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(09/12/07 3:08am)
NEW YORK – For the guys in the Fab Faux, the songs of the Beatles are as much classical music as classic rock.\n“The way an orchestra would do Mozart or Beethoven – that’s how we do the Beatles,” explains guitarist Jimmy Vivino.\nAnd that’s how the brilliant Beatles cover band – it’s a five-piece, featuring late-night musical stars Vivino, from Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and Will Lee, from The Late Show with David Letterman – approaches its gig this Saturday night: a complete recreation of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” before a sold-out crowd at Manhattan’s Beacon Theater.\nIt’s their largest headlining show ever, nearly a decade after Lee’s obsession with the Beatles led him to seek out similarly crazed New York musicians and 40 years after the Beatles released the album that altered the course of musical history.\n“This is the first album that I remember listening to as a single piece,” Vivino said before a weekday rehearsal with his regular cohorts, the Max Weinberg 7. “It was meant to be listened to that way. There are no singles from ‘Sgt. Pepper.’”\nThe band, with bassist Lee and guitarist Vivino, is rounded out by acclaimed New York music scene vets Rich Pagano on drums, Frank Agnello on guitars and Jack Petruzzelli on keyboards and guitar; all five share vocal chores.\nTo describe them as a tribute band conjures images of four guys in bad wigs and ‘60s facial hair, and that’s not what the Fab Faux is about. Lee explains the mission this way:\n“In my mind, our job is to bring the records to the stage. That’s kind of what we are. I’m not saying we ever achieve that, but that’s the goal.”\nThe five are self-professed Beatles geeks, the type who hoard bootlegs and raw studio tracks, guys who can listen to “Revolver” 500 times and hear something different with each spin (vinyl, of course). Pagano once wrote an impassioned “Modern Drummer” piece extolling the virtues of Ringo’s stick work.\nHow much do these guys love the Beatles? They’re all well-known musicians, with impeccable resumes and plenty of work. And in their spare time, they like to unwind by picking up their instruments ... and playing the Beatles.\n“We’re fans first,” said Lee, who’s played with all four Beatles during his career. “For me, the Beatles are the top of the musical food chain. Something happened back in ‘64, when the Beatles hit America.”\nPagano, who’s worked with Patti Smith, Ray Davies and many others, shares the sentiment.\n“I don’t know anybody who’s as into it as we are,” Pagano said. “There really isn’t any better pop music, as far as we’re concerned. You can get so sick of certain types of music. But we don’t get sick of the Beatles.”\nTheir audience clearly feels the same way. The band has headlined four of the last five years at the annual Beatle Week in Liverpool, recreating the Fab Four for 35,000 Beatlemaniacs. They’ve done shows in Las Vegas, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Toronto.\nThe band’s sound will be enhanced at the Beacon by the four-piece Hogshead Horns and the Creme Tangerine Strings. The Fab Faux will kick off the show with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and proceed through its 13 tracks, closing with “A Day in the Life.”\nOne strange thing has emerged from the project: although the Beatles provided a musical soundtrack for the lives of most Baby Boomers, and each member of the Fab Faux is intimately aware of the Beatles’ catalog, playing the songs live has left the band hearing the music through new ears.\n“I was surprised to find out how little you know of these records until you dig deep in,” said Lee. “We weren’t able to hear it before. Now we’ve reached a certain height in awareness – and there’s always so much more.”
(08/31/07 1:57am)
NEW YORK – Hilly Kristal had no idea what he was unleashing when he welcomed a rash of unknown bands onstage in his dank Bowery dive: Television, the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, the Patti Smith Group.\nKristal, a New Jersey farm boy whose musical tastes ran to tamer fare, opened CBGB as a haven for country, blues and bluegrass music. Instead, his cramped club became the epicenter of the punk rock movement, setting off a three-chord musical revolution that spread around the world.\nKristal, 75, died of complications from lung cancer at a Manhattan hospice after a long fight with the disease, his family announced Wednesday. CBGB closed last October with a blowout concert by Smith and her band, ending a 33-year run for the dingy space where Kristal operated from a small desk just inside the entrance with its familiar white awning.\n“He created a club that started on a small, out-of-the-way skid row, and saw it go around the world,” said Lenny Kaye, a longtime member of the Patti Smith Group. “Everywhere you travel around the world, you saw somebody wearing a CBGB T-shirt. It was a real rallying point for musicians trying something different.”\nAt the club’s boarded-up storefront Wednesday morning, a spray-painted message read, “RIP Hilly, we’ll miss you, thank you.” There were also a dozen candles, two bunches of flowers and a foam rubber baseball bat – an apparent tribute to the Ramones’ classic “Beat on the Brat.”\nDavid Byrne, lead singer of Talking Heads, remembered Kristal’s low-key demeanor and generosity.\n“Other clubs were all about models and beautiful people, and he was about letting the musicians in for free, to hear music and get cheap beers,” Byrne said. “It automatically created a scene, and we’d just hang out all night.”\nKristal was an unlikely avatar of punk music, opening his own club in 1973 after booking acts such as Miles Davis at the Village Vanguard. “At first, they didn’t play so well,” he once said of the seminal punk bands that came to CBGB.\nBut he became a beloved figure to the performers who used his small venue as a launching pad to stardom, including several who reached the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also served as manager for the Dead Boys, whose appeal was summed up by their album title “Young Loud & Snotty.”\n“In an era when disco was the mainstream, Hilly took a chance and gambled,” said drummer Marky Ramone. “The gamble paid off for him and for us. We are all grateful to him.”\nThe influence of Kristal’s club was pervasive, extending to generations of bands around the country and the globe. Even the landlord who finally evicted Kristal from CBGB first kissed his wife inside its walls, which were plastered with mementoes from bands across the decades.\nKristal’s plans for a club attuned to his tastes disappeared when Television, led by Tom Verlaine, began playing Sunday nights in the mid-1970s. Other bands were soon joining them, and CBGB became the place for punk fans to mingle with performers like Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry or the doomed Sid Vicious.
