Hurricane Sandy vs. Hurricane Katrina

City Room crunched some numbers to truth-squad Governor Cuomo's claim that Hurricane Sandy was "more impactful" than Hurricane Katrina.

Andrew W.K.\'s Bahrain Trip Is Canceled

Andrew W.K. will not be taking his brand of party diplomacy to Bahrain as he had originally planned. He said on his Web site on Tuesday that the United States State Department had withdrawn an invitation to play a concert sponsored by the United States Embassy in Manama, the capital. He had said earlier that the State Department had asked him to be a cultural ambassador to Bahrain, a religiously conservative Muslim country, “promoting music, freedom and positive party power.”

But late on Monday a state department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said embassy officials had changed their minds about showcasing Andrew W.K., a rapper and party-anthem rocker, after they reviewed his work, which includes songs like “Party ‘Til You Puke.”

“We had a Bahraini entity that approached the embassy about co-sponsoring a visit by this guy, who I take it is pretty popular there in Bahrain,” Ms. Nuland said, according to NPR. “That was initially approved, and then when more senior management at the embassy took a look at this, the conclusion was that this was not an appropriate use of U.S. government funds.”

She said United States diplomats had determined, “when they looked at the body of his work, that we didn't need to be part of this invitation.” She added: “There may have been some preliminary conversations with him, but he will not be going to Bahrain on the U.S. government's dime.”

Andrew W.K., whose full last name is Wilkes-Krier, took the news badly, sending a Twitter message on Monday saying, “I'm just blown away.” On Tuesday he released a statement on his Web site in which he said the United States Embassy in Bahrain had reached out to him more than a year ago and invited him not only to perform but also to give motivational speeches.

He said officials in the public affairs office at the United States Embassy in Manama had led him to believe through months of preparations and a background ch eck that the trip had been approved. That changed around noon on Monday, he said.

“I was scheduled to fly to Bahrain on Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012,” Mr. Wilkes-Krier wrote in his statement. “We received our official itinerary from the State Dept. at 5:58 a.m., on Monday, Nov. 26, 2012. Less than six hours later, we received an urgent telephone call informing us that the entire trip had been canceled, due to some higher level controversy.”

He added: “You can't judge a book by its cover. I would've done a great job and represented our nation with dignity and pride.”

A British Museum Treasure Will Visit the United States

The Cyrus Cylinder - one of the most famous objects in the British Museum - will travel from its home in London to five museums in the United States next year.

Often referred to as “the first bill of human rights” because its inscription encourages freedom of worship throughout the Persian Empire, it is a small clay object - not quite nine inches long - bearing an account, in Babylonian cuneiform, by Cyrus, the King of Persia of his conquest of Babylon in 539 B.C. The cylinder was found in what was once Babylon, now Iraq, in 1879 during a British Museum excavation and has been on display at the museum ever since. It is one of the most famous objects to have survived from the ancient world.

Although it traveled to the National Museum of Iran in 2010 it has never been on view in the United States. When it does come here, it will be one of 16 other objects from the British Museum that make up a show called “The Cyrus Cylinder in Ancient Persia,'' illustrating innovations initiated by Persian rule in the ancient Near East from 550 B.C. to 331 B.C. and the impact of the Persian Empire had on the ancient world.

“The Cyrus Cylinder in Ancient Persia,'' will open in March at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. It will end at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Calif., where it will be on view from Oct.2 through Dec. 2.

The loan is part of a wider effort by the British Museum to lend what it calls “universal objects” to different parts of the world. In a statement, Neil MacGregor, director of the museum said, “You could almost say that the Cyrus Cylinder is a history of the Middle East in one object and it is a link to a past which we all share and to a key moment in history that has shaped the world around us.''

For Statue of Liberty, a Lonely End to the Year

Adrees Latif/Reuters After the storm: the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island on Oct 31.

