NYC's Ray Donovan

Remember The Wolf in Pulp Fiction? 

"I solve problems," he proudly declares.

This type of person is more commonly known as a "fixer", the person called in to solve difficult, embarrassing, expensive, potentially life-shattering messes that people, usually wealthy people, stupidly get themselves into. 

In movies like Pulp Fiction or Michael Clayton, and TV shows like Ray Donovan, fixers are usually asked to dispose of dead bodies, intimidate people, engage in blackmail (or get blackmailers to back off), launder money, and destroy or hide incriminating evidence. Fixers are usually smart, skilled, stealthy, shadowy -- they operate behind the scenes, undercover, quickly and efficiently. They keep the appearance of law abiding respectability intact for their clients -- even when it couldn't be further from the truth. 

Michael Cohen, the Trump's lawyer whose home and offices were just raided, fancies himself the president's fixer. The problem is that he's an idiot who loves the limelight and actually makes his client's problems worse!   

But not all fixers are sleazy accomplices. Some are, in fact, just good public servants.

Meet Stanley Brezenoff. 

He's an eighty-year old lifetime public servant who has worked in and out of city government for decades. He was a deputy mayor under Koch and has held a variety of jobs where he has usually fixed agencies under duress. De Blasio has called on Stanley's services multiple times since taking office.

Stanley's latest assignment: fixing NYCHA, the public housing authority that has fallen into dysfunction. Stanley is coming in to turn around he troubled agency and will hopefully improve the lives of its 400,000 residents. 

He's basically the fixer of NYC, our own Ray Donovan, and it's great that, even at his age, he feels the call to serve. 

Or, as De Blasio probably said when he found out that Stanley would help, "Well s!@t yeah, n$gro, that's all you had to say!"