(02/27/06 5:46am)
TURIN, Italy -- Across 16 topsy-turvy days in Turin, the U.S. Olympic team teetered somewhere between torment and triumph, each step up to the medal stand tempered by one step back somewhere else.\nThere were unlikely Alpine golds from skiers Julia Mancuso and Ted Ligety. And the disaster in the mountains that was Bode Miller and his tattered reputation.\nSpeedskater Joey Cheek set a standard for Olympic class, winning two medals and donating his $40,000 reward from the U.S. Olympic Committee to a charity for children trapped in war zones. Teammates Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis typified something less than class, fussing and fighting like second-graders in a sandbox.\nA kid dubbed "The Flying Tomato," Shaun White, sailed into the sky above Bardonecchia to claim a gold medal in the snowboard halfpipe. Another snowboarder, Lindsey Jacobellis, hot-dogged her way out of a gold medal in a still-stunning turn of events that typified a growing Generation X Games gap among the Americans.\nBy the time the Turin two-step was done, the final medal total left the U.S. somewhere between total success and perceived failure. The collection of 25 medals -- 9 gold, 9 silver, 7 bronze -- was far less than the record 34 of 2002, but nearly double the previous high of 13 from 1994 and 1998.\nDespite the medals haul, the Olympics proved to be not much of a ratings draw for NBC, which was consistently beaten by shows such as "American Idol" and "Grey's Anatomy." The network said it wasn't a disaster, though it was on the low end of their ratings expectations.\nAnd cynics might observe the Olympics have added 16 new medal sports since the '98 Nagano Games, several in U.S.-friendly events.\nIt was the most medals ever won by the Americans in a foreign Winter Olympics, and left the U.S. second only to Germany's 29 medals. The head of the USOC was quick to spin it as success, while acknowledging others might see it differently.\n"This has been an incredible performance," Jim Scherr said. "It's probably a little bit our fault that this team has been viewed as a little less than that because of the high expectations we all had coming into these games."\nNo one came into the games with higher expectations than skier Miller and speedskater Hedrick, each entered in five events. Miller won nothing; Hedrick epitomized the yin/yang of the Americans in collecting a gold, silver and bronze between yapping with Davis.\nAlmost lost in the backbiting was Davis' Jackie Robinson moment, a gold medal in the 1,000 meters that made him the first black athlete ever to win an individual Olympic gold medal.\nThe U.S. medal haul came from their domination in men's long-track speedskating and snowboarding, with seven medals apiece. Short track skater Apolo Anton Ohno added a gold and two bronzes, one of the latter in a relay event.\nThe news wasn't as good elsewhere in the Piedmont region.\nHockey was a dual disappointment: The professionals from the NHL looked like amateurs, winning a single game. The women -- gold medal finalists in 1998 and 2002 -- settled for a bronze. The women speedskaters were shut out. Michele Kwan, plagued by a groin injury, never reached the ice.\nThe Alpine team, the self-proclaimed "Best in the World," boasted of a potential eight-medal haul -- and won two. "This just in," announced David Letterman on his "Late Show." "Bode Miller has tested negative for medals."\nThe games' most enduring moment was also its most bizarre. Jacobellis, on the next-to-last jump of the first women's Olympic snowboardcross, grabbed her board in an unnecessary bit of showboating -- and then crashed, blowing her gold medal. Her silver seemed almost insignificant.\nThe stunt was endlessly replayed, with Jacobellis alternately cheered (by the snowboard community) and chastised (by everyone over 40).\nThe disagreement demonstrated a generation gap involving the age of the sports, not the athletes. The new wave of U.S. Olympians on snowboards or skis wanted to put on a show ... and maybe get a medal, too.\nTake aerial skier Jeret "Speedy" Peterson. A seventh-place finish in the aerials couldn't wipe the smile off his face. "I came here to do the Hurricane," he said, referring to the difficult maneuver, "and I did the Hurricane."\nNever mind that he botched it. Or that an easier stunt might have won a medal.\nThe mindset wasn't universal. Tanith Belbin, a Canadian who won American citizenship on Dec. 31, came to Turin and won a surprising silver medal with ice dancing partner Ben Agosto on Feb. 21.\nThere were other stunners, too: Shauna Rohbock, cut from a medal-winning sled before the 2002 games, coming back to win a silver with teammate Valerie Fleming in the bobsled. Three-time Olympian Rosey Fletcher, a self-described "dark horse," grabbing a bronze in the snowboard parallel giant slalom.\nThe U.S. men's curling team swept through the competition to grab a bronze -- the first American Olympic medal in the sport -- when skip Pete Fenson delivered a clutch shot on the last stone of the match.