The Statue of Liberty, which was open to the public for just one day this year before Hurricane Sandy struck, will remain closed for at least the rest of the year, keeping tourists at a distance and putting hundreds of people out of work.

There is no projected date to reopen the statue or Liberty and Ellis Islands, according to the National Park Service. The decision led to the layoffs of 400 people who work on the islands or ferry visitors there, Crain's New York Business reported Monday.

The Park Service is preparing a report on the damage to the national monum ent complex, which had nearly 3.8 million visitors in 2011.

“As soon as we're able to make it safe, we'll reopen it for visitors,” said Mike Litterst, a Park Service spokesman.

The statue, a 126-year-old gift from France, had been closed the whole year for $30 million in renovations, but reopened, briefly, on Oct. 28, its dedication anniversary, which was the eve of the storm's arrival. The enduring symbol of freedom remained intact, but the islands' infrastructure sustained damage.

With business down, Statue Cruises, which ferries visitors to the islands, laid off 130 workers. The ferry service is still operating some harbor cruises past the island, said Michael Burke, Statue Cruises' vice president.

“We're hoping that the National Park Service will allow visitor access as early as possible, even if it's in a limited capacity,” Mr. Burke said.

About 100 people who provide security and other services on Lib erty and Ellis Islands were laid off.

The islands' souvenir and concessions vendor, Evelyn Hill, Inc.,  laid off 170 workers, and is now down to 3 employees, said the company's president, Bradford Hill. The company also lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory, he said.

Evelyn Hill has operated at the Statue of Liberty for 81 years, dating back to the days when immigrants passed through Ellis Island to start new lives. The company will continue, Mr. Hill said.

“We've weathered World War II, the centennial and 9/11,” Mr. Hill said. “We'll certainly weather through this as well.”

Seattle\'s Intiman Theater Plans Summer Festival

Intiman Theater of Seattle announced plans on Tuesday to hold its second summertime festival of plays and musicals in 2013, another step toward artistic and financial recovery after unpaid debts caused the cancellation of productions in 2011 and layoffs of the theater's staff.

The next festival of four productions, which will run in repertory from June 22-Sept. 15, will include a world-premiere musical, “Stu for Silverton,” billed as the unlikely story of Stu Rasmussen, the real-life transgendered mayor of the tiny town of Silverton, Oregon. The show has music and lyrics by Breedlove, a New York singer-songwriter, and a book by Peter Duchan, who wrote the libretto for the recent Off Broadway musical “Dogfight.” The two men and Intiman's artistic director, Andrew Russell, have been developing the musical for the last two years; Mr. Russell will also directing the show.

The other festival productions â€" which were chosen to reflect issues of race, sex, p olitics, and money â€" are “Trouble in Mind,” Alice Childress's 1950s play about race relations inside a theater rehearsal room; “Lysistrata,” the classic by Aristophanes about women withholding sex from their husbands in an effort to stop war; and “We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!,” a farce by Noble Prize winner Dario Fo about working-class housewives in an uproar over the rising cost of groceries.

Intiman leaders have no plans to return to a traditional season of theater productions, Mr. Russell said by e-mail on Tuesday, but added that he expected at some point to consider ways to have “a theatrical presence within the Seattle community throughout the year.” Intiman's current debts now total approximately $270,000, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday, citing local Seattle media reports.

According to a statement from the theater on Tuesday, the 2012 summer festival drew financial support from more than 1,000 donors who contributed a total of $1 million bef ore the productions were staged â€" an upfront financing strategy intended to assure that the Intiman shows did not end in debt if ticket sales were low. Intiman leaders have now begun a similar fundraising drive to help finance the 2013 festival.

Watchlist: Falling (or Flying) With Neil Patrick Harris

Neil Patrick Harris may have the most bulletproof brand in the entertainment business: square-jawed but winsome, smart but dopey, cuddly but dirty, cynical but sincere. Plus he sings and dances.

