Happy Whatever-This-Is, From the Staff of City Room

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

Two Haunting Images, but Why Criticism for Only One?

N.Y.P.D. Brandon Woodard, right, and the gunman who killed him moments after this surveillance-camera image was made.

Updated 3:06 p.m. | The two photos, taken a week apart, though hardly identical, have much in common: a man seconds away from sudden public death, the instrument of his demise closing in on him.

But the photos have been received very differently.

The New York Post was widely criticized for publishing a picture of a man about to be crushed by a sub way train - and we were criticized for rerunning it in a piece about The Post's cover. Yet very few eyelashes were batted about the widespread publication Tuesday of a chilling photo of Brandon Woodard texting obliviously on a Midtown street as a man drawing a gun from his pocket prepared to murder him.

Why the disparate responses?

Some of the criticism of the subway photo was aimed at the photographer, who many thought should have helped pull the victim up rather than taking his picture, though he said he was too far away to do anything in time. And some of it was aimed at The Post's choice of words to go with the disturbing image.

But there seems to be something about the images themselves that made one of them highly questionable a nd the other relatively non-problematic. (The journalism blog Poynter has also weighed in on the subject, as has The Times's David Carr.)

Please discuss below.

Behold the 12/12/12 12:12 Baby

Dr. Amos Grunebaum/NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital

This baby is so fresh she doesn't even have a name yet, but she definitely has a number. Baby-girl Patterson entered the world at 12 minutes after noon today at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. (The clock-looking thing on the right in the photo above is a timer, not a clock.)

The little one weighs just over six pounds. She has twin siblings. We wish her health and happiness a dozen times over. Her parents are Michael and Olivia Patterson of the Upper East Side. What should they name her?

Christie Tells Barbara Walters He Isn\'t Too Heavy to Be President

Andrew Burton/Getty Images Gov. Chris Christie

Gov. Chris Christie said it was “ridiculous” for people to question whether he was too heavy to be president of the United States during a television interview scheduled to be broadcast on Wednesday night.

The governor told Barbara Walters for her annual “10 Most Fascinating People” special on ABC that he was “more than a little” overweight.

But when Ms. Walters said some people say he is too overweight to be president, Mr. Christie, a Republican who is often mentioned as a potentially formidable candidate in 2016, responded: “That's ridiculous. I don't know what the basis for that is.”

Ms. Walters said that people were concerned about his health and that people who were overweight were more prone to health problems like heart disease and diabetes.

But the governor noted his work after Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey, when he appeared all over the state in his now familiar fleece jacket (he wore one to mock himself on “Saturday Night Live”) and won a huge bump in his public approval rating, even among Democrats.

“I think people watched me for the last number of weeks and Hurricane Sandy doing 18-hour days and getting right back up the next day and still being just as effective in the job,” he told Ms. Walters. “So I don't really think that would be a problem.”

Prominent Republican donors had encouraged Mr. Christie to run for president this year, and floated his name as a potential vice-presidential candidate. He recently announced that he would run for re-election next year. (The big question in New Jersey politics is w hether Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark, will be his Democratic challenger.)

The governor's advisers have maintained that his weight does not bother his constituents. If anything, they say, some people appear to identify more with someone who struggles with his weight.

That has not stopped interviewers from asking about it. Earlier this year, he told Oprah Winfrey that he had “developed a shell” about weight jokes. And he told Piers Morgan that he had started working with a trainer.

Ms. Walters started the discussion by observing that Mr. Christie is a “little overweight.” He responded, “More than a little.”
When she asked why, he replied, “If I could figure that out, I'd fix it.”

Suspect in Patz Murder Pleads Not Guilty

The man indicted in the killing of Etan Patz in 1979 loudly pleaded “not guilty” Wednesday to murdering the 6-year-old boy.

Pool photo by Louis Lanzano Pedro Hernandez in court last month.

Those two words are the only ones the man, Pedro Hernandez, 51, has uttered in court since his arrest in May. He entered the courtroom wearing a sweatshirt and sweat pants with his hands cu ffed behind his back. He glanced at his wife and daughter in the audience before sitting down.

The police have said Mr. Hernandez made a videotaped confession during which he said he had choked Etan moments after luring him to the basement of a bodega where he was working.

After Mr. Hernandez's appearance in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to enter his formal plea, his lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, said his client had distanced himself from the confession and no longer believed what he had told the police.

Mr. Fishbein said Mr. Hernandez was susceptible to making a false confession because of his long history of mental illness, including hallucinations, his low intelligence and his detention by the police for six or seven hours on the day he confessed.