(02/13/06 5:42am)
TURIN, Italy -- It was hardly a lost weekend for the U.S Olympic team. The good news was just hard to find among all the disappointments.\nGold medals for speedskater Chad Hedrick and snowboarder Shaun White were nearly lost in a flurry of Winter Games woes that spread from sport to sport, and star to star. Big names fell short -- or got no chance at all.\nSkater Michele Kwan was shut down by a badly injured groin muscle without ever stepping on the ice. Goodbye to the team's (and television's) most familiar Olympic face, tear-streaked by the turn of events.\nSkiers Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves were both shut out in the downhill, where longshot Frenchman Antoine Deneriaz won the gold.\nShort track speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno skidded into fourth place in a semifinal heat, missing a chance to defend his gold medal in the 1,500 meters.\nLuger Tony Benshoof, on the verge of winning the first-ever singles luge medal for the United States, slipped into fourth place Sunday -- missing a bronze by 0.237 seconds. Instead, Latvia -- yes, Latvia -- won its first Winter Games medal.\nThe women's moguls team was shut out Saturday in the freestyle despite fielding what was regarded as the deepest squad in the world.\nFour years ago, the Americans won a staggering 34 medals with the home field advantage in Salt Lake City -- more than double their previous high of 13 in a Winter Games. In Turin, they were just a little staggered: two golds and a silver in two days.\nHistorically, countries that played host to the games experience a 41 percent drop in medals when they returned to foreign soil for the next Olympics. That would leave the United States looking at about 20 medals in Italy.\nJim Scherr, head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, declined to make a prediction for the U.S. medal haul. But he couldn't have predicted the early heartbreak suffered by the Americans, either. Kwan's sudden disappearance was perhaps the most devastating blow, since Miller, Ohno and Rahvles get to return in other events.\nThe 25-year-old skater smiled through her tears as she spoke about leaving Turin without the gold medal she chased for a decade.\n"I've learned it's not about the gold, it's about the spirit of it and about the sport itself," she said.\nSo have a few of her teammates.
(03/22/05 4:16am)
NEW YORK -- Cabaret singer Bobby Short, the tuxedoed embodiment of New York style and sophistication who was a fixture at his piano in the Carlyle Hotel for more than 35 years, died Monday. He was 80.\nShort died of leukemia at New York Presbyterian Hospital, said Virginia Wicks, a Los Angeles-based publicist. The hospital did not immediately return a call seeking further detail.\nAs times changed and popular music shifted from Sinatra to Springsteen to Snoop Dogg, Short, a three-time Grammy nominee, remained irrevocably devoted to the "great American songbook": songs by Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, the Gershwins, Billy Strayhorn, Harold Arlen.\n"I go back to what I heard Marian Anderson say once: 'First a song has to be beautiful,'" Short said to The New York Times in 2002. "However, 'beautiful' covers a wide range of things. I have to admire a song's structure and what it's about. But I also have to determine how I can transfer my affection for a song to an audience; I have to decide whether I can put it across."\nWith his classic songs and suave presence, he entertained thousands over the years in the Carlyle's Upper East Side boîte. In 2003, he celebrated his 35th anniversary there. His fans inevitably included New York's rich and famous: Norman Mailer and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the '70s, Barbara Walters and Dominick Dunne in the new millennium.\nShort, despite his veneration of the classics, was no nostalgia act. His musical taste, like his smooth voice and elegant wardrobe, was always impeccable. As an ambassador of vintage songs, Short played the White House for presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Clinton.\n"My audience," he said, "expects a certain amount of sophistication when they are coming to hear me."\nWhen Short first played the Cafe Carlyle in 1968, the Vietnam War was raging and Mayor John Lindsay was in City Hall. The quintessential "saloon singer" remained through another five administrations, becoming as familiar a New York landmark as the Empire State Building or Central Park. He appeared in the movies "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Splash," along with the television miniseries "Roots" and the program "In The Heat of the Night."\nWhile suffering from a vocal problem in 1970, Short began work on an autobiography, "Black and White Baby." In 1995, he updated his memoirs with "Bobby Short: The Life and Times of a Saloon Singer."\nRobert Waltrip Short was born Sept. 15, 1924, the ninth of 10 children in a musically inclined family. By age 4, he was playing by ear at the well-worn family piano, recreating songs heard on the radio. By age 9, the self-taught pianist was performing in saloons around his Danville, Ill., home to earn extra money during the Depression. Even then, his material included Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady."\nWithin two years, Short graduated to playing Chicago under his nickname, the "Miniature King of Swing."\nShort played the vaudeville circuit: St. Louis, Milwaukee, Kansas City. On one date, he teamed with Louis Armstrong. And by age 12, he was headlining Manhattan nightclubs and regular engagements at the Apollo Theater.
