think that there is a paucity of ideas today, and so [Hollywood goes] back to what worked before, and generally they're right -- it works again, because audiences love what's familiar. They're much less tolerant of something new. They'll give a lot more space to something that's familiar [compared] to something that challenges their expectations. … It is what it is, and there's no reason to question that or to fight that. Audiences get the films they want, and they go to them in vast, vast numbers, and in the old competition between fantasy and reality, fantasy wins hands down, because people do want to be entertained and not challenged."

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Russian parliament endorses anti-US adoption bill

MOSCOW — Defying a storm of domestic and international criticism, Russia moved toward finalizing a ban on Americans adopting Russian children, as Parliament's upper house voted unanimously Wednesday in favor of a measure that President Vladimir Putin has indicated he will sign into law.

The bill is widely seen as the Kremlin's retaliation against an American law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators. It comes as Putin takes an increasingly confrontational attitude toward the West, brushing aside concerns about a crackdown on dissent and democratic freedoms.

Dozens of Russian children close to being adopted by American families now will almost certainly be blocked from leaving the country. The law also cuts off the main international adoption route for Russian children stuck in often dismal orphanages: Tens of thousands of Russian youngsters have been adopted in the U.S. in the past 20 years. There are about 740,000 children without parental care in Russia, according to UNICEF.

All 143 members of the Federation Council present voted to support the bill, which has sparked criticism from both the U.S. and Russian officials, activists and artists, who say it victimizes children by depriving them of the chance to escape the squalor of orphanage life. The vote comes days after Parliament's lower house overwhelmingly approved the ban.

The U.S. State Department said Wednesday it regretted the Russian parliament's decision.

"Since 1992, American families have welcomed more than 60,000 Russian children into their homes, providing them with an opportunity to grow up in a family environment," spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement from Washington. "The bill passed by Russia's parliament would prevent many children from enjoying this opportunity ...

"It is misguided to link the fate of children to unrelated political considerations," he said.

Seven people with posters protesting the bill were detained outside the Council before Wednesday's vote. "Children get frozen in the Cold War," one poster read. Some 60 people rallied in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city.

The bill is part of larger legislation by Putin-allied lawmakers retaliating against a recently signed U.S. law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators. Although Putin has not explicitly committed to signing the bill, he strongly defended it in a press conference last week as "a sufficient response" to the new U.S. law.

Originally Russia's lawmakers cobbled together a more or less a tit-for-tat response to the U.S. law, providing for travel sanctions and the seizure of financial assets in Russia of Americans determined to have violated the rights of Russians.

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90-year-old real estate baron, philanthropist Jay Kislak is forever young

Real estate baron Jay I. Kislak discovered a Fountain of Youth of sorts that springs from an inquisitive and acquisitive mind.

At 90, Kislak is wheeling and dealing in real estate, and he’s exploring history and art with the fervor of a man generations younger.

The patriarch of The Kislak Organization marked 74 years in real estate this year, 59 spent in Miami.

While he has long since appointed a protégé, Thomas Bartelmo, as president and CEO of the diverse family-owned real-estate businesses, Kislak remains chairman. And he is a regular at the headquarters in Miami Lakes.

That is, when he’s not off to Maine for the summer.

Or busy chairing a blue-ribbon commission named by the U.S. Interior Secretary to orchestrate the 450th anniversary in 2015 of the founding of St. Augustine.

Or jetting off to evaluate a possible acquisition. (Kislak recently looked at the potential for real estate development in North Dakota, booming with shale oil, but decided to pass.)

Kislak’s empire has gone through dramatic changes over the years. He built — and eventually sold — commercial banking, mortgage servicing and insurance firms.

Today, with annual revenue in excess of $28 million, his organization focuses on the commercial brokerage business started by his father, Julius Kislak, in Hoboken, N.J., more than a century ago; on owning a portfolio of apartments and other property (Kislak is on the prowl for more), and on managing funds of property-tax certificates, a niche created by the economic downturn.

