The Creators of \'Modern Family\' Answer Your Questions

Jordin Althaus/ABC Ty Burrell, left, and Nolan Gould in a scene from “Modern Family.”

In 2009 Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd bet they could freshen the musty old family sitcom genre with a looser, mockumentary shooting style and broader, more inclusive ideas about what comprises a family.

They were correct, to put it mildly. “Modern Family” made its debut that year to critical huzzahs and has become one of the most popular sitcoms on television as well as the most acclaimed. It has been named the top comedy at the Emmy Awards for three years running, and several of its adult cast members have won acting statues of their own.

Mr. Levitan and Mr. Lloyd, the show's co-creators, are taking your questions about the show. They have credited their own families and an awkward writing staff - their description - for inspiring enough domestic high jinks to fill 20-plus episodes each season, but acknowledge that the possibility of running out of  silly-yet-resonant stories “keeps me awake at night,” Mr. Levitan said in an interview last summer.

What else frightens or inspires them as they create “Modern Family”? Here's your chance to find out - please post your questions about the show in the comments below. We'll pose some of them to Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Levitan and post their answers here at a later date.

For 2nd Time, Schools Official (Now Former) Is Fined for Nepotism

A former senior budget official in the city's Education Department was fined about $48,000 for creating a job that he could have filled with his unqualified wife, then paying her an excessive salary, the Conflicts of Interest Board announced on Wednesday.

The official, Angel Namnum, who resigned as the department's director of central budget in March, had arranged for the hiring of his wife, Rosa Castillo, as a community coordinator for $52,000 a year, according to a settlement he reached with the board. The job typically pays about $35,000 at entry level.

Mr. Namnum, who was paid $190,806 annually, fell afoul of the city's nepotism rules before. In 2008, he was fined $1,250 for recommending his brother's hiring for a principal's position.

In the new case, Mr. Namnum asked a subordinate to create a budget line for a community coordinator position in the Bronx last year, when he was the Education Department's business direct or there, and then he assigned that job a title and a salary, according to the settlement (see also below).

“At the time of my request, I knew that the pay scale I indicated was higher than the usual pay scale for the designated position and that my wife did not meet all the requirements for the position,” he said in the settlement. Mr. Namnum then asked another Education Department employee to solicit Ms. Castillo's résumé, without informing the employee that Ms. Castillo was his wife.

Throughout the hiring process, the position was not posted as available nor was anyone interviewed, the conflicts board said in a statement. No Education Department employees involved had met Ms. Castillo before she was offered the job.

Ms. Castillo was terminated in April, shortly after Mr. Namnum resigned, the conflicts board said.

The fine, totaling $47,929, represents a $15,000 penalty against Mr. Namnum and the entirety of his wife's earnings at the Educati on Department, $32,929.

The penalty is the second-highest ever imposed by the conflicts board. The largest was $84,000, imposed in 2000 against a former city sheriff, Kerry Katsorhis, after the board concluded he was using his office to run an outside law practice, among other things.

Namnum Conflicts Ruling (PDF)

Namnum Conflicts Ruling (Text)

Artifacts of a Music Career, Gone With the Storm\'s Roar

Ángel Franco/The New York Times Kenny Vance, the singer, songwriter and music producer, at the ruins of his home in Belle Harbor, Queens. Many of his possession were destroyed or washed away.

In the 38 years since Kenny Vance moved into his oceanfront home at the end of Beach 137th Street in the Rockaways, the house became a repository of his half-century musical career as a singer, songwriter and producer.

“It was my little museum,” said Mr. Vance, 68, an original member of Jay and the Americans, which was an opening act for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones , and the musical director behind many prominent films and television shows, including “Saturday Night Live.”

Over the years, he improved the modest beach house in the Belle Harbor section of Queens into a comfortable two-story refuge of rejuvenation that enabled him to keep a busy performance schedule.

“I weathered all the storms - never even got a drop of water in my basement,” said Mr. Vance, who would write and record music and rehearse with his band in his basement studio.

Then came Hurricane Sandy, which drove the ocean through the streets of Belle Harbor and pulverized his house while he was away performing on a cruise ship. He returned to find his house reduced to rubble.

“After the hurricane, a friend called and asked if I got water in the basement, and I said, ‘I don't have a basement anymore,'” Mr. Vance said. “It was beyond recognition. My whole reality didn't exist anymore.”

His posses sions reduced to the luggage he took on the cruise and his car, he was placed by federal officials in a Hampton Inn on Staten Island, and has spent his days visiting the remains of his house to sift through the sand for the rare photograph or recording that might be intact and worth saving.