(11/01/04 4:37am)
NEW YORK -- Lawyers for singer R. Kelly were filing a criminal complaint against a member of rapper Jay-Z's entourage and considering other legal action after the platinum-selling stars' joint tour came to an abrupt end.\nThe "I Believe I Can Fly" singer was booted from remaining shows at Madison Square Garden by the promoter Saturday, a day after a member of Jay-Z's entourage allegedly blasted Kelly with pepper spray, said his publicist, Allan Mayer. The promoter announced that Jay-Z, with special guests, would do the shows alone.\nKelly's lawyers were filing a complaint against the entourage member and considering action over the decision to remove Kelly from the tour, Mayer said.\n"The fans deserve better than this," Kelly said in a statement. "I'd like the show to go on. It's really disappointing that Jay-Z and the promoter don't."\nJay-Z and R. Kelly were in the midst of a 40-city "Best of Both Worlds" tour, which has been beset by canceled shows and reports that the feuding performers weren't even on speaking terms.\nThe tour, which had been scheduled to run through Nov. 28, has been canceled, said promoter Jeff Sharp of Atlanta Worldwide Touring. Jay-Z's publicist was unsure if the rapper would try and fill the remaining dates as a solo act.\nThe pepper-spray incident happened about an hour into Friday night's show, when Kelly walked on stage and said he saw two people in the audience waving guns, Mayer said. Kelly abruptly stopped his set around 9:30 p.m. while arena security employees searched for weapons.\nFinding none, guards told Kelly it was safe to continue performing, Mayer said. But as the singer was making his way back to the stage, a man in Jay-Z's entourage -- apparently miffed that Kelly interrupted the show -- sprayed him and two of his bodyguards in the face, Mayer said.\n"I'm pretty sure Jay didn't realize what was going on," Mayer said.\nAll three men were treated at St. Vincent's Hospital and released, he said. Jay-Z performed for another 45 minutes after Kelly was sprayed.\nJana Fleishman, publicist for Jay-Z, said Saturday that the rapper's entourage knew nothing about the incident because it occurred while Jay-Z was performing. Jay-Z "did not attack R. Kelly in any way, shape or form," Fleishman said.\nIn a radio interview on Hot 97 FM radio Friday, Jay-Z said he couldn't understand why Kelly left the stage.\n"You can't get a gun inside Madison Square Garden," the rapper said. "If people give me love he can't take it."\nThe Chicago Sun-Times reported discord between the two performers after Kelly showed up more than two hours late for a show in Chicago and walked off the stage mid-performance in St. Louis this month.\nThree shows on the tour were canceled because of "technical difficulties" suffered by Kelly, Fleishman said.\nOn Tuesday, Kelly and Jay-Z released their collaborative CD "Unfinished Business"
(09/30/04 4:49am)
NEW YORK -- Geoffrey Beene, the award-winning designer whose simple, classic styles for men and women put him at the forefront of American fashion, died Tuesday at 77. Beene died at his home of complications of pneumonia, according to Russell Nardozza, vice president of Geoffrey Beene Inc.\nThe designer launched his own company on a shoestring budget in 1963 and turned it into a fashion empire. Along with Bill Blass, Beene was regarded as one of the godfathers of American sportswear. Beene, who had planned to be a doctor and found himself daydreaming instead about fashions, was an eight-time winner of the Coty Fashion Critics Award and the first American designer to show his clothes in Milan. He was widely hailed for his innovative and iconoclastic work.\n"A designer's designer, Geoffrey Beene is one of the most artistic and individual of fashion's creators," read the plaque given to him on New York's Fashion Center Walk of Fame. A 1993 New York Times article described him as "an artist who chooses to work in cloth."\nBeene signature style was a reflection of his outlook on longevity. \n"The more you learn about clothes, the more you realize what has to be left off," he once said. "Simplification becomes a very complicated procedure."\nBeene's trademark dressy but comfortable clothing was perhaps best epitomized by a sequined evening dress/football jersey in his 1967 collection. That same year, he designed the wedding dress for first daughter Lynda Bird Johnson.\nBorn in Haynesville, La., Beene was a premed student at Tulane University when he found himself sketching gowns while became bored during lectures. His first job in the industry came when he signed on as an assistant in the display department of the downtown Los Angeles branch of I. Magnin, the clothing store. A company executive recognized his talent and encouraged Beene to get a job in fashion. He moved to New York City in 1947, enrolled at the Traphagen School of Fashion, and then went off to Paris to learn the business. He returned to New York and got his first big break in 1954, a job designing for Teal Traina and his fledgling firm.\nIn 1963, Beene opened his own company in a champagne-colored showroom on Seventh Avenue, and the business was an instant success. In its first year, Geoffrey Beene Inc. sold $500,000 worth of clothes, a figure that would quadruple in just two years. The next year he won the first of his Coty Awards.\n"He was a quiet gentleman, but he had this uncompromising and liberating attitude toward clothes," said Valerie Steele, director of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "I think his peers recognized the artistry and amazing technical skills that went into what he did."\nHe became a New York institution as well, entertaining friends in his Upper East Side apartment or tending orchids in the greenhouse at his Oyster Bay getaway home. The genteel Beene even engaged in one of the great New York traditions -- the feud -- as he battled for years with Women's Wear Daily, the industry bible.\nNo funeral services are planned, said Narozza. He is survived by a sister, Barbara Ann Wellman of Conroe, Texas.