“There has to be more than the statement and we believe there is no further evidence,” Mr. Fishbein said. He said he intended to file a motion to have the indictment dismis sed because it is based on nothing more than an untrue confession.

The office of Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, contends the confession is credible and persuasive and not the product of Mr. Hernandez's mental illness.

Prosecutors filed with the court a record of 16 times and locations when Mr. Hernandez made statements about the killing to law enforcement authorities over the span of more than 30 hours in May.

The statements began at Mr. Hernandez's home in Maple Shade, N.J., at 7:25 a.m. on May 23. He made a videotaped and written statements at the Camden County, N.J., prosecutor's office just before 3 p.m.

At 10:30 that evening, he was with the police near the bodega and Etan's apartment in SoHo. Just after 2 a.m. on May 24, Mr. Hernandez was at the office of the Manhattan district attorney speaking to a prosecutor. He made videotaped statements in that office at 2:17 a.m. and again at 6:30 a.m.

Mr. Hernandez is due back in court on Jan. 30.

Q Train, 11:05 A.M.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

During the Regency\'s Renovations, the Power Breakfast Takes a Pause

Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times The famous power breakfast at the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue is relocating to a temporary space because the hotel is scheduled to close for renovations next year. A farewell celebration was held on Wednesday.

When the next history book about New York City is written, the chapter on people and power will almost certainly require a section covering something that began in 1975 and ended on Wednesday: The modern Manhattan power breakfast.

That term, power breakfas t, may not have originated at the Loews Regency Hotel, but for politicians, lobbyists, media personalities and business executives through five mayoralties and seven presidencies, the Regency was the place to see and be seen. That is why the index of that history book will probably say, “See also: ‘Movers and shakers.'”

That is why, every morning, the Lincoln Town Cars lined up outside the Regency, at 540 Park Avenue at 61st Street.

That is why, every morning, backs were slapped and cheeks were air-kissed, introductions were made, A-list types were seated at their usual tables, things were discussed - mergers, acquisitions, candidacies, donations - and deals were agreed to. Oh, and money was spent. An omelet cost $24; coffee, $9.

But the Regency is about to close for what Jonathan M. Tisch, the chairman of Loews Hotels, described as 10 months of top-to-bottom renovations. So on Wednesday, the hotel invited Regency regula rs to what it promoted as the final power breakfast. But it was not a goodbye: Mr. Tisch and his cousin James S. Tisch, the president and chief executive of Loews Corporation, want the power-breakfast crowd to move to a temporary home, a restaurant at 100 East 63rd Street.

“So the lost tribes have somewhere to wander to,” said William J. Bratton, the former New York City police commissioner, who met his wife, Rikki Klieman, at the Regency. (“At Table No. 1,” he explained. “Rikki was having breakfast with her new boss from Court TV,” he said. They exchanged business cards; one thing led to another; and they married in 1999.)

Other regulars talked about unlikely combinations of high-wattage personalities. “Opposites attract,” James Tisch said, remembering a morning when the Rev. Al Sharpton was at one table and Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, was at the next.

Another morning, James Tisch said, Eliot Spitzer held forth near Kennet h G. Langone, a founder of Home Depot and ally of a Spitzer target, Richard A. Grasso, who had been chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Langone had been on the board of the exchange and had been chairman of its compensation committee, which had approved Mr. Grasso's pay. Mr. Spitzer went to court demanding that Mr. Grasso return most of the $139.5 million he had received. The state's top court ruled later that the money was his to keep.

On yet another morning, James Tisch said, Joseph J. Lhota, who was a deputy mayor under Rudolph W. Giuliani and is now the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, arrived for breakfast. So did the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, a Democrat.

Mr. Sharpton, Mr. Lhota and Ms. Quinn were on hand on Wednesday, as was David N. Dinkins, the former mayor; Leslie Moonves, the president and chief executive of CBS; Barry I. Slotnick, a high-profile lawyer; and Kathryn Wylde, the president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City.

Even in such a crowd, there were memories of celebrity sightings. “Andrew Cuomo used to come and sit by himself before he was anybody,” said Herb Wilson, a cosmetics executive. “When I used to see him” - away from the Regency - “I'd say, ‘Andrew, I see you at the diner.' He'd say, ‘That's some diner.'”

Mr. Sharpton said his introduction to the Regency came from another well-connected political figure.