So far, he has barely filled half of his car trunk.

On Wednesday, he watched a backhoe fill a dump truck with pieces of his home and its ruined contents.

Somewhere in that debris might have been shards or more of early vinyl recordings of the Harbor Lites, a doo-wop group in which Mr. Vance began his professional career in the late 1950s, at age 15, in his native Brooklyn.

Ángel Franco/The New York Times Some remnants from Mr. Vance's home.

And maybe remnants of 45-r.p.m. records with hits like “She Cried” and “Cara Mia” from Mr. Vance's next group, Jay and the Americans. Possibly photographs of him with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, when the groups first played in the United States.

“I was saving all this stuff to, one day, put into a book,” he said.

Gone was the shirt he wore in “American Hot Wax,” the film in which he appeared as a bandleader and for which he produced the soundtrack.

And now in the sand was a bulky roll of two-inch audio tape: the master recording of the “Animal House” soundtrack, which Mr. Vance also produced.

“I had a tape of John Belushi singing a dirty version of ‘Louie Louie,' which no one will ever hear now,” said Mr. Vance, who was musical director for “Saturday Night Live” in the early 1980s. The backhoe scooped up a poster of Kenny Vance and the Planoton es, his current group.

One item not in the pile was his upright piano.

“They found it up on the boulevard,” he said, referring to Rockaway Beach Boulevard. He used to keep the piano in the Brill Building in Manhattan, a hive of songwriting activity when Mr. Vance had an office there in the 1960s. Once, he said, an unknown songwriting duo - Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who would later form the band Steely Dan - used the piano to audition songs for him in 1967.

There in the sand were pieces of a drum set, and a half-buried kitchen blender. “Oh man, my juicer,” he said, picking up the blender.

Nearby was half of a 45 disc of “Looking for an Echo,” a Vance hit. And there was a sand-encrusted cassette tape of his own compositions with the handwritten label “7 Songs.” “I have no idea what it is,” he said.

Mr. Vance kept his 12 vintage guitars on the first floor, where he thought they would be safe. They were not.

He had ho meowner's and flood insurance, he said, but “I still have no idea what's going to happen. There is so much bureaucracy to go through.”

The house was where he gathered with his children and grandchildren, and where he rehearsed his latest album, a Christmas-themed offering called “Mr. Santa.”

But Mr. Vance, who is divorced, has not let what has happened stop him from performing. He has a show scheduled Saturday in Red Bank, N.J.

“Performing is my medicine,” he said, adding that his most poignant find in the wreckage was a photograph of him performing with the singer Johnny Maestro, who died in 2010.

“I cried when I found that,” he said. “I realized that I'm lucky, because I'm still here.”

M.T.A. Says Riders Will Not Have to Pay for Storm Repairs

Estimating that as much as $950 million in infrastructure damage may not be covered by insurance or federal aid, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority nonetheless pledged on Wednesday that riders will not be asked to bear the cost of rebuilding its transportation system as a result of Hurricane Sandy.

With a fare increase already scheduled for March of next year and a system still operating at less than full strength, officials said riders had already paid for the storm indirectly, sitting on more crowded trains and often waiting longer for them to arrive.

“This will not be a burden upon our riders,” Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the transportation authority, said of the storm costs during a news conference.

The authority incurred an estimated $5 billion in losses from the storm, including $4.75 billion in infrastructure damage.

After drawing from its insurance policy, with a maximum coverage of a little over $1 billion, the authority estimated that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would cover at least 75 percent of the remaining infrastructure costs, leaving about $950 million that the authority may need to cover itself.

The authority planned to begin up to $4.8 billion in external borrowing over the next few years, before some reimbursements are likely to trickle in. This strategy, outlined in the authority's November Financial Plan for 2013-2016, calls for the authority to pay as much as $29 million next year in interest and $48 million in both 2014 and 2015. To offset these changes in the financial plan, the authority said it would need to engage in significant cost-cutting from sources that have not yet been identified.

Since facing a deep budget shortfall in 2010, the authority has already undertaken an aggressive series of cuts, including the elimination of some subway lines and buses. Mr. Lhota emphasized Wednesday that service reductions were not expe cted this time around.

He also faced - and refused to answer - questions about his interest in running for mayor, an idea that has been floated in the news media and by an aide to former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, for whom Mr. Lhota served as deputy mayor.

“This is an MTA press conference, it's not a political press conference,” he said. “Unfortunately for all of you, I'm not going to answer any questions whatsoever about politics.”

Still, Mr. Lhota does not appear to mind the attention paid recently to him and the authority, which has been widely praised for restoring service so quickly after the storm. He pointed to a recent Quinnipiac poll in which 75 percent of voters called the authority's overall storm response “excellent” or “good.”