Looking out his office window at a bustling interchange recently, Kislak mused: “I remember when they built the Palmetto Expressway and you could drive down it and never see another car.”

“The same thing with I-95: There was hardly any traffic,” said Kislak, a slender man with a signature mustache and a thick Hoboken accent that never faded.

Kislak moved to Miami in 1953 to grow the mortgage business, but his world view hardly dates to 1950s Florida. Already a book lover, he began pulling on a thread of Florida history, soon broadening his interest to the early Americas.

Over the decades, Kislak, bankrolled by a stream of brokerage commissions, mortgage fees and apartment rent, grew into a prominent collector of rare books and maps, manuscripts, artifacts and art to feed his fascination with the pre-Columbian era and the European exploration of America.

His wife Jean Kislak shares his passion for collecting. They met at a party for Andy Warhol; it would be her second marriage, his third. Their quest for art, history and collecting has taken them to all continents, even Antarctica.

“We don’t quit [collecting]. But we are going to quit,” said Jean, a former corporate art director. “Acquisition has always been a part of my life. I don’t know if it’s a sickness.”

In 2004, Kislak gave away much of the treasure. His foundation donated more than 3,000 rare maps, manuscripts, paintings and artifacts to the Library of Congress. The gift, estimated to be worth in excess of $150 million, is housed in the ornate Thomas Jefferson building in an exhibit that bears his name. Kislak also funds fellowships for studies of the collection, part of his diverse efforts over the years to support education. Among other things, his family foundation endowed the Kislak Real Estate Institute at Monmouth University, in West Long Branch, N.J., and has provided key support to a real estate program at Florida State University.

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Causeway victim Ronald Poppo finds peace but not healing

When Ronald Poppo was a kid in the 1950s and ’60s, a family Christmas in Brooklyn meant wind-up model trains circling the tree, Italian dinners of lasagna and stuffed squid, and, because Dec. 25 was also his father’s birthday, ricotta-filled cassata cake.

There was always music, because the Poppos have musical talent. Ronnie, as his older sister and two older brothers called him, played the violin as a child and guitar as a teenager.

And there was church, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as their mother was a devout Baptist.

An aunt brought Christmas presents, recalled Ronald’s sister, Antoinette Poppo, who still lives in New York.

“We were poor, but we didn’t know we were poor,’’ she said.

It’s hard to say when Ronald Poppo last enjoyed childhood Christmas memories, had a merry — or even comfortable — Christmas. After vanishing from the family in the early 1970s, he encamped on the gritty streets of Miami, an inebriated vagrant drifting ever further from the mainstream.

His last known home was the concrete stairwell of a tourist-attraction parking garage.

He surfaced again May 26 as the hapless victim in one of South Florida’s most sensational, blood-drenched crimes. That day, a naked, crazed, 31-year-old Rudy Eugene attacked 65-year-old Poppo on the MacArthur Causeway, stripping away his clothes then gnawing on Poppo’s face, leaving him mutilated and blind.

Police shot and killed Eugene about 18 minutes into the assault.

Through news of the event, Poppo’s stunned siblings learned he’d been alive all along, and people from his past began to emerge with snippets of information about his life before he disappeared onto the streets.

Following intensive medical treatment at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Poppo moved to Jackson Memorial Perdue Medical Center, an 11-acre, 163-bed nursing home/rehab facility in South Miami-Dade, its halls now cheerily decked with holiday decorations.

He has refused all interview requests since the incident, and apart from allowing doctors to hold a news conference in June, he hasn’t authorized his treating physicians to talk about his medical condition.

Jackson officials closely guard his privacy.

Photos displayed at the June news conference showed Poppo’s face as a mass of clots and raw tissue, his eye sockets hidden under flaps of skin, his nose gone, his cheeks and forehead partially so. Doctors had to remove one mangled eyeball but at the time hoped to save the other, and at least some sight.

They weren’t able to.

His sister says that when they talk, brother Ronnie doesn’t mention the attack, the past, or how he spends his time. But he did recently say that he likes his accommodations and the people who care for him.