That well-honed persona will only be bolstered by Mr. Harris's new Web series, “Neil's Puppet Dreams,” which started Tuesday on the Nerdist YouTube channel. Produced in association with the Jim Henson Company, the show demonstrates something that we could have figured out on our own: Mr. Harris and the Muppets, who share most of the qualities listed above, are a perfect match.

The simple premise is that when Mr. Harris dreams, his dreams are populated by puppets. The first video, four minutes long, covers a nighttime classic, the dream of falling, as Mr. Harris (playing himself) floats downward accompanied by a trio of winged Muppets who sing an increasingly macabre ditty about his immediate future:

Your limbs will fall off
and your organs will burst.
You'll look like an artpiece
by Damien Hirst.

(Mr. Harris's response: “Who?”)

It's all good, inconsequential fun. Mr. Harris has been an online-video trailblazer, with his starring role in Joss Whedon's 2008 mini-musical “Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.” There's nothing revolutionary about the first installment of “Puppet Dreams,” unless you count the short lead-in to Mr. Harris's dream, in which he appears as half of a male couple (with children) alongside his real-life partner, David Burtka, who is a writer and producer of the series.

Even in the season of “The New Normal” and other mainstream shows depicting gay relationships, it feels, in its comic ordinariness and its s emi-reality, like a small act of bravery.

Made in the Bronx, Exiled From Manhattan and Queens, Statue Will Head to Brooklyn

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times “Civic Virtue” now stands on Queens Boulevard, near Queens Borough Hall (in the background).

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times A female figure symbolizing vice under the male allegory of virtue.

And Staten Island, too?

Given the improbable journey of “Civic Vir tue” since it was begun by the sculptor Frederick MacMonnies in 1920, nothing can be ruled out. The statue, known rudely as “Fat Boy” or “Rough Boy,” is about to become the best traveled public monument in city history, moving from the Bronx (where it was carved) to Manhattan (1922 to 1941) to Queens (1941 until the present) to Brooklyn, where it is to settle indefinitely in Green-Wood Cemetery.

The move was authorized Nov. 13 when the municipal Design Commission approved a long-term loan of the statue to Green-Wood. In a city preoccupied with cleaning up from Hurricane Sandy (Green-Wood suffered at least $500,000 worth of damage), the authorization slipped under the radar. A mayoral spokeswoman confirmed it on Monday.

Within months, perhaps by year's end, the perennially controversial and increasingly crumbly 15-foot-high marble - an allegory of virtue standing atop the sirens of graft and corruption - will disappear from the prominent spot it has occupied for 71 years in Kew Gardens, at Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike, outside Queens Borough Hall.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The new setting for “Civic Virtue,” at Green-Wood Cemetery.

It will be swallowed into the ornamented landscape of Green-Wood Cemetery, where it will stand at Jasmine and Garland Avenues. Surrounded by ornate mausoleums, memorial statuary and 560,000 dead bodies, “Civic Virtue” will be much less conspicuous. Make of that political metaphor what you will.

“Green-Wood always has been a sculpture garden,” said its president, Richard J. Moylan, who first offered a new hom e for “Civic Virtue” in 2010. “Adding sculpture, new and old, when possible and appropriate, will help maintain interest in Green-Wood long after the last burial is made.”

For instance, a bas-relief that once adorned the headquarters of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was lent to the cemetery in 2006 and placed at the mausoleum of the society's founder, Henry Bergh. And though MacMonnies is not buried at Green-Wood, his parents and brother are. So is Angelina Crane, the benefactor of the “Civic Virtue” monument.

The fountain at the base of “Civic Virtue,” designed by the architect Thomas Hastings, will stay behind in Queens. Dan Andrews, a spokesman for Borough President Helen M. Marshall, said she hoped to restore it to working order and install seating and modest landscaping around it, creating a tranquil place that pays tribute to outstanding women in history.”

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Detail of the fountain at the base of “Civic Virtue,” which will remain in Queens.