At the agency's full board meeting earlier on Wednesday, one member proposed that the group “formally congratulate” Mr. Lhota and his team for “bringing honor” to the authority after the stor m.

“All in favor?” Mr. Lhota asked, to laughs.

Mike Tyson, \'Chaplin\' Announce National Tours

Mike Tyson may have taken some punches from New York critics, but that isn't stopping him from taking his Broadway show, “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth,” on the road in a 10-week tour.

The tour, which Mr. Tyson announced Tuesday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” will hit more than 36 cities, starting with a two-night engagement on February 12-13 in Indianapolis, the city where in 1992 Mr. Tyson was convicted of rape.

In the show, which was directed by Spike Lee and ran for 11 days at Broadway's Longacre Theater in August, Mr. Tyson strongly denies that he committed the crime, for which he served three years in prison. And on “Jimmy Kimmel,” Mr. Tyson added a comic footnote about an unannounced jailhouse visit from Florence Henderson.

At the time, Mr. Tyson was in solitary confinement, so couldn't see her. “What was I going to say when Mrs. Brady came to visit?” Mr. Tyson said, staggering round the stage, imitating what was like to walk to the bathroo m in shackles. “Hi ma'am, how ya doing?”

Mr. Tyson, who did not explain why Ms. Henderson had visited, said he hoped she would come see the show.

Meanwhile, a more family-friendly production, “Chaplin: The Musical,” currently running at the Barrymore Theater, has also announced plans for a national tour, starting sometime in the fall of 2014. A world tour is also in the planning stages, according to a release from the producers. The release did not specify whether Rob McClure, who stars as the Little Tramp, will take the role beyond Broadway, where the musical has struggled at the box office.

Spotted (and Striped): the Runaway Zebra of Staten Island

Modern-day New York City has a proud tradition of relatively exotic animals roaming its streets, from escaped peacocks and peahens to the coyote of the West Side Highway bike path to the deer of Bay Ridge, to say no thing of a whole series of fugitive veal calves and other slaughterhouse-bound livestock.

But unless our memory is faulty, this is first time in a while that a zebra has been spotted on the loose.

The wildlife show began around 9:20 a.m. today for Zachary Osher, the owner of Metropolitan Drape and Blind on Victory Boulevard in the Staten Island neighborhood of Travis, who happened to be looking out the window when he saw what appeared to be two large hoofed animals trotting by.

“They ran past me, and then they made a loop around the parking lot,” Mr. Osher said. “I thought they were circus animals.” Like any quick-thinking citizen, he grabbed his iPhone and ran out shooting.

“They came around and they were galloping,” he said. “The pony was in the lead and the zebra was behind.”

The unlikely pair dodged traffic on the busy street and exited the frame, pursued, Mr. Osher said, by two men in dark suits carrying lassos.

Mr. Os her sent his video to The Staten Island Advance and went back to work.

It was unclear how the zebra and its companion spent the morning, but by 2:30 p.m., the police reported that the pair â€" the unstriped animal was actually a horse, the police said â€" had been captured and returned to their home, a petting zoo up the road at Victory Boulevard and Travis Avenue.

No such zoo is officially listed, but judging by this photo snapped in front of an auto garage at 1305 Travis Avenue and posted to Twitter two weeks ago, the zebra (or a zebra at any rate) is no stranger to the area.

SFMOMA Gets Major Gifts of Photography

On Wednesday the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced promised gifts of 473 photographs from three separate collectors, including a pledge of 26 photographs by Diane Arbus, from the San Francisco dealer Jeffrey Fraenkel, that will double the museum's holdings of her images. The museum got a lot of attention in 2003 when it organized an especially personal traveling exhibition about Arbus's life and work.

Two other gifts â€" one from an anonymous donor, the other from the Kurenboh Collection in Tokyo â€" include nearly 350 examples of Japanese photographs, which will make SFMOMA home to what it says is the biggest collection of Japanese photography in the United States. Also included in the gifts are works by celebrated photographers the museum already collects like Robert Adams, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Irving Penn and Garry Winogrand.

First Official Twitter Fiction Festival Begins

Twitter has already made a mark in the literary world, through experiments like Jennifer Egan's tweet-by-tweet New Yorker story, “Black Box,” and Ben Okri's line-a-day poem - not to mention the continuing debate over whether the microblogging service has turned the once-contentious literary world into a boring mutual appreciation society.

But now partisans of twitterature have their own official international pow-wow, thanks to the five-day Twitter Fiction Festival, which began Wednesday under the hashtag #twitterfiction.

