Results tagged “newton”

Police responded to reports of gunfire in an apartment in the Mt. Eden section of the Bronx last night and found three people shot in the head. Two of the victims were dead and one was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where he is in critical condition. The dead victims were 20-year-old Ludmildy Rosado and 34-year-old Daniel Newton. Police were not sure if the two knew each other or not.

Grace Paley, New York's official state author from 1986-88, died at the age of 84 yesterday. She had been battling breast cancer for quite some time. The author, born in the Bronx on December 11th, 1922, still kept an apartment in Manhattan -- but was at her home in Vermont at the time of death. The NY Times recaps her life in literature:

Ms. Paley’s output was modest, about four-dozen stories in three volumes: “The Little Disturbances of Man” (Doubleday, 1959); “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974); and “Later the Same Day” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985). But she attracted a devoted following and was widely praised by critics for her pitch-perfect dialogue, which managed at once to be surgically spare and almost unimaginably rich.

Continue reading "Author-Activist Grace Paley Dies at 84"

Just after Ethan Hawke declared more love for the Hotel Chelsea and more fear about the changes there being the final nail in the coffin of "old New York," The Observer suspects his exes ex of helping to hold the hammer.

Earlier this year reality television and Broadway collided in the form of "Grease: You're The One That I Want". The show aired on NBC and documented a trip down memory lane with a troupe of wannabe Sandys and Dannys all vying for the coveted roles. By the end, two were left standing, and tonight they make their debut in Grease at the Brooks Atkinson Theater. And now, with Xanadu, Broadway is hosting two movie-to-stage Olivia Newton-John vehicles. Can Two of a Kind be far behind?

New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson drew fire in March after her heated dinner party spat with playwright David Hare, in which she reportedly broke it down for Hare thusly: “We are the central arbiter of taste and culture in the city of New York.” Imperious but true. The Times draws a lot of water in this town when it comes to theater; and when there’s big money on the line they are now the dominant factor in determining whether a new production lives or dies.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A train derailed on Otto Rd. in Queens, a stabbing at Rockaway Blvd. and Broadway in Brooklyn, and a sexual assault at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn.
• Visitors to the New York-New York hotel-casino in Las Vegas got an extra dose of big city verisimilitude last night, when shots rang out in the casino's mezzanine. Three people were struck, but none were seriously injured before the gunman was tackled.
• 20 newspapers around the country received letters postmarked from Queens and the Bronx that threatened investment firm Goldman Sachs. "Hundreds will die. We are inside. You cannot stop us."
• State Senator Marty Golden is proposing extending the Shore Parkway bike path over the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island. Currently, Brooklyn riders who'd like to pedal around Staten Island have to cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and then take the Staten Island Ferry.
• AM New York lists a variety of businesses around New York that are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including gyms, restaurants, spas, and the 5th Ave. Apple store.
• The New York Times reports on either one of the first, or the first Mr. Softee truck drivers ticketed under a new anti-noise ordinance for playing his jingle while parked at a curbside in Fort Totten, Queens.
• A six-month-old golden retriever puppy woke its sleeping owner by barking, alerting the man that his home was on fire after it got struck by lightning Thursday night in Garrison, a small town north of the city. The puppy named Ranger died in the fire after becoming lost in the smoke and flames, but he wound up saving the life of Richard Shafran, who escaped the burning home in time.
• A man is suing New York City after he was wrongfully imprisoned for 22 years after being convicted of rape. Alan Newton repeatedly asked for a review of DNA evidence from his alleged victim's rape kit, but was incorrectly told that the evidence had been lost, after the police conducted only a quick and cursory search for the exonerating items.

A look at some noteworthy television this week:

EVENT: Bluestockings is a great little place on Allen St, if you haven't already checked it out. Tonight the UnCoolKids tell us this bookstore (and more) is having an event called "Where Have You Been? Conversations on Travel":

There's two majorly horrific films coming out this weekend, though only some of the frights are intentional. Gaspard Ulliel seemed like such a nice boy in . Personally the "Jack Sprat" jokes seems a little tired but maybe seeing the comedian act with himself and poor Thandie Newton in various, vaguely offensive stereotypes is your thing.

