While the presidential races heats up, it's important for us citizens to remember that there are many other elections coming up this year that will have as much, if not even more, impact on our lives than who does or doesn't win the presidency in November.
Here in NYC there are a batch of Democratic primaries for state legislative seats that are shaping up to be very competitive -- at least if some of the latest campaign financing reports mean anything. A number of challengers are outraising incumbents and snagging endorsements. Also, the primaries are in late June so they're not that far away.
The problem is that some of these people aren't real Democrats -- they are stealth Republicans -- so it's important for people voting in these primaries to understand who they may or may not be voting for. I strongly suggest you check out City & State and Gothamist to get more information about the upcoming primaries -- make sure sure you're not accidently giving your vote to a Trump supporting fraud.
In 2014, Harvey Weinstein went on the Howard Stern show to promote a new movie. Towards the end of the freewheeling interview -- where Harvey and Howard talked about the great movies Harvey's company had produced over the years, about what an idiot former Disney head Michael Eisner is, about how Harvey came to love movies and theater and culture of all sorts -- Howard asks the now fallen producer about the "casting couch."
Harvey denies ever having taken part in this ages-old traddition, that this kind of practice is long gone and outdated in the new corporate movie business -- and that the "risks are too great" and the "budgets are too big", no one would think of transgressing in this way without suffering severe repurcussions.
I remember hearing this interview at the time and totally believed him -- it seemed like in the era of social media, 24/7 cable news, TMZ, litigousness, etc. this kind of nasty behavior was long dead.
Guess not.
Not only was Harvey a participate in the casting couch culture, he was one of its chief offenders -- and now it's sent him to jail. So much so, in fact, that Howard pondered several years later, "When did this guy have time to make movies?"
The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is an aging, deteriorating beast, and there's currently a proposal in the City Council to tear it down completely and replace it with an underground tunnel. Thus a massive amount of land between the city's two biggest boroughs would be transformed and made available to the public.
Many other cities are doing this -- replacing their old highways with tunnels and making their surfaces more pedestrian and people friendly.
Obviously the cost and difficulty of this would be immense but, if it could be pulled off, would be an amazing and wonderful thing for roughly 6 millions New Yorkers.
There's nothing better than being out and about in NYC and spotting a piece of history, a living memorial to the city's past. Recently I took my kids to the park and, as they and a bunch of other children ran around and climbed on structures and hit the swings, I noticed this small plaque in the concrete ground.
Nearly every NYC public playground has one of these plaques and it's really fascinating to get a snapshot of who was in charge when these playgrounds were built -- and rebuilt. It's one thing to read the history of NYC and learn about the master builder Robert Moses and the hapless Mayor Vincent Impelliteri -- but it's another thing to see a living piece of their legacy at the very place where your children are blithely having fun. It's also bizarre to see Rudy's name there (the former currently mayor stinking up America) along with the legendary parks commissioner Henry Stern who recently died.
These plaques are a reminder that this city was built and tended to over time -- and that nothing here happens by accident. History, literally, is at our feet.
Something was in the movie water in October 1994 when not one, not two, but three very different but nonetheless classic movies were released -- Pulp Fiction,Clerks, and The Last Seduction.
The Last Seduction falls into my favorite new category of NYC movies -- movies about New Yorkers who are far from home, in an environment that is totally alien to them.
The plot revolves a woman who works as a telemarketing manger who is married to a doctor. They are deeply in debt to the mob and decide to make some easy money by engaging in a one time drug deal (the doctor-husband sells some goons stolen prescription drugs and winds up with a big suitcase full of cash). His wife then steals the money and heads upstate, leaving her husband to the mafia's fate, while she plans to get to Chicago and start a new life. Worried that her husband and the mob might find her if she gets to Chicago too soon, she stops in a small town in upstate New York, gets a job, and seduces a local man (hence the title) into murdering her husband (the mob has not yet killed him but instead broken several of his fingers).
Her plan is coldly brilliant and flawlessly executed but she is desperate to get out of this small town and go back to NYC so she can live large on her stolen loot. Throughout the movie there are jokes about living in "cowtown", how this city woman cannot tolerate life in this tiny place, and she even tells her "cowboy" at once point to go find a nice "cowgirl" and make "cowbabies." Lovely lady.
The great actress Linda Fiorentino played Bridget, the scheming femme fatale, while Peter Berg plays the mark of her seduction, and Bill Pullman is her miserable husband. The people in this movie are uniformly horrible, the story starts out dark and gets darker, and it ends badly. But the movie is also very funny and, yes, sometimes sexy. This is the kind of movie that doesnt get made anymore and, had it not been so well made and acted, would have just been another dumb thriller.
So this is a great one to watch although probably not with someone you're in a relationship with. It makes you want to become celibate.
Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and assult and is off to jail.
Part of me wants to make the usual prison rape jokes but I won't since there's nothing funny about this -- it's a tragedy for his victims, their families, and even his family. Hopefully they can heal in the longterm -- and hopefully Harvey will learn something as he spends the next few years and maybe the rest of his life in prison.
When I was a kid, the radio station WQXR not only played classical music but was also the official station of The New York Times. Since my dad was a culture and news junkie, he listened to it all the time. I remember that occasionally there would be commercials for various high-end products and restaurants -- and one of them was for B. Smith's restaurant.
I remember that, in the ads, this very friendly, inviting voice would come on the air and tell people about her great restaurant and why you should go to it. If I had been old enough and had had enough money, I would have.
B. Smith was a trailblazing business woman, starting out as a model and later became a very successful cookbook author, home products line inventor, and restaurant owner. She even had her own TV show. In the 1980s and 1990s she was one of the most biggest names in NYC. Long before celebrities started their own product lines or opening their own restaurants, B. Smith was creating the model for it -- and, yes, she was a black woman, which made her success all the more impressive.
Sadly Ms. Smith was diagnosed with early onset Altheizmers in 2013, and now she has died, aged 70. It's a great loss but she leaves an amazing legacy.
