Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It's a little cold but otherwise the weather is perfect for a wild St. Patrick's Day. Take one of the craziest party days of the year and have it fall on a Saturday and, well, it's gonna be one big day!

The parade kicks off on Fifth Avenue and I'm sure it'll be one of the best attended parades in recent memory. Also, several LGBT groups will be marching which is a great thing (there's been a LOT of controversy about this over the years, nay decades).

So, if you're Irish (like me!) let all debauchery begin! (Don't get too drunk.)

Will Weinstein walk -- or go away?

It's been several months since Harvey Weinstein fell from grace, exposed as a sexual predator. This begs the question: will he go to jail?

He probably should have been charged several years ago but, for various reasons, wasn't. But rumor has it that the Manhattan DA is poised to arrest him soon. How soon? We shall see. 

This saga will, apparently, just go on and on and on ...

A (Very, Very, Very, Very) Short History of Eatin', Drinkin', Partyin', and Crashin' in NYC

Several years ago a friend of mine and I were walking around Soho with a girl he was briefly dating. We walked passed a restaurant (don't remember the name now) and she pointed at it, noting, "My friend used to work there. She had sex with the chef on a table."

My immature reaction was, naturally, "Cool! (And can I get her number?)"

Of course, that kind of "hanky-panky" goes on in restaurants (and lots of other businesses) all the time; as we've learned, frighteningly, it isn't always consensual. It's never appropriate. But, for a long time, it was normal.

And yet ... there's always been a romantic allure to the high-end NYC restaurant world. While it's always been a exhausting, poor-paying, and incredibly insecure profession, it's also full of glamour, celebrity, and, yes, sex appeal. That's why people are trying to break into this business more than ever before.  

Interestingly enough, the high-end hotel industry doesn't have quite the same allure of restaurants (how many celebrity hoteliers can you think of, besides Ian Shrager?) but, it goes without saying, there are many hotels in NYC where "if these walls could talk ..." Take, for instance, the Gramercy Hotel, the crash pad of choice for numerous rock stars like David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, and Lou Reed, just to name a few. Needless to say, back in the day, pure bedlam ensued at the Gramercy when these rock gods and their entourages crashed there. 

That said, you can still seem some bedlam -- more to the point, dancing female bartenders -- at the infamous Coyote Ugly saloon. Yes, it's same place that a movie was made about several years back and it's still going strong. It recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. I have yet to go and should (after all, I've meet to the real Mystic Pizza that's in Connecticut!). In this #MeToo era, a long-lasting business in NYC that was established and run by women should be celebrated.

Eating, drinking, partying, and crashing in NYC -- you can't beat it. 

Helicopter Crash in the East River

Nathan Lane: Broadway Legend

I've seen the great Nathan Lane on stage more than any other actor, in both musicals and plays, over the course of 20+ years -- Laughter on the 23rd Floor, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Producers, It's Only a Play, The Front Page. 

He's amazing stage presence, he electrifies the audience and makes any material he's working with even better. He's the best.

I hope to see him soon in the revival of Angels in America where he'll play the loathsome lawyer (and Trump mentor) Roy Cohn. Meanwhile, I enjoyed, and you will too, this big interview he did where he reflected on his career and the life of Roy Cohn -- and how he's more like us than we care to admit. 

Last of the Beats

I don't want to be rich, famous, or even that good-looking. I just want to be remembered -- fondly. 

Fondly remembered by those who knew me -- and perhaps by some who wish they had.

To me, being fondly remembered is the only measure of a life well-lived. Everything else is puffery, nonsense. A person's real legacy exists in the hearts and minds of those who remember.

I never knew or heard of a man named Hassan Heiserman during his lifetime, but I wish I had. He was one of the last people to come of age during the "Beat Generation" and he knew them all -- he was Allan Ginsburg's roommate, Jack Kerouac created a character in his novel Big Sur after him, and he was Miles Davis' drug dealer. More than that, Hassan was a man on the move, living (squatting really) mostly in NYC but also wandering the country, meeting interesting people, having adventures, and experiencing life to the fullest. He was a man of his times who observed and lived them, he was a walking chronicler of his age. He was "groovy", a real "beat", in the very best meaning of the terms. And, after his recent death, he was very fondly remembered.