Ms. Marshall was candid about her unwillingness to spend money on the statute. “Vice is portrayed in the form of a woman,” she said in 2007. “I have no enthusiasm for restoring it.”

“Civic Virtue” was denounced even before it was installed in front of City Hall as a demeaning depiction of woman being trampled by man. In a nation of newly enfranchised women, this kind of symbolism at the seat of government was especially unwelcome.

Mary Garrett Hay of the National League of Women Voters was paraphrased in The New York Times of March 16, 192 2, as saying that “in this age, woman should be placed not below man, but side by side with him in any representation of civic virtue.”

Mayor John F. Hylan made it plain that his sympathies lay with opponents, even as he allowed the installation of the statue. He sponsored a hearing on March 22 before the Board of Estimate, whose jurisdiction over the matter was unclear, at which “Civic Virtue” was excoriated by speakers, including his honor.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

MacMonnies did himself no favors by explaining the idea that public service was best embodied by “the unspent strength of a young man” who “does not even see the temptation” at his feet. To suggest temptation's “charm and insinuating danger,” the artist said, “one thinks of the beauty and laughter of women: the treachery of the serpent coils of a sea creature wrapped about its prey.”

Despite the criticism, “Civic Virtue” remained in place, in part because politicians were leery of demolishing something on which $60,000 had been spent. It was left to George U. Harvey, borough president of Queens in 1941, to put Manhattan out of its misery. Discerning a kindred spirit, he welcomed “Civic Virtue” to Borough Hall that year, two months before Pearl Harbor.

“I have been kicked around for years, just as that statue has,” Mr. Harvey said. “I felt that he and I had so much in common that if he were over here, near my office, I could come out here sometimes and we could tell each other our troubles.”

Not everyone, it should be said, saw trouble in “Civic Virtue.” Told this week of the allegorical battle going on across Queens Boulevard, Yael Goldman, an asso ciate broker and manager at Nu-Place Realty, allowed: “I never noticed that. Twenty-four years I'm in this office.”

Ms. Goldman wondered whether it was fair to view the sculpture through the lens of contemporary standards. “Who are we to judge something that was once considered art?” she asked. “It was art. Everybody's view of art is different.”

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times A chain-link fence surrounds “Civic Virtue,” which is in a poor state of repair.

\'Silence! The Musical\' to Close

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Jenn Harris as Clarice Starling and Brent Barrett as Hannibal Lecter.

The Off Broadway show “Silence! The Musical,” an unauthorized parody of the Oscar-winning movie “The Silence of the Lambs,” will close on Dec. 30. Over an 18-month run, the show gained a cult following yet could not manage to earn back its $750,000 capitalization budget. The producers announced on Tuesday that the show â€" which turns on the relationship and battle of wits between FBI agent Clarice Starling and the malevolently brilliant cannibal Hannibal Lecter (Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in the movie) â€" would wrap up at the Elektra Theater in Times Square after playing 447 regular performances and eight preview performances.

A spokesman for the producers said that ticket sales, which had been robust during the summer and early fall, have not bounced back since Hurricane Sandy.

Many Off Broadway commercial productions struggle to turn a profit; in the case of “Silence!,” its chances were hamstrung by a limited schedule â€" the show held only four to six performances a week for much of its run â€" as well as a relatively large cast of 12 actors and a band. The musical also transferred theaters twice during the course of its run, adding to production costs.

With a score by Jon and Al Kaplan and a book by Hunter Bell, “Silence!” is now also running in Los Angeles, and future productions are being planned for South Africa and London.

Wyatt Cenac Leaving \"The Daily Show\"

“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” is losing one of its correspondents, Wyatt Cenac. Comedy Central said that Mr. Cenac had decided to leave at the end of the year, which for the show comes on Dec. 13, when it tapes a final edition before a holiday break. “Jon and the staff wish him the best in his future endeavors,” a channel spokesman said.