“He says they take him outside and walk him around the place,’’ Antoinette Poppo said. “He’s glad to be there. ... He doesn’t really talk much at all. He says, ‘Take care of yourself.’ It’s so sad he can’t see, and has to depend on other people.’’

He told her that “his face hasn’t healed yet,’’ but that he doesn’t want more surgery because “it’s going to hurt.’’

If so inclined, Poppo could have participated in all sorts of Christmas festivities at Perdue, where well-wishers from The Cocoplum and Cutler Ridge Women’s Clubs, the Soroptimist Club of Coral Gables, the Grupo de Kendall, Bethel Baptist Church, and the Teddy Bear Club brought gifts for residents including shampoo, batteries, home-made goodies — and teddy bears.

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10 Talented Dogs Playing the Piano

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Lady Gaga Documentary Announced

The nearly 33 million Little Monsters who follow Lady Gaga on Twitter got a massive Christmas present this morning as the singer revealed she'll soon be coming to a theater near you!

VIDEO - Lady Gaga Hosts Fame Picnic in Paris

"Merry Christmas little monsters," Gaga wrote. "Terry Richardson is making a #LadyGagaMOVIE documenting my life, the creation of ARTPOP + you!"

"Thank you for being so patient waiting for my new album ARTPOP I hope this gets u excited for things to come. I love you with all my heart!" Gaga announced her fourth album on August 6, 2012 and featured several of the songs in contention for inclusion on her recent Born This Wall Ball. Although no release date is yet known, it's rumored to be due out in Spring 2013.

VIDEO - The Secret Lady Gaga Never Told Beyonce

Gaga has previously collaborated with Richardson on countless magazine covers and 2011's Lady Gaga x Terry Richardson photobook.

Lady Gaga won't be the only major musician to be featured in a documentary next year. It was revealed on November 26 that HBO would be airing a Beyonce documentary on February 16, 2013.

VIDEO - Get A Sneak Peek at Beyonce's Documentary

The film promises extensive first-person footage -- some of it shot by Beyonce on her laptop -- in which she reflects on the realities of being a celebrity, the refuge she finds onstage and the joys of becoming a mother after giving birth to her daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, in January 2012. Watch a sneak peek below.

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Upstate NY madman left chilling suicide note before luring firefighters to death; cops say another body found

William H. Spengler Jr.

A homicidal maniac -- bent to “do what I like doing best: killing people" -- left a chilling suicide note before torching his neighborhood and murdering two firefighters, police revealed this morning.

Cops also today said they’ve found a third victim of ex-con William Spengler Jr.’s murderous rampage, discovering a body, probably of his 67-year-old sister Cheryl, in the charred rubble of their home.

The Spengler siblings hated each other and lived on opposite ends of the house, neighbors said, and when she couldn’t be found yesterday, police feared the worst.

"We did locate apparent human remains in the ruins of the house at 191 Lake Road. The medical examiner has removed those remains,” Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said this afternoon.

UPSTATE MADMAN SETS BLAZE TO LURE FIREFIGHTERS TO DEATH

"The medical examiner will be working on the identification and I'm assuming that's going to take quite a period of time. The assumption is that is the shooter's sister."

Earlier today, cops disclosed that William Spengler -- a loser mama’s boy who once spent 17 years in prison for beating his grandmother to death -- penned a murderous three-page missive, telling the world why he turned a quiet lakeside neighborhood into hell on earth.

“I still have to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down and do what I like doing best: killing people,” Spengler wrote his suicide note, made public by police.

REUTERS

A house burns after Spengler set fire to it.

Spengler, 62, set his home -- in the tight-knit, upstate town of Webster, just outside Rochester -- ablaze early yesterday morning to lure volunteer firefighters to the scene. The gutless killer then methodically shot four of those fireman, two fatally, before blowing his brains out.

"There was no motive in the note...there were some ramblings in there,” Pickering said. “There was intelligence information that we obtained that our investigators need to follow up on. It spoke mainly that he intended to burn his neighborhood down and kill as many people as possible."