Hassan wasn't rich -- far, far from it. Most of his life he was homeless, crashing on people's couches, he never really had a real career except for driving a cab, he lived on the edge, on the fringe, in perpetual movement. Up until the end of his life. 

And even though I and many of the people I know have many more material, earthly goods than he did, I envy him. He saw and experienced it all. He lived a full life. Nothing groovier. 

I probably won't be remembered. This blog will probably won't be remembered. But I'll try to live a full life -- and maybe, like Hassan, be remembered a little bit fondly by someone.

Meet the First NYC Night Mayor

Finally! After this new job was created by the city government in September, 2017, people were wondering when NYC would get its first "night mayor."

Now we got one. It's a lady!

Her name is Ariel Palitz, a former nightclub owner. She will be a liaison between the city and the nightlife world. I'm sure it'll be a fun -- and exhausting -- job.

Good luck!

Elaine Chao is a B%@#$

Pacino's Way

Al Pacino is one of the greatest actors in history and still going strong -- he has a new movie where he plays Joe Paterno premiering on HBO in April, and he's making his third movie with Robert De Niro -- also his first with Martin Scorsese -- due out in the next year or so. But he has made so many great movies over the last almost 50 years that the time has come for "retrospectives."

And there's going to be a huge one in NYC starting next week! 

If you love movies, love Pacino's acting, then you must go the Quad Cinema from March 14 to 30 where over 30 of his films -- from his 1970s classics to much more recent ones -- will be playing. All the greats, and some of the not so greats, are playing in it, and what's so cool is that Pacino himself was involved in putting this together!

All the movies you love him from are in this: The Godfathers, Scarface, Dog Day Afternoon, and Heat, among many, many others. Even better, a new movie and -- a documentary about the movie -- called Salome and Wilde Salome are premiering on March 30 to conclude this event.

Needless to say, many of Pacino's best movies are set in NYC (again, The Godfathers, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Panic in Needle Park, Sea of Love, The Devil's Advocate, and Carlito's Way). But the Boy from the Bronx also made other cities look cool, bringing his tremendous talent and New York attitude to Los Angeles in Heat, to Baltimore in ... And Justice for All, Miami in Scarface and Any Given Sunday, and Alaska in Insomnia. The man just oozes this city.

No actor I can think of has ever uttered so many memorable lines in film. Among them:

"I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!"

"Attica! Attica! Attica!"

"You're out of order!"

"Say hello to ma' lil' friend!"

"Who-ahhh!"
"You want big time? You gonna die big time!"

"'Cause she's got a greeeattttttt ass!" 

And many more. Pacino is an interesting cat, always discovering himself in the characters he plays. You gotta read this interview he gave about this retrospective -- he really is Wild Pacino. 

Bad Cop, Good Job

Every so often a police officer who commits a crime will go on trial -- and inevitably be acquitted. Juries and judges have shown that they just don't have the internal fortitude to send criminal cops to jail.

And that's just for the cases that go to trial -- as we know, in the case of Eric Garner, the cop who murdered him didn't even face charges.

Very often, after the bad cops beat the legal rap, we hear that they'll face "internal discipline" or "possible termination." The idea being peddled to the public is: Okay, bad cops won't go to jail -- can't do that, it'll kill police morale and harm law enforcement moving forward, cops in jail will be living prey, it's just too dangerous -- but they'll get fired so they won't menace in a badge anymore so we can all -- pun intended -- breath easier. 

But that almost never happens. Bad cops very often stay on the job for a long, long time. Eric Garner's murdered remains on the force nearly four years later.  

Why?

Buzzfeed has just published a long, bombshell report on how the NYPD protects its worst actors. It has designed internal systems and processes to make sure that no bad cops suffer consequences for their actions. 

It's the kind of thing that, depending where you sit, you either find infuriating or reassuring. But it shows that accountability in law enforcement and NYPD practices remain, even in the late second decade of the 21st century, very much stuck in the past.