(10/17/03 4:38am)
NEW YORK -- Divers searched for an 11th person missing and presumed dead Thursday as a probe into the horrific crash of a Staten Island ferry focused on whether its pilot fell unconscious while crossing New York Harbor.\nIn addition to 10 confirmed deaths, a Staten Island woman was presumed dead on the morning after the city's worst mass transit accident in at least a generation, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.\nPolice divers were hunting for the woman's body in the water near the ferry docks off Staten Island, Kelly said.\nIn addition, 42 people were injured.\nEarlier, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had said three people were missing. Authorities said at late morning that they were still unsure whether the two others had been on the boat.\nWitnesses said the ferry, crossing the wind swept New York Harbor from lower Manhattan, never appeared to slow down as it approached Staten Island Wednesday afternoon. The boat struck a maintenance pier hundreds of feet from the slips where the ferries normally dock.\nThe pilot quickly bolted from the scene, went home and attempted suicide, a law enforcement source told The Associated Press. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said pilot Richard Smith slit his wrists and shot himself with a pellet gun.\nSmith, 55, was in critical condition and under police guard Thursday morning at St. Vincent's Hospital. Twenty-two victims also were taken there.\nA co-worker told authorities the pilot had been asleep, slumped over the controls, the source said.\nStaten Island councilman Michael McMahon said he was told at a briefing Thursday that Smith may have lost consciousness because of "health problems and medication."\n"By the time the other captain could get control of the ship, it was too late," McMahon said.
(10/06/03 5:46am)
NEW YORK -- The crime was ... well, it was surreal.\nOn an island inhabited by 14,000 accused criminals, a $250,000 Salvador Dali sketch disappeared during a midnight fire drill, replaced by a fake. And the people responsible were not the inmates, but four prison officials, authorities said.\nLast week, a former assistant deputy warden admitted his role in the March 1 robbery at the Rikers Island jail and implicated his co-workers in the role-reversing rip-off. The plot's alleged mastermind and the two other members of the "Dali gang" are all due in court this month.\nMitchell Hochhauser, 40, claimed the irreplaceable Dali ink and pencil sketch was destroyed by a skittish co-defendant although his claim is up for debate.\nEven the Hochhauser guilty plea produced strange reactions: defense attorney Joseph Tacopina, representing alleged ringleader Benny Nuzzo, was just as pleased as the prosecution.\n"This is a classic example of a witness with a motive to implicate another person," Tacopina said a day later.\nAccording to Hochhauser, the plot was conceived in "The Bodega" a snack room used by the guards. He says Nuzzo's proposal initially elicited laughter, and with good reason.\nThe sketch depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a jailhouse fixture since 1965, when the self-promoting artist with the sprawling mustache planned a visit. Dali instead called in sick, sending a note that promised "a wonderful gift for the prisoners."\nVoila! He zipped off the crucifixion sketch in his Manhattan hotel room, and it was placed in the prison dining room -- a pearl amidst crime.\n"It's a pretty strange story all around," said Peter Tush, curator of education at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla. "It was unusual for Dali to just give things away. He was not the most generous artist."\nFor 38 years, the art was virtually undisturbed; it was moved just once, in 1981, to the jail's lobby because prison officials feared an inmate might damage or destroy it.\nBut it was safe, authorities said, until March 1.\nHochhauser and Nuzzo were in charge that night, working with officers Timothy Pina and Greg Sokol. The two bosses staged a fire drill as a distraction while the two officers swiped the sketch from its display case, authorities said.\nThe foursome hoped for a big payday, officials said but other officers noticed the fake almost immediately. The suspects were under arrest by mid-June. By then, an increasingly nervous Nuzzo had already destroyed the sketch, Hochhauser said in court.\nHochhauser, a 19-year correction veteran, agreed to resign and accept a one- to three-year jail term in his plea agreement. Sokol and Pina, both suspended without pay after their arrests, have October court dates.\nSokol, who cooperated with authorities and taped conversations with the other three, could enter a plea Oct. 21.\nNuzzo is expected in court on Halloween.\nCity officials held out hope the missing Dali might be returned. But defense attorney Tacopina, without elaborating, hinted that the sketch was possibly a phony.\n"I have some question whether that one was the real Dali," Tacopina said. "There's some evidence about that, but I'll deal with that at trial"
(09/12/03 6:24am)
NEW YORK -- Two-by-two they stepped forward at ground zero Thursday. The sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, grandsons and granddaughters of the Sept. 11 victims mournfully recited the 2,792 names of the World Trade Center dead.\n"My mother and my hero," 13-year-old Brian Terzian said after reading the name of his mother, Stephanie McKenna. "We love you."\nFor a second straight year, the nation paused on a bright September morning to recall the day when hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.\nIn New York, 200 children led the mourning, showing extraordinary poise as they read the enormous list of victims for 2 1/2 hours. Church bells tolled at the moment hijacked Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pa. A moment of silence was observed at the Pentagon for the 184 victims there. And President Bush stood in silence on the White House lawn.\n"We remember the heroic deeds," Bush said. "We remember the compassion, the decency of our fellow citizens on that terrible day. We pray for the husbands and wives, the moms and dads, and the sons and daughters and loved ones."\nThe relatives at ground zero appeared in various sad permutations: Police Sgt. Michael Curtin was represented by his three daughters, Jennifer, 17, Erica, 15, and Heather, 13. Kristen Canillas, 12, stood alongside 8-year-old Christopher Cardinali; both had lost a grandparent.\n"I love you and I miss you," Kristen said after reciting the name of her grandfather, Anthony Luparello.\nThe children -- the youngest was 7 -- offered poignant messages to their lost loves ones, their emotions laid bare before a crowd that held aloft pictures of the victims, dabbed tears from their eyes, and laid flowers in temporary reflecting pools representing the towers.\nThe two years since the attack seemed to disappear as speakers surrendered to their emotions.\n"My daddy, Gerard Rod Coppola," said Angela Coppola, 20, her voice cracking. "Your light still shines."\nThe crowd of thousands observed a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., the time the first plane slammed into the north tower.\nThe remembrance extended far beyond lower Manhattan. Firefighters in Chicago joined in the moment of silence, while bells tolled in Milwaukee.