Summer doldrums? Nonsense! It was a New York week replete with events, affairs, controversies, milestones, and even a happening or two. In midtown, scientists released a fake “terror gas” in three locations to see how it would spread. This may have been the biggest release of gas in the city since Ed Koch’s third mayoral term. In Washington Square, a 47-year-old former model named Halal Faisal pulled a Lady Godiva by stripping naked to protest the American presence in Iraq, as a crowd of onlookers thoughtfully ogled the antiwar slogans on her body. Up in the Bronx, a squiffy teenager stunned and delighted a Yankee Stadium crowd by taking a five-story leap into the netting behind home plate. “That was the only exciting thing that happened today,” groused George Steinbrenner after the Yanks went on to lose the game 2-1. It was subsequently revealed that the foolish teen, Scott Harper, was an aspiring white rapper from Armonk whose hip-hop name is “Non-Existent.” A strong odor of scandal emanated from St. Patrick’s as its (now ex-) rector, Monsignor Eugene Clark, tried to explain away photos taken by a private detective of what seemed to be an adulterous encounter he had with his “leggy” (and married) assistant in a Hamptons “love shack.” The news about the 79-year-old priest—who once sermonized that the United States was “probably the most immoral country in the Western Hemisphere”—had some local Catholics wondering whether the money they put in the collection plate wasn’t going for Viagra. The health department urged all city restaurants to stop serving food containing “trans fats,” putting at risk such basse cuisine favorites as diner fries and the black-and-white cookie. A trio of deaths—Peter Jennings at 67, author Judith “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” Rossner at 70, and parking-garage magnate Abe Hirschfeld at 85—seemed to define three essential aspects of New York: urbane, noir, and meshuga. Finally (and inexplicably), a survey revealed that Americans view the Big Apple as the most humorless place in the nation, inspiring the Post to come up with the moniker “No-Yuk City”—which is, of course, extremely funny.