In other film to stage news, the campy Broadway adaptation of the so-bad-it's-good Olivia Newton-John movie Xanadu (which famously prompted one critic's quip, "In a word, Xana-don't.") is rolling full speed ahead. The movie, famous for its over-the-top roller disco sequences – and catapulting "Magic" to the top of the U.S. pop singles chart – will at last fill the terrible void left behind by Lloyd Weber's roller skating spectacle Starlight Express. (Rumors of a Broadway adaptation of Zoo Animals on Wheels remain unconfirmed.)

THEATER: Strings, a new play by Carole Bugge, is loosely based on a real-life train ride in which American physicists Burt Ovrut, Paul Steinhardt and English physicist Neil Turok tweaked the Big Bang theory – and changed it forever. In Bugge’s version, three fictionalized characters – physicist George, his cosmologist wife June and string theorist Rory – spend the trip arguing physics and examining old scars of jealousy and infidelity. En route, the trio is visited by three famous dead scientists: Isaac Newton, Marie Curie and Max Planck. The role of George is played by Keir “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Dullea, who was Dave in Kubrick’s 2001. - John Del Signore

New York mid-December always smells vaguely of pine and peppermint, despite our recent springtime temperatures. Bring that cozy holiday feeling with you into the cineplex for a couple of new feel-good holiday movies.

Uh-oh - a teacher's attempt to make Newton's Third Law of Motion ("For every action force there is an equal, but opposite, reaction force.") more understandable may have backfired. The Daily News reports that 18 year teaching veteran Leonard Brown has been suspended from Benjamin Cardozo High School after a female student says he touched her breast.

He asked the student - from Cardozo's elite Da Vinci Math Science Institute - to hold her hands up against his and lean against his hands with all of her weight, he said. He also put his hands on her shoulders before the demonstration.

Continue reading "Teacher's Demonstration Too Physic-al?"

If you've followed The Innocence Project, the non-profit started by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld (pictured, Neufeld on the left, Scheck on the right) which uses DNA evidence to free the wrongfully convicted, you'll find this interesting. Last year, Lee Long sued Scheck and Neufeld, as well as another lawyer and their law firm, for mishandling his wrongful imprisonment claim.

"Can you feel me? Can you motherfuckin' feel me?" Adira Amram belts out on her song "Wanna Make Out," which she sings while dressed in leotards, a Betsey Johnson push-up bra and suit jacket, or other attention-getting garb while pounding away on a keyboard or piano. Amram, the daughter of composer David Amram, started out as an actress but has taken to performing her hilarious “keyboard fantasy” songs at local comedy gigs. The 25-year-old performer is at The PIT Fridays in October with her latest work, Adira Amram Is An American Idol (tagline: “Let Her Spangle Your Banner”), which is fitting for a woman with a former President’s photo on the cover of her CD, Me and Bill (North Street Records).

After Scott Fappiano was freed last week, after being in falsely imprisoned for 21 years (he was mistakenly convicted of raping a police officer's wife in their Brooklyn home), more questions are being raised about the way police evidence is stored/a>. Thought Fappiano had requested a pair of sweatpants be tested for DNA evidence in 1989, the technology back then wasn't able to read the small sample - and then the pants and sample were basically lost until this year (they had been in the DNA testing company's storage all along). The Innocence Project, which took on Fappiano's case, said that the NYPD evidence collection and tracking systems need to be reformed; IP's Peter Neufeld told WABC 7, "Unfortunately it's a black hole. We've had less good fortune locating evidence in New York City than in the rural quarters of Mississippi and Alabama."