Four whiskey bottles, filled with gasoline, were found unspent against his house, law enforcement sources told WHEC-TV.

Spengler ignited his deadly blaze with a flare gun that was recovered at the scene, the local NBC affiliate reported.

The sadistic killer was found with a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, Mossman 12-gauge shotgun and a Bushman semi-automatic AR-15 rifle with 30-shot magazine, police said. Crazed gunman Adam Lanza used the same make of Bushman rifle in the tragic Newtown, CT shooting earlier this month.

As a convicted felon, Spengler had no legal right to possess guns so cops want to trace those weapons.

Police are exploring connections Spengler and his late mom, Arline, had to the West Webster Fire Department, officials said.

Spengler first torched his family’s home on Lake Road, where Irondequoit Bay meets Lake Ontario, at around 5:45 a.m. — then lay in wait for his unsuspecting prey.

Crouched like a sniper and armed with a rifle and a handgun, Spengler targeted responding firefighters from behind an earthen berm that gave him a clear shot, said Pickering.

“He took a position of cover to be a sniper to shoot the first responders . . . It does appear it was a trap that was set,’’ a grim-faced Pickering said.

It’s unclear why Spengler targeted the men, although he was having personal problems.

He lived with a sister he hated, neighbors said, in the same house where he had fatally bludgeoned his 92-year-old grandmother with a hammer in 1980.

Spengler’s beloved mother, Arline died in October. In her obituary, donations were directed to the “West Webster Firemen’s Association (Ambulance Fund).’’ It wasn’t immediately clear why.

"As far as motive, all kinds of speculation, and truthfully, we do not know. They're trying to draw a nexus, I know, between the donations of the mother to the fire department. There could be a nexus to 33 years ago when Webster police arrested him for murdering his grandmother,” Pickering said.

“We are aware of it and trying to figure out the connection,” said a source with the sheriff’s office.

One of Spengler’s victims yesterday, 43-year-old Michael Chiapperini, was a volunteer with the West Webster Fire District and a lieutenant in the town’s police department, where he also served as a media liaison.

The selfless Chiapperini, who spent 20 years as cop, had spent time in Suffolk County last month, volunteering for Hurricane Sandy cleanup duty, officials said.

He had just been named a local “Firefighter of the Year.”

He is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son who also worked with the volunteer fire department.

The other man killed was volunteer Tomasz Kaczowka, a 19-year-old 911 dispatcher and a community-college student with dreams of becoming a full-time firefighter.

“These people get up in the middle of the night to fight fires,” said Pickering, choking back tears. “They don’t expect to be shot and killed.”

Two more volunteer firefighters, Joseph Hofstetter and Theodore Scardino, were wounded by bullets. A cop suffered injuries from shrapnel. All three were expected to survive.

Hofstetter, who also works full time for the Rochester Fire Department, was hit in the pelvis and the bullet lodged in his spine. Scardino was hit in the chest and knee.

The firefighters had to fall back after shots were first fired, allowing flames from Spengler’s home to spread to neighboring houses.

Spengler then traded shots with officers who arrived with an armored truck they used to remove the injured, as well as people living nearby.

He was chased on foot from his perch, then killed himself before he could be subdued, cops said.

Four houses burned to the ground and four more were damaged by the time the blaze was brought under control.

Dozens of people had to be evacuated from the smoldering area on Christmas Eve.

During the gunfight, emergency radio communications captured someone frantically saying he “could see the muzzle flash coming at [him],” as Spengler fired.

The audio, posted on the Web site RadioReference.com, also had someone reporting, “Firefighters are down!” and saying, “Got to be rifle or shotgun — high-powered . . . semi or fully auto.”

It would have been illegal for Spengler, as a convicted felon, to possess any firearm at all.

Sheriff Patrick O’Flynn said he couldn’t help thinking about the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., and other mass shootings in recent years.

“It’s sad to see this is becoming more commonplace . . . across the nation,” O’Flynn said.