Mr. Cenac, a writer and stand-up comic, joined “The Daily Show” in 2008, following in the punch-lines of past correspondents like Steve Carell, Ed Helms and Rob Corddry. His departure was first reported by Vulture, the entertainment news Web site.

The show doesn't plan to hire a new correspondent right away, nor does it need to, since it doesn't have a set number of players. Besides Mr. Cenac, there are six currently: Samantha Bee, Jason Jones, John Oliver, Aasif Mandvi, Al Madrigal and Jessica Williams. Ms. Williams, the newest correspondent, joined the cast in January.

\'Miss Firecracker\' to Open on Broadway

Dan Steinberg/Associated Press Amber Tamblyn.

Beth Henley's play “The Miss Firecracker Contest,” which had a critically praised Off Broadway run in 1984, will be mounted on Broadway this spring and star the Emmy-nominated actress Amber Tamblyn (“Joan of Arcadia”), the show's producers announced on Tuesday. Ms. Tamblyn will play Carnelle Scott, a lonely young woman in Mississippi who hopes that persevering in the patriotic pageant of the title will turn her life around. The character was an important early role in the career of Holly Hunter, who played the part in the original Off Broadway production of “Miss Firecracker.” (Ms. Hunter reprised the role in a 1989 film adaptation.)

The new rev ival will mark two Broadway debuts â€" acting for Ms. Tamblyn and directing for Judith Ivey, a Tony Award-winning actress who is now appearing in the Broadway revival of “The Heiress.” Ms. Tamblyn also starred in the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” movies and appeared in several episodes of “House” toward the end of its television run.

Performances dates, a Broadway theater, and further casting will be announced later. This will be the first play by Ms. Henley on Broadway since the 1982 production of “The Wake of Jamey Foster,” which also featured Ms. Hunter. Ms. Henley's other Broadway outing was “Crimes of the Heart,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

The lead producer of “The Miss Firecracker Contest” is a relative newcomer to Broadway, Larry Kaye, who is also the producer of another play announced for Broadway this spring, “The Velocity of Autumn.” Mr. Kaye, a lawyer, has written and directed theater productions in Washin gton, D.C., and â€" through his company HOP Theatricals â€" has invested in recent Broadway musicals like “American Idiot” and the revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

Japanese Museum Returns a Possible Leonardo to Italy

ROMEâ€"More than 70 years after an oil painting depicting a panel of Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated Battle of Anghiari was spirited away from Italy to enter into a succession of private collections, the work â€" tantalizingly attributed by some to the master himself â€" is going on show at Italy's presidential palace until mid-January.

The Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, the most recent owner of the so-called Doria Panel, returned the painting to Italy this summer after officials here demanded its restitution, claiming that it had been illegally exported at the start of the Second World War. The Japanese museum had bought the work â€" which depicts “The Fight for the Standard” from Leonardo's famous Battle of Anghiari mural â€" in good faith on the Japanese antiquarian market in 1992.

Several copies are known of this scene from the Leonardo mural, which was painted in 1504 for Florence's Palazzo Vecchio and has been lost for some 500 years, despite numerous attempts to locate it.

The panel will be studied by experts to “determine its authenticity and attribution,” said deputy culture minister Roberto Cecchi. The Doria Panel has alternately been attributed to Leonardo or to an unidentified 16th century Tuscan artist.

“The return allows for further research to be undertaken and for the work to be shown to the public,” said Akira Gokita, the director of the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum at a press conference Tuesday.

Mr. Gokita declined to say how much the museum had paid for the work, but Mr. Cecchi said the painting had been insured for 18 million euros.

In recent years, Italian officials have successfully negotiated for the return from international museums of numerous works that they claimed had been illegally removed from the country.

The painting will be provided for exhibition to the Japanese museum for four years on a rotating basis, according to the terms of the accord stipulated with the Italian cul ture ministry, along the lines of similar agreements that the ministry has with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which returned several antiquities to Italy.

The Japanese museum “has given a magnificent example,” said Louis Godart, councilor to the Italian President on matters of artistic conservation.