THEATER: The talented Michael Gladis, who theatergoers may recall from the hit 2000 revival of Brecht’s Baal, is currently appearing in ‘nami at The Kirk Theater. This darkly humorous drama is about a suburban woman’s belief that she has uncovered a plot to sell a child of Tsunami-ravaged Indonesia into sex slavery by her neighbors. Sounds heavy, but Martin Denton at nytheatre.com hails ‘nami as “indie theatre at its very best” and the “most exciting play” he’s seen so far this season. That’s saying something, because Denton goes to enough shows to make him the Brooklynvegan of New York theater. - John Del Signore

Today, after Alan Newton was declared innocent, after serving 21 years for a Bronx rape he did not commit. The Innocence Project, which works on cases "where postconviction DNA testing of evidence can yield conclusive proof of innocence" at Cardozo Law School, helped find police evidence that the police had claimed was lost years ago. The NY Times' story headlines it as "New York Fail at Finding Evidence to Help the Wrongfully Convicted" and writes:

With more people and more crime than any other American city, New York also stores more evidence — over 1 million pieces in a central warehouse in Queens, and more in satellite facilities in each borough — and until recently, its inventory system consisted of handwritten ledgers and index cards. Besides storerooms run by the Police Department, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner also keeps some biological evidence.

Continue reading "Guilty For 21 Years Before Being Proven Innocent"

Todd Zuniga, Opium Magazine

Happy Friday the 13th! Get out there and tempt fate this weekend...

The science nerd (we use that term lovingly) roster makes us feel like giant underachievers. Want to feel like one too? Here's who you'll see at the Dorkbot in NYC:

The Gotham Gazette has a good article about the state of our city's waterways. The good news is that they are less polluted than they used to be:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/arts/music/16country.html">NY Times explains that the song is "Comin' to Your City" but changed the chorus to "Comin' to New York City")The NY Post doesn't hide its feelings about the CMA's: "The star of last night's Country Music Awards at Madison Square Garden didn't sing a note or win a prize. It was New York City, which lent the show the credibility and elegance it's always lacked." Well, a backhanded compliment is better than none, we guess.

An editorial in today’s Times reminds us that prison isn’t just a plot twist in the stories of powerful people like Martha Stewart and Judith Miller; a lot of people spend a lot of time there, and we could do a better job of making that time about rehabilitation. Thanks to Lauren Cerand at Maud Newton, we see that this Sunday at Pier 63 (Hudson River at West 23rd Street) Books Through Bars is having an event to increase support for and awareness of educational resources for prisoners. Between noon and 5:30, if you donate a book you can see various panels and readings (including, at 1:30, a panel of formerly incarcerated writers who will discuss their writing lives in and out of prison; PEN sponsors an interesting prison writing program, too).

Francesca Kaplan, Artist/Designer/Stylist

The game may have been bad, but it was nowhere as bad as the game they had against the Blazers earlier this season. On the bright side, Jason Kidd, who has been out since off-season surgery, is scheduled to practice Friday and may play as soon as Saturday. It could serve as a much spark for the Nets, but the wise Richard Jefferson said, "Just because it's close to happening, Jason's not going to solve all our problems. We still have a lot of problems on this team we need to fix."

Swatch put up a billboard of the the Bunnysutra watch in Times Square, which, of course, is freaking out some pedestrians, especially the line "Touch your swatch, pick your position." The Post contrasts horrified reactions from out-of-towners ("Oh, my God. That's disgusting. We have enough sexual implications in the world. Why are you going to use these animals having sex?") with amusement from New Yorkers ("It's funny. It's not screaming sex in your face - it's love.").

Read more Readers' Picks and see who and what New York picked as the Best of New York (Best Street Food: Daisy May's chili carts; Best Same-Day Spot Removal: Hippodrome). And check out the other fantastic New York blogs nominated: 601am, Buzzmachine, greg.org, LockhartSteele, low culture, Maud Newton, Memefirst, and TMFML.

Today's Young Manhattanite Interview is with Maccers; previous YMI have been with Blaise K, Elizabeth, and Maud. Check them out!

And, if we had the phone numbers of every single person who visited the site, you can be sure Jake or Jen would call. If not to beg for your vote, then to ask you to buy a Gothamist t-shirt.