\nDefense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld presided over a ceremony at the Pentagon and attended a wreath-laying at nearby Arlington National Cemetery. Solicitor General Ted Olson, whose wife, Barbara, died in the attack, told Justice Department employees that an unrelenting fight against terrorism is the best way to honor the memory of those who died.\n"Their suffering and deaths must fuel our dedication to stamp out this cancer," Olson said.\nIn rural Pennsylvania, church bells began tolling solemnly shortly after 10 a.m. to mark the moment Flight 93 crashed. The plane was believed to be headed to the nation's capital; it went down as the passengers fought back against the hijackers.\n"I feel incredibly proud for what my nephew did and those brave souls and what a difference they made," said Candyce Hoglan, whose nephew Mark Bingham was among the passengers. "They prevented those monsters from continuing on with their plan."\nSome families of the 700 New Jersey victims in the trade center attack attended ceremonies in their home state, including the unveiling of black marble monuments for the 37 residents of Middletown, N.J., killed by the terrorists.\n"It's not easy today," said Rose Marie D'Amato, whose sister was working on the 94th floor of the north tower. "I felt like I wanted to be here, and I wanted to be in New York. We never recovered any body remains"
(09/02/02 5:27am)
NEW YORK -- There was more than musical magic on stage that day in 1936 when Lionel Hampton joined Benny Goodman in a Manhattan ballroom; it was a breakthrough in American race relations.\nHampton, a vibraphone virtuoso who died Saturday, broke a barrier that had kept black and white musicians from performing together in public. Through a six-decade career, he continued to build a name for himself as one of the greats in jazz history.\n"He was really a towering jazz figure," said saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who played with Hampton in the 1950s. "He really personified the spirit of jazz because he had so much joy about his playing."\nThe 94-year-old showman and bandleader died of heart failure at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said his manager, Phil Leshin. Hampton suffered two strokes in 1995 and had been in failing health in recent years.\nHampton played with a who's who of jazz, from Goodman to Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker to Quincy Jones. His own band helped foster or showcase other jazz greats including Charlie Mingus, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Joe Williams and Dinah Washington.\n"With Hampton's death, we've drawn closer to losing part of the origins of the early jazz era," said Phil Schaap, a jazz historian.\nJones, the Grammy-winning producer and composer, said in a statement that Hampton was a mentor for more than 50 years. Jones was 15 when he first played trumpet with Hampton.\n"He taught me how to groove and how to laugh and how to hang and how to live like a man," Jones said. "Heaven will definitely be feeling some backbeat now."\nDuring his career, Hampton performed at the White House for presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush. When he played for Truman, his was the first black band to ever entertain in the White House, Hampton once said.\nRep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., remembered Hampton's 90th birthday party at the White House, when the man known as the "vibe president" invited President Clinton to grab his saxophone and jam.\nIn 1997, Hampton received the National Medal of Arts while wearing a borrowed suit, socks and shoes, because all his clothes and much of his bands' arrangements and other memorabilia had been destroyed in a fire two days earlier.\n"He was an American music legend and will be sorely missed," President Bush said in a statement Saturday.\nHampton's music was melodic and swinging, but audiences also responded to his electric personality: the big smile, energy and bounce that contributed to his style. When not playing the vibes, he drummed, sang and played his own peculiar style of piano, using two fingers as if they were vibraphone mallets.
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
NEW YORK -- The gruesome search through the graveyard of the World Trade Center yielded no survivors as the death toll mounted Thursday and hopes dimmed for more than 4,700 missing souls. President Bush promised to visit New York to "hug and cry" with its shaken citizens.\nTwo days after the trade center was hit and destroyed by two hijacked passenger planes, swirling dust kept visibility limited, and sanitation trucks waged a losing fight against the residue of the blast. Hundreds of family members searched for any sign of their loved ones.\nTens of thousands of residents still could not return to their homes in a closed-off lower Manhattan. Nerves were frayed by bomb scares and false alarms, both in New York and in Washington.\nThe city also brought in 30,000 body bags for pieces of human remains.\n"Even scary movies do not happen like this," said Enver Kesti, 42, a pizza chef, who returned to clean up a gourmet shop that once sat in the towers' shadows.\nBush declared Friday, the day of his New York visit, a "national day of prayer and remembrance." He asked Americans to spend their lunch breaks taking part in services at their chosen places of worship, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.\nThe president praised New Yorkers for showing "the compassion of America and the bravery of America."\nNew York was not alone in counting its missing and dead. The Pentagon said 126 people in the building were killed in Tuesday's plane attack. Seventy bodies had been recovered.\nAdd the 4,763 missing reported by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, plus the 266 passengers and crew members who died aboard the planes that hit the trade center, the Pentagon and a field southeast of Pittsburgh, and the total dead in Tuesday's carnage could be more than 5,000.\nThat would be higher than the death toll from Pearl Harbor and the Titanic combined. A total of 2,390 Americans died at Pearl Harbor nearly 60 years ago, and the sinking of the Titanic claimed 1,500 lives.\nDeputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told reporters at the Pentagon that the U.S. response to the attacks that wrought these horrors would "unfold over time."\n"One thing that is clear is you don't do it with just a single military strike, no matter how dramatic," Wolfowitz said.\nIn New York, the difficulties of extracting bodies from the rubble meant that while 184 deaths had been confirmed, city officials prepared to watch the total soar. The missing included nearly 400 city firefighters and police officers. Another 2,300 people were injured.\nThe lone bit of bright news was the recovery of two firefighters who slipped into an underground pocket beneath the rubble while searching for survivors Thursday. The two radioed for help and were rescued by fellow firefighters several hours after they fell.\nAt One Liberty Plaza, an office building near the trade center site, volunteers were evacuated when the top 10 stories of the complex appeared unsteady. Workers fled, sprinting down the street.\nAt a grief center set up for families with missing relatives, Jeanine Nardone arrived to look for her brother. She had hung his photo in a Brooklyn subway station, hoping someone would recognize Mario Nardone -- a 32-year-old Staten Islander, 6'1", 180 pounds, bald with blue eyes, who worked on the 83rd floor of Two World Trade Center.