Shakespeare\'s Globe Sets 2014 Opening Date for Indoor Theater

Leaders of the open-air Shakespeare's Globe theater in London said on Tuesday that its new indoor theater space will open in January 2014 and be named for Sam Wanamaker, the American actor and director who led the decades-long effort to rebuild the Globe on the south bank of the Thames River.

The new 340-seat theater will be designed in the Jacobean tradition, with perhaps the most notable touch being the candles that will light much of the space, according to the Globe's artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole. The construction of the new Sam Wanamaker Theater is costing approximately 7.5 million pounds, or about $12 million, and 6.5 million pounds have been raised so far, a spokeswoman for the theater said.

The inaugural production for the new theater will be announced next year, the spokeswoman added. The space, which will have two tiers of galleried seating and a pit seating area, will feature Jacobean plays by Webster, Marlowe, and Ford as well as works by Sh akespeare.

While the Globe is a replica of the wooden open-air theater where some of Shakespeare's plays were produced in the 16th century, the new theater space was envisioned by Wanamaker and others years ago to augment the Globe for Jacobean works that were performed indoors during the 16th and 17th centuries.

“The Sam Wanamaker Theater will allow the Globe to continue its experimental vision of going back to the future,” Mr. Dromgoole said in a statement. “Just as with the Globe itself, these unique playing conditions offer an opportunity to refresh our understanding of Jacobean theater, and to provoke new visions for the future of how theater can be made.”

Wanamaker, who performed on Broadway mostly in the 1940s and ‘50s and appeared in such films as “The Concrete Jungle” and “Private Benjamin,” died in 1993.

You Must Remember This: \'Casablanca\' Piano on Sale Dec. 14

These may be tough times for many beloved pianos, but one famous set of keys has so much sentimental value â€" and Hollywood cachet â€" that it is expected to fetch a million-dollar price at Sotheby's on Dec. 14. The piano used to play “As Time Goes By” in the 1942 movie “Casablanca” is being offered for sale by a Japanese collector, with Sotheby's estimating that it will go for up to $1.2 million, according to The Associated Press.

The collector purchased the piano at a Sotheby's auction in 1988 for $154,000. In the film, the nightclub musician Sam (Dooley Wilson) plays on the piano and sings “As Time Goes By,” the love serenade for Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman).

How Are You Celebrating Shirley Chisholm Day?

Today is Shirley Chisholm Day, honoring the daughter of Bedford-Stuyvesant, pioneering politician, antiwar and pro-choice activist, child-care expert, college professor, author and namesake of the Shirley A. Chisholm State Office Building in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. How are you celebrating?

After \'Argo,\' a New Spotlight on a Hostage Crisis

Millions of Americans have seen the film “Argo” and enjoyed it. Not Barry Rosen. With this movie, Mr. Rosen could not possibly be like millions of Americans. When he saw “Argo” a few weeks ago, he inevitably brought to it a critical eye that only a few dozen others could share.

“I'm not saying it's not a good adventure movie,” he said, “but it's not serious to my mind.”

“For me,” he said, “it was very much an escapist film,” while reality as he knew it was “much more compelling and more dangerous.” On this, you must take him unquestioningly at his word.

Mr. Rosen is the lone New Yorker remaining from among the 52 American men and women held hostage for 14 months by Iranian militants who had overrun the United States Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. During those months â€" 444 days in all - a transfixed America felt as if the entire country had been taken prisoner.

That moment in histo ry is the backdrop for “Argo.” The focus, though, is not on the hostages but, rather, on six American diplomats who slipped out of their compound, made their way to the Canadian Embassy and, eventually, flew out of Iran through a delicious subterfuge cooked up by an alliance of the C.I.A. and Hollywood.