“The first time I came here, Percy Sutton brought me,” he said, referring to the lawyer and radio-station owner who was the Manhattan borough president from 1966 to 1977. “I was in my early 20s. He said he would come and sit here with the powers that be and make them uncomfortable.”

Across the room, Scott M. Stringer, the current Manhattan borough president, also remembered his first breakfast at the Regency. “I think I was a newly minted Upper West Side assemblyman,” he said, recalling an order of scrambled eggs and potatoes. “I never knew things could be so expensive, and that was 1993.” (According to the menu, the Regency now charges $34 for a breakfast with juice; two eggs; potatoes; toast, a bagel or an English muffin; and coffee or tea. The eggs by themselves are only $14.)

What about the Regency's temporary home, at a restaurant that changes with the seasons? It is Park Avenue Winter now. By the time the Regency reopens, it will morph into Park Avenue Spring, followed by Park Avenue Summer, and will probably transform itself into Park Avenue Autumn.

“We'll try it,” said Mr. Wilson, the cosmetics executive. “But nothing has the cachet. The vibrancy. The excitement. You spend an hour here, it's like 10 minutes.”

Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times Well-known guests gathered on Wednesday for one of the last power breakfasts at the Regency. From left to right were Ken Sunshine, a public relations executive, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, former Mayor David N. Dinkins and Jay L Kriegel, a former top aide to Mayor John V. Lindsay.

At Interfaith Luncheon, an Appeal for a Miracle

Brian Harkin for The New York Times Rabbi Marc Schneier greeted Imam Souleimane Konate at an interfaith Hannukah luncheon in Midtown.

Hanukkah is the Jewish holiday of miracles, commemorating how one day's worth of oil left in a Jerusalem candelabra more than 2,000 years ago somehow lasted for eight days. Imam Souleimane Konate, the head of Masjid Aqsa, a mosque in Harlem, is hoping that bodes well for his cause.

The imam was one of eight Islamic leaders from the New York area to gather in a kosher restaurant in Midtown on Monday for a Hanukkah celebration lunch with Rabbi Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel.

Rabbi Metzger, a tall man in a black fedora and long white beard, had just landed from Israel, so he swept in a bit late to the restaurant, Solo on Madison Avenue, with his wife and 13-year-old son.

“Salaam aleikum,” he said in Arabic to Imam Shamsi Ali, the head of the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens. “Shalom aleichem,” Imam Ali replied, repeating the same greeting - Peace be with you - in Hebrew, a brother Semitic language.

B rian Harkin for The New York Times Rabbi Yona Metzer, left, Imam Shamsi Ali, center, and Rabbi Marc Schneier shared a table.

Rabbi Metzger, in his first meeting with Muslim leaders in New York, remarked that Jews and Muslims have more in common than Jews and Christians, as well as a more peaceful history of coexistence. “As the sons of Abraham,” he said, “we don't need to use swords, we want to use candles, to use light.”

The event's host, Rabbi Marc Schneier, who heads a group dedicated to Jewish-Muslim dialogue, the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, pointed out that kind words were not enough to heal rifts between the faiths. “Miracles can happen, but people have to work extremely hard for them,” he said.

And to that end, Imam Konate brought up the problem that he has been grappling with.

His congregation is about to be evicted from its building on Frederick Douglass Boulevard because it can no longer afford its rent, which has gone to $10,000 from $4,000 in recent years as the boulevard has rebounded and gentrified. Now the rent is being raised to $18,000.

“The landlord is from the Jewish faith,” he told the rabbis. “We don't even know what to do; what we are asking him to do is to give us time, so that we can search for another location.”

He asked if maybe the rabbis could intervene.

“So you're asking for the chief rabbi and this rabbi to try to perform a miracle?” Rabbi Schneier asked, to laughter.

“We will try to help you,” Rabbi Metzger said, after asking how much time the imam needed to move. If the landlord was a religious man who attended synagogue, Rabbi Metzger added, he would be more likely to hear him out.

Antiwar \'Grannies\' Briefly Make Toys \'R\' Us Store Their Battlefield

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Lillian Pollak, left, and Corinne Willinger, led groups of older women on Wednesday inside the Toys “R” Us store in Times Square to protest what they said was the prevalence of violence in toys and games.

Clamors for peace inside the mammoth Toys “R” Us emporium in Times Square might not be unusual coming from parents and directed at their toddlers demanding yet another Barbie doll or another ride on the store's Ferris wheel .

But on Wednesday, the exhortations for peace were coming from an unexpected source â€" older women who belong to the Granny Peace Brigade and the Raging Grannies, two groups that have gained widespread attention for their demonstrations against the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.