\n"He's a strong person," Nardone said. "He would not give up on us. And I'm not going to give up on him."\nMany family members stopped by the armory-turned-counseling center established by the city. Looking south from there, the seemingly endless plume of acrid, white smoke from the wreckage still corkscrewed above the Manhattan skyline.\nAt Bellevue Hospital, a blue wall erected around a construction site was covered with pictures and descriptions of the missing and prayers for safe returns.\nNew Yorkers did take some small steps toward normal life. While everything south of 14th Street remained closed, the northern part of Manhattan became busier. Office buildings reopened, restaurants put out sidewalk tables and hawkers handed out fliers. Traffic on the streets and subways was up sharply compared to Wednesday.\nThe government gave the go-ahead for commercial flights to resume and some did, but schedules were expected to be in disarray, and heavy security was the rule.\nBond trading resumed, while Wall Street officials said the stock markets were expected to open again on Monday. The shutdown on the New York Stock Exchange was already longer than the two-day closure at the end of World War II; the next-longest lasted a week, after the 1929 crash.\nBut the National Football League called off the 15 games scheduled for this weekend, and all Division I-A college football games also were postponed. Major-league baseball extended its hiatus through the weekend.\nIn Washington, the Senate was evacuated because of a bomb scare, and officials disclosed that Vice President Dick Cheney moved to Camp David in what his spokeswoman called "a purely precautionary measure."\n"From a security standpoint, this is not business-as-usual any more," said press secretary Juleanna Glover.\nNew Yorkers also remained edgy. On Staten Island, parents pulled children off school buses after a report that a car possibly linked to the terrorists had driven into the borough. At LaGuardia Airport, passengers were briefly evacuated from the just-reopened facility after a man said something about a device in a bag. Buildings around Manhattan were evacuated as authorities erred on the side of caution.\n"Right now, a lot of people are panicking," said Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. "And they really have to be as cautious as possible"
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
NEW YORK -- One week after terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, the mayor said there was virtually no hope left Tuesday of finding any of the 5,400 missing souls alive. Meanwhile, a federal grand jury has begun investigating the attack.\nThe somber news from Mayor Rudolph Giuliani came just a few hours after the nation, led by President Bush on the White House lawn, paused for two minutes to honor the victims. The remembrance came at 8:48 a.m., exactly one week after the first of two hijacked airliners struck the twin towers, followed soon after by hijacked planes crashing at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.\nNancy Pelaez, an administrative assistant on her way to work in New York, paused and wiped away tears. When you keep silent these two minutes, it seems like a really long time," she said. "I'm thinking of people who were looking for their loved ones."\nBy Tuesday, 218 people had been confirmed dead at the Trade Center and 5,422 were still listed as missing. Five survivors have been found, but none since last Wednesday. Just 135 bodies have been identified -- little more than 2 percent of the dead and missing.\nAfter a week of round-the-clock digging by thousands of rescue workers, the mayor said the chance of finding any survivors in the smoking ruins of the 110-story towers is now "very, very small."\n"We don't have any substantial amount of hope we can offer anyone that we will find anyone alive," Giuliani said. "We have to prepare people for that overwhelming reality."\nAuthorities said a grand jury was convened last week in nearby White Plains to investigate the attacks, the first step toward possible charges. The community is part of the federal court system's Southern District of New York, which has historically led investigations related to Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the attacks.\nIn Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft said authorities have detained 75 people and arrested at least four material witnesses in the terrorist investigation. The Immigration and Naturalization Service said it has changed its rules to double the time some immigrants can be detained to 48 hours.\nThe FBI is also investigating the possibility that more than four planes had been targeted by the hijackers, Ashcroft said.\nAfghanistan's Taliban rulers, meanwhile, vowed to wage a holy war against America if U.S. forces launch an assault to punish them for sheltering bin Laden, a Saudi exile. In the capital of Kabul, hundreds of clerics gathered to discuss conditions for possibly extraditing bin Laden to a country other than the United States.\nThousands of Afghans continued to flee to Pakistan amid fears of a U.S. attack. Some pushed past guards, ignoring warning shots fired over their heads.\nAs the one-week mark arrived, workers in New York's command center paused amid the ringing phones and glowing computer screens. In Union Square, residents stood silently amid a sea of candles and flowers.\nEven workers at ground zero stopped briefly in the hazy morning sunshine before returning to their labors within the seven-story mound of concrete, glass, metal and wood.\n"If a brother has lost his life, you'd like to give him a proper burial," said Tom Butler, spokesman for the Uniformed Firefighters Association. "We're going to continue to do what we have to do."\nWearing a face mask to protect his face from the smoke, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan joined the mayor and Gov. George Pataki for a 20-minute tour of the rubble. He shook his head repeatedly.\n"This is not just an attack on New York or the United States but on the whole world," Annan said. \nNot long after his visit, the U.N. General Assembly postponed next week's annual gathering of world leaders.\nHundreds of families from more than five dozen countries are waiting for word of their loved ones. Relatives continue to wallpaper the city with heartbreaking fliers bearing pictures and details of the missing.\nIn hopes of getting DNA matches, they have rooted through personal effects -- toothbrushes, coffee mugs, razors, hairbrushes, chewed gum -- that might provide a match with the dozens of body parts found at the site.\nThe process of DNA matching is expected to begin late next week, when the city medical examiner's office receives special FBI software.\nAt the former Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, workers have sifted through more than 45,000 tons of debris from the crash site. Authorities said several knives and box cutters have been found, but it's unknown whether they belonged to the hijackers.\nFire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, with ash on his shoes and a haggard expression on his face, said the collapse of the twin towers is making it difficult to dig deep into the rubble. And in areas where there might be a void beneath the rubble, rescuers have been driven away by the heat from underground flames.