The luckless hostages are shown fleetingly, as in a moment when their captors line them up for mock executions by a firing squad. Terrifying as that scene was, it landed wide of the mark, said Mr. Rosen, who was the embassy's press attaché. Now, at age 68, he is in charge of public and external affairs at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

“There was no firing squad,” he said. “There were mock executions in our cells. They took place in the middle of the night. Total darkness. They were dressed up in black outfits. It was their charade. They were the same people guarding us during the day. They'd open up our cell, throw all that we had on the floor - it wasn't much: photos, letters - throw us up against the wall, point the gun against our head, and just laugh and walk out.”

“It was an attempt at intimidating us and making us feel like we were totally without any power,” he said. Clearly, the tactic worked. “We were powerless,” he said.

Whether or not former hostages like “Argo,” it has performed at least one important service for them: It has, for now anyway, retrieved their crisis from the deep recesses of the American consciousness, and shined some welcome light on it.

Of the 52 who were finally released on Jan. 20, 1981, 13 have died, the most recent death being that of Phillip R. Ward, an intelligence officer at the embassy. He took his own life last month â€" as fate would have it, just as “Argo” was opening. “Ward came home but never returned,” V. Thomas Lankford Jr., a lawyer for the hostages, wrote in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. “He was never the same.”

In his own way, neither was Mr. Rosen. He suffers from recurring bouts of deep anxiety and sleeplessness. “For 33 years, it's been a constant,” he said. “I went through an emotional disconnect while I was there. This has followed me through these decades.”

He and the other survivors still have unfinished business with Iran. They want to be compensated for their ordeal.

They tried for years to accomplish that with lawsuits, but hit a brick wall in the courts. American administrations repeatedly opposed them, citing an agreement with Iran in 1981 that had cleared the way for the hostages to be freed. That arrangement permitted companies to recover billions in Iranian government funds that the United States had frozen. But the hostages themselves were barred from seeking damages.

A deal is a deal, the State Department insisted, and it must be honored.

A deal reached in effect at gunpoint is no deal at all, the former captives countered. That argument did not prevail.

Now the hostages' best hope rests with a House bill that would compensate them with money obtained from two principal sources: any Iranian assets that may remain frozen and fines imposed on companies found to be trading illegally with Iran. Whether this bill becomes law is an open question.

“This is not a money grab,” Mr. Rosen said. As he sees it, basic standards of fairness were turned on their head when his own government agreed that it was fine for huge corporations to recover money from Iran but not those who had endured long torment.

He recalled a moment in 1981 soon after being freed. He and his wife, Barbara, had a much-needed getaway in Jamaica with their two children. An American who ran “a construction company with interests in Iran” recognized him and came over.

“He says to me, ‘How did you make out?'” Mr. Rosen said. “I said: ‘We didn't get a dime. We are what we are.' He s ays, ‘We made out like a bandit.'”

“Now that has to hurt me,” he said. “And it hurts everybody else who was held hostage.”

E-mail Clyde Haberman: haberman@nytimes.com

Movies, Memorabilia and Metallica

Carter Dow Kirk Hammett with items from his collection of horror-themed memorabilia.

Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist for the band Metallica, was 6 years old when an older brother got a model of Frankenstein and painted it, to Mr. Hammett's dismay, in a rainbow of psychedelic colors.

“It was the late '60s in San Francisco,”  Mr. Hammett said. “But that's not how Frankenstein looked. I begged my mom to buy me a model. I painted it the way I wanted.”

That artistic choice was the start of Mr. Hammett's lifelong obsession with horror memorabilia. Decades after his first acquisition, Mr. Hammett, 50, has amassed a vast collection that includes horror movie pos ters, toys, dolls, games, costumes, masks, original artwork and other mementos. Last month, Abrams released “Too Much Horror Business,” a 228-page coffee-table book that highlights hundreds of those pieces. Selected movie posters from the book are featured in this slide show.

Mr. Hammett recently spoke with ArtsBeat by phone about provocative design, evil sounds and how horror fans and metal lovers are kindred spirits. Following are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q.