At West Webster Fire Station 1, there were 20 bouquets on a bench in front. Another bouquet had roses with three gold-and-white ribbons saying, “May they rest in peace,” “In the line of duty,” and, “In memory of our fallen brothers.”

Gov. Cuomo asked New Yorkers to pray for the firefighters’ families, victimized by this “senseless act of violence.”

Last December, a 15-year-old boy doused his home in Webster with gasoline and set it ablaze, killing his father and two brothers, ages 12 and 16.

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Miami: We’re still busiest cruise port

Florida’s ports are steaming bow-to-bow in the race to be the world’s businest cruise ship port.

Though some publications have reported Port Canaveral in the lead with 3,761,056 million for its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, PortMiami officials Monday said they had hosted 3,774,452 passengers during the same period, putting it slightly ahead. Fort Lauderdale’s PortEverglades reported 3,689,000 passengers for the period, putting it slightly behind the others in third place.

“We’re all very close,’’ said Paula Musto, PortMiami spokeswoman.

PortMiami has slipped below its previous high of 4 million plus passengers because of changing ship deployments, she said. That number is expected to again cruise past 4 million in 2013 as several new ships homeport in Miami.

Jane Wooldridge

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South Florida Christians immerse themselves in the spirit

In the days leading up to Christmas, Brenda Lans, a Miami law-firm administrative assistant, sang religious carols with other Lutherans to harried travelers at Miami International Airport.

Jorge Rollo, an office manager, oversaw the sprawling Gift of Bethlehem tableau on the grounds of St. John Neumann Catholic Church in southwest Miami-Dade.

Teenage siblings Coraliz and Dennis Morales shivered in the chilly darkness outside Faith Presbyterian Church in Pembroke Pines as characters in a Living Nativity.

Count them all among the Christians who believe that taking religion public during the late-December shopping frenzy helps make “Keep Christ in Christmas’’ and “Jesus is the Reason for the Season’’ more than bumper-sticker slogans.

Whether in small groups — the Rev. David Imhoff of Grace Lutheran Church in Miami Springs called his 13 carolers a “flash mob for Jesus’’ — or casts of hundreds like the Gift of Bethlehem, the activities become missions for the faithful.

“On a spiritual level, it was so rewarding,’’ said Lans, 55, who isn’t in a church choir and described her singing contribution as “backup noise’’ to those with good voices. “It’s good to get back to the old traditions of caroling which give you the true meaning of Christmas...I felt uplifted doing that.’’

Another caroler, Elizabeth Maldonado, said that singing “Away in the Manger,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and “Silent Night” for TSA agents, travelers and rental-car agents fulfills an obligation to evangelize, but in a way that doesn’t put people off.

“That’s the greatest commission, to go spread the Gospel,’’ said Maldonado, 53, who sang with her husband, George Sr., 52, and son George Jr., 13.

“Jesus commanded us to do that...Christmas is about the birth of our Savior, but some forget and some have not been told,’’ she said. “The only way to reach them is through love, not to criticize. You can’t push God into their lives, but you can show Him by your actions.’’

Coraliz, an 18-year-old Flanagan High School student, said she was freezing on Friday night when she spent two hours as a shepherd in the Living Nativity scene, as traffic whizzed by on Taft Street, but she didn’t mind.

“Advent is really special,’’ she said. “It’s a time when you honor Christ and thank Him for everything he has done for you, and you have to remember that this day of Christmas is the day that He brought His son to save us. As a Christian, that’s the biggest day of the year. I think it’s really easy to forget what we’re celebrating, and it reminds people what the point is.’’

“We get so wrapped up in Santa and shopping and parties, which are all wonderful, but in reality, this is the birth of the man who gave way to our salvation, and that’s to be celebrated,’’ said Rollo. He called the Gift of Bethlehem, which recreated life in the town where Jesus was born — right down to the lepers, horses, and open-fire bread bakers — “a celebration of our faith and spirituality, and that 2,000 years ago, Mary and Joseph put their faith in God and had this baby.’’

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