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
NEW YORK -- Notorious mob boss John Gotti will be interred in a Roman Catholic cemetery alongside his son, but his family was denied permission to hold a funeral Mass for the convicted killer.\nGotti, responsible for at least five murders during his bloody reign atop the Gambino crime family, will not receive a Mass of Christian burial, the Rev. Andrew Vaccari, chancellor of the Diocese of Brooklyn, said Wednesday.\nInstead, Vaccari said in a one-sentence statement, "there can be a Mass for the dead sometime after the burial of John Gotti."\nGotti died of cancer Monday at a prison hospital in Missouri. He had been sentenced to life in 1992.\nThe decision on the Mass echoed the ruling made by church officials after the Gotti-ordered murder of his Gambino predecessor, "Big Paul" Castellano, in 1985. Castellano's family received permission for a private Mass after his burial, but was denied a funeral Mass with the body in the church. But unlike Gotti, Castellano was also denied burial in a Catholic ceremony because of his life of crime.\nGotti's remains were removed from the Missouri prison on Tuesday for their eventual return to New York and his family, which has been splintered by federal prosecution. Two of his brothers, his son and his ex-son-in-law were all jailed at the time of his death; another brother and a nephew were under indictment.\nGotti will end up in the family mausoleum that holds his son Frank, who died in 1980 at age 12 when he was accidentally struck by a neighbor's car. The neighbor, 51-year-old John Favara, disappeared four months after the accident and is believed to have been murdered.\nThe mausoleum is inside St. John's Cemetery in Queens, where an assortment of Mafia figures found their final resting spots. Those buried at St. John's include Carlo Gambino, Carmine Galante, Vito Genovese and Charles "Lucky" Luciano.\nWednesday's announcement did not say why Gotti was deemed qualified to be buried in a Catholic cemetery.\nIn addition to Castellano and Gotti, the church has denied a funeral Mass to other mobsters: Galante and Gotti underboss Frank DeCicco.\nAt issue is a church precept called "scandal" -- the idea that by granting a funeral Mass to someone who lived outside church teachings, the wrong message would be sent to the church faithful.The denial is not a judgment on the deceased's lifestyle, since the church believes that only God can make that determination.
(02/11/02 6:17am)
SALT LAKE CITY -- Old school, meet the new school.\nSnowboarder Kelly Clark, in an Olympic event that's all of 4 years old, soared above the halfpipe course to win America's first Winter Games gold on a day when other countries snapped decades-old winless streaks in more traditional sports.\nClark nailed her final run on Sunday to give the United States its first victory in its first hometown Winter Olympics since 1980 -- three years before the 18-year-old snowboarder was born.\nShe was cheered wildly by the partisan crowd, which included three barechested men in the freezing weather, the letters "U-S-A" painted across their chests. Guns 'n Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" blared as she launched her high-flying, dominating performance.\nDoriane Vidal of France won the silver and Fabienne Reuteler of Switzerland won the bronze.\nThe halfpipe debuted as an Olympic event at Nagano in 1998, where America's Shannon Dunn took a bronze medal.\nIn two days in Salt Lake City, the Americans -- who hope to capture 20 medals, the most ever for a U.S. winter team -- had one gold and two silver medals.\nEarlier, Swiss skier Simon Ammann returned from injury and soared to victory in the 90-meter ski jump -- the first Swiss ski jumping medal since 1972.\nThat was hardly much of a streak compared to the 54-year stretch of Finnish futility that Samppa Lajunen ended with his gold medal in the Nordic combined.\nThe nine gold medals awarded so far have gone to nine different countries, an Olympic sharing of the wealth. Austria, with five total medals, was atop the medals chart.\nMEN'S DOWNHILL \nIn one of the games' traditionally glamourous events, tradition was served as Austrian Fritz Strobl -- long overshadowed by more illustrious Austrian teammates -- swept to the gold medal.\nHe became the sixth Austrian to win the downhill in the 15 races since Alpine skiing debuted in 1948, although the first in a decade.\n"It's sensational," said Strobl, a 29-year-old police officer who had never won a medal in a major competition. "I didn't expect it. I was just thinking of racing down the course, not of winning"