Your collection spans several decades. How long have you been a horror fan, and how long have you been collecting?

A.

I've been into horror movies since I was 5. I've been collecting since I was 6. When I started making a little money and had some disposable income, I dove into it. I would say it's been about 28 years of collecting. I have thousands of items. I've never counted everything but I do have i t in a database. A lot of the difficulty in putting the book together was trying to decide what not to put in.

Q.

There's a lot of horror memorabilia out there. How did you decide what's worth acquiring?

A.

It was the stuff I liked the most. It didn't really have anything to do with things like monetary worth or how rare stuff was. It had everything to do with how cool the stuff was. It didn't matter if it was older or newer. Usually the coolest stuff is the stuff that is the most rare or that you can't see anymore because the aesthetic isn't there anymore.

Q.

You had a big hand in the book, including writing all the captions. What else did you do?

A.

I did all the layout as well, from endpaper to endpaper. I had a very distinct vision. It was important for me that this be shown a certain way. I worked with a graphic designer and art director, and a lot of times there would be movie posters put next to each other that would not work. I made sure every piece was where it should be.

Collection of Kirk Hammett

Q.

A big section of the book is devoted to the movie posters in your collection. What do you find appealing about the horror poster?

A.

The movie posters are the items that I love the most. I think they are super beautiful. I love what they represent. A lot of the stuff from the '20s had a very expressionistic look to it. I'm really into German Expressionism. I love “Nosferatu” and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and “Faust.”

A lot of the  posters from the '30s are also beautiful. At the time horror movies were a relatively new genre, and when the big studios designed  posters for them, there was no formula. They used the same approach for a horror movie poster as they would a western or romance. They used lush colors. It was very vibrant. There's a romantic quality to the approach to these posters that you don't get nowadays. The technique they used is a lost art.

Q.

Do you remember the first poster you got?

A.

“The Day of the Triffids.” It's a film about giant man-eating plants from space that come in on meteorites. What happens is there's this explosion and it blinds everyone on the face of the earth. Then these man-eating plants stalk humans. I was sequestered inside the house and saw it on TV. I saw it when I was 5. I don't know if I'd show my 5-year-old this movie.

Q.

Is your collection on display in your home or do you kee p it in storage?

A.

I really am not the kind of person to store it. I have to display it and have it seen. I also have a shortage of wall space, so what I do is rotate stuff. I'll put something up on the wall and after three months I'll take it down and put something else in its place.

Q.

What's the connection between metal and horror movies? There's a lot of crossover between the two, but I wonder where that comes from.

A.

They use the same ingredients. A good horror movie has its peaks and valleys. It's dark and light, just like a good metal song. Visually, horror movies have a dark, evil aspect, just as heavy metal sonically has its darker side, its evil-sounding side. Also they draw from the same subject matter. The best example is the movie “Black Sabbath” and the band Black Sabbath.

Musically there's a movement called the flatted fifth that's really evil-soundin g. It was outlawed by the Catholic Church during the middle ages. That movement is what gives you a real evil sound that conjures up dark, fantastic images. It's like an audio horror movie. It personifies what a horror movie is about.

Q.

It's probably hard to choose, but do you have an item in your collection that you consider a favorite?

A.

The movie “Black Cat,” from 1934, is one of my favorite movies. Three or four years ago I was thumbing through an auction catalog and I saw the outfit that Boris Karloff wore in that movie. I couldn't believe it still existed and that someone found it.

I acquired the piece at auction and had a Boris Karloff mannequin made. I put the suit on him. But the second I got the outfit at my house I put it on. I was amazed at how well it fit. I walked around my house for four or five hours pretending I was Boris Karloff.

An Autumn Night

Dear Diary:
   

Librado Romero/The New York Times

Fog shrouds the street lamp.
Sodden leaves stick to the sidewalk.
Beads of drizzle cover a
Lone car at the curb.
A shadowy figure floats by,
Holding an umbrella high.

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