The participants, some two dozen published and neophyte authors from five continents chosen by a panel of American publishing insiders, will be posting in five different languages, often with input solicited from readers. The Iowa-based writer Jennifer Wilson is posting photographs of gravestones and then writing “flash-fiction” in response to epitaphs submitted by followers. The South African author Lauren Beukes is writing mashups, gathered under the hashtag #LitMash, based on “incongruous suggestions (the weirder the better!),” according to the festival's showcase page. The French fantasy novelist Fabrice Colin will write a serialized story of five strangers trapped on a bus. And an anonymous Chinese author is contributing “Censortive,” a story exploring the limits of free speech in the People's Republic, tweeted out in a series of late-night installments.

The festival will also have a nonvirtual component, with a live event on Saturday at the New York Public Library featuring several participants, including the writer Andrew Schaffer, who is contributing paranormal domestic comedy under the handle @ProudZombieMom.

Rihanna Tops Chart as Adele Rolls On

Rihanna's “Unapologetic” (Def Jam) was the best-selling album in the United States last week, moving more than 238,000 copies and giving Rihanna her first No. 1 album on the Billboard album chart. That was a significant milestone for the Barbadian singer, who has had a dozen No. 1 singles but whose previous six CDs never made it to the top of the chart, Billboard reported.

The news of Rihanna's success came at the same time that the British soul singer Adele reached a different kind of milestone: her 2011 album, “21,” (XL/Columbia) which earned her several Grammy Awards, passed the 10-million mark in sales less than two years after its release, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That LP dominated the album chart for much of the last 12 months and spun off three hit singles - “Rolling in the Deep,” ”Someone Like You” and “Set Fire to the Rain.”

On this week's chart Taylor Swift's “Red” (Big Machine) held steady at No. 2, selling 185,00 0, while last week's leader, One Direction's “Take Me Home,” (Columbia) slipped to No. 3 with 176,000 copies sold.

The first album by the “American Idol” winner Phillip Phillips, “The World From the Side of the Moon,” (Interscope) had a strong first week on the market, landing the bluesy young rocker at No. 4 with 169,000 in sales. Kid Rock's latest release, “Rebel Soul,” (Atlantic) made its debut at No. 5, with 146,000 copies sold.

The rest of the Top 10 was a grab bag. Rod Stewart's holiday set “Merry Christmas Baby” (Verve) remained at No. 6. Pink's “The Truth About Love” (RCA) and Jason Aldean's “Night Train” (Broken Bow) both re-entered the Top 10, at No. 7 and No. 8 respectively, buoyed by special sales at major retailers. The ninth slot belonged to Led Zeppelin's “Celebration Day,” (Rhino/Atlantic) a live album culled from the band's 2007 reunion concert. Keyshia Cole's new album, “Woman to Woman,” (Geffen) rounde d out the list at No. 10.

\'Occupy\' Movement\'s Next Guerrilla Effort: A Film Screening

Almost from the moment Hurricane Sandy struck New York, an ad hoc offshoot of Occupy Wall Street set to work collecting food and clothing for victims of the storm and sending volunteers to hard-hit areas like Red Hook, Brooklyn, and the Rockaways in Queens to clean out flooded basements and to repair damaged houses.

Now, in what may be the quickest turnaround for a movie in recent memory, the group, Occupy Sandy, will show a documentary Wednesday about its efforts and the contention that the storm was tied to climate change and the fossil fuel industry. In classic Occupy fashion, the screening will not be in a traditional theater, but rather on the side of a yet-to-be-disclosed building in the East Village.

The screening of the film, “Occupy Sandy: A Human Response to the New Realities of Climate Change” (see trailer above or click here), will be at 6:30 p.m.

The filmmaker, Josh Fox, whose movie “Gasland” explored the controversy over the oil- and natural gas-drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, will be on hand as the new film is projected into the dark of night by Occupy Wall Street's mobile art van known as the Illuminator. Several victims of the storm who received assistance from Occupy Sandy are expected to attend.

To be notified of the screening's location, text the phrase “@climatecrime” to 23559 or the follow the hashtag #climatecrime on Twitter.

Video: 24 Hours of New York Transit

Buses and trains as points of light.

The wonky mouthful known as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's General Transit Feed Specification is a free tool aimed at software developers who seek to use the agency's schedules to make useful apps.

But the G.T.F.S. has its aesthetic applications, too. Behold the video below (or here) by YouTube user STLTransit, featured Tuesday on Mashable, of 24 hours of buses, subways and trains coming and going, each one a point of dancing light. Like “Broadway Boogie Woogie” performed by fireflies, or something.

If you can't get enough, STLTransit has similarly represented the transit systems of Greater Cleveland; York, Ontar io; and Cincinnati, among others.

Spacewar! to Invade Museum of the Moving Image

Patrick Alvarado/Museum of the Moving Image A model of the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor-1) computer.

Museum gallery will become shooting gallery on Dec. 15 when “Spacewar! Videogames Blastoff” opens at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. The exhibit celebrates the 50th anniversary of a pioneering digital video game developed by students and researchers at M.I.T.

The two-player Spacewar! game had its premiere at the 1962 M.I.T. Science Festival, where it was intended to demonstrate the power of the then-new PDP-1 computer. The project, according to a statement from the museum, not only established a template for the relationship between the game industry and n ew technology but also introduced “shooting as a common aspect of game play.”

The exhibit, which follows hot on the heels of the Smithsonian's recent “Art of the Video Game” show, will offer some friendly fire alongside its historical displays. In addition to a replica version of Spacewar!, playable on a model of the PDP-1 (very few of the original machines survive), visitors can contribute to a million-gun birthday salute, thanks to playable versions of Computer Space (1971), Space Invaders (1979), Sonic the Hedgehog (1991), Halo 4 (2012) and 16 other arcade and console games indebted to Spacewar!

Video: Where \'Gangnam Style\' Meets the Salvation Army

Michael Kolomatsky/The New York Times At the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan, a man uses an energetic approach to solicit holiday contributions.

Cuomo Spokesman Joins Public Affairs Firm

ALBANY - Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's former communications director, Rich Bamberger, has landed a new job.

Mr. Bamberger, who left Mr. Cuomo's office earlier this month, will join M Public Affairs, a New York and New Jersey firm that is a subsidiary of ASGK Public Strategies, the Chicago-based company that David Axelrod, President Obama's political strategist, helped to found.

Mr. Bamberger will serve as managing director and plans primarily to work with corporate clients. The firm is led by Maggie Moran, who was a senior adviser on Mr. Cuomo's 2010 campaign for governor.

“I look forward to using the skills I first developed as a journalist and later refined in government to serve the clients of M Public Affairs,” Mr. Bamberger said in a statement.

Mr. Bamberger began as Mr. Cuomo's communications director in 2008, when Mr. Cuomo was attorney general, and moved with Mr. Cuomo to the governor's office in 2011.

Mr. Bamberger was previously a tele vision producer who served as managing editor of WCBS-TV in New York City and “Inside Edition.”

Music Critic Alex Ross Inspires a Festival

LONDON - First there was the book. Now there is the festival. The Southbank Center announced the details Tuesday morning of The Rest Is Noise, a year-long festival of 20th-century music inspired by Alex Ross's 2007 book of the same name. Mr. Ross, a music critic for The New Yorker magazine, won considerable acclaim for “The Rest Is Noise,” a sweeping survey of 20th-century classical music.

“When I read the book in its proof form, I called up Alex Ross right away,” said Jude Kelly, the artistic director of the Southbank Center, speaking to journalists and music professionals at the press launch. “I said, let me stage this.” Read more here on the IHT's blog, Rendezvous.

Cashless at the Bridge

The New York Times Cars first crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge on May 7, 1938.

Dear Diary:

The recent announcement that cash would no longer be accepted at the tolls on the Henry Hudson Bridge left me feeling unexpectedly wistful. That there would no longer be human beings collecting money there recalled an experience I had in the '80s, when I was a college student.

I had gone to visit a friend at her school in New Jersey and was on my way home to Connecticut. As usual, at that time, I had just a few dollars on me, enough to get over the George Washington Bridge and pay the remaining tolls between New York City and home. But unfamiliar with city traffic, I got mixed up after coming over the George Washington and somehow ended up heading back toward New Jersey. On the other side I turned around and got myself going in the right direction, but paying the toll a second time wiped out my cash.

Pulling into the tollbooth at the Henry Hudson, I paused for a second and then burst into tears. “I have no money,” I wailed.

The toll taker asked me to pull over to the side of the bridge. The man followed me over to the shoulder. I expected to be thrown into some toll-related version of debtors' prison.

He leaned over the driver's side window. “How much do you need to get home?” he asked. I burst into tears again, this time from gratitude.

We settled on an amount sufficient to get me through the tollbooths scattered along the parkways ahead. He gave me the money and a slip of paper with his address on it. I don't remember his name, but I do recall that he lived in Co-Op City, for which I have had inordinate affection ever since.

When I got home, I mailed him the cash.

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