On Wednesday, they took their message into Toys “R” Us to protest what they said was the prevalence of violence in children's games and toys. They have staged similar demonstrations at other stores, including Target.

It was the fourth consecutive year that the groups had demonstrated inside the store, at Broadway and 44th Street. The first two years they rode the famous Ferris wheel, waving signs and banners until they were forced to get off the ride by store employees.

This year, the nearly two dozen women changed their tactics and divided into thre e groups. One group went to the video game section downstairs, another went to an area that features war-themed toys and a third group stayed in the store's lobby.

The protest began promptly at 12:45 p.m. with them singing “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” They chanted “Don't buy war games, don't buy war toys,” while customers and store employees looked on, clearly perplexed. One employee said: “Are they even allowed to do that? I've never seen anything like that.”

Other onlookers were more supportive of the demonstration.

“I think it's a really good thing that they're out here,” said Stephen Beckwith, 38, from Toronto. “I have two boys at home and I don't let them play with violent toys.”

“Video games can be terrible,” he added. “The ones that kids play these days are the worst. It's just kill, kill, kill.”

After about 15 minutes, the demonstrators were asked by a security guard to leave.

Eva-Lee Bair d, one of the “grannies,” said that as retirees, many of them believed it was a great time in life to protest.

“This kind of protest is really for the old and the young,” said Ms. Baird, 72, a grandmother and retired New York City schoolteacher. “My overworked mid-40s daughter can't be here.”

Lillian Pollak, 97, the oldest member of the Raging Grannies at the protest, said that she had protested many things in her life and that it was natural for her to keep attending demonstrations even at her age.

“During World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, I went to Washington to demonstrate,” said Ms. Pollak, a great-grandmother, author and retired teacher. “I would like, before I die, to see a world closer to peace.”

Soon after being asked to leave the store, and being politely escorted out, the women continued their demonstration outside, standing beside people dressed in costumes that included Mickey Mouse and Cookie Monster.

Mary Raymond, 53, a high school teacher from Connecticut, was leading a school field trip when she stopped to watch the demonstrators.

“I don't agree with them,” Ms. Raymond said. “I think toys are toys. Children - they're just playing.”

One of her students, Adam Witek, 17, echoed the sentiment, saying, “I've had gun toys all my life and turned out just fine.”

The Granny Peace Brigade and the Raging Grannies made headlines in 2005 when 18 protesters were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for blocking the entrance to a military recruitment center in Times Square. The women were acquitted of the charges in 2006.

Ms. Baird, who was among those arrested, said that it was in preparing for the trial that the women realized how much they enjoyed one another's company.

“These w omen are teaching me how to grow old,” she said. “There's a sisterhood here.”

“We hope we've made a bit of a difference,” she added. “We don't solve all the problems, but it would be worse if we weren't here.”

Cuomo Puts Campaign Finance on 2013 Agenda

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday that he would seek legislation to significantly expand New York's regulation of political spending by corporations, individuals and tax-exempt groups during his third year in office.

Mr. Cuomo also said he would push to make the public financing of campaigns a part of any bill, but refused to say whether the absence of such a provision - long sought by liberal groups - would be a deal-breaker in any negotiations with Republicans in the State Senate, who have opposed public financing in the past.

“I think it's very, very important to have a public finance piece in there,” Mr. Cuomo said.

Mr. Cuomo's comments, made in an interview on Tuesday afternoon with WXXI radio, came hours after Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general and an occasional rival of the governor's, proposed forcing politically active tax-exempt groups to disclose the donors to their political efforts in New York. As attorney general, Mr. Schneide rman is the state's top regulator of charitable organizations and can approve his new rules without legislative consent.

“The attorney general's jurisdiction is helpful; I think we need to go further,” said Mr. Cuomo, who held that post before becoming governor two years ago. “The attorney general only has jurisdiction over not-for-profits registered in the state.”

Both Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Schneiderman have made tighter campaign and ethics regulations a priority during their first terms. Mr. Cuomo sought last year to strengthen ethics oversight of the Legislature, with mixed success, while Mr. Schneiderman has focused on tax-exempt nonprofit groups, in New York and around the country, that have injected hundreds of millions of dollars into federal and state elections.

Advocates for such policies have long faulted New York for having confusing, p oorly enforced and porous campaign finance rules, including some of the highest limits in the country for contributions to candidates. (Those high limits have generally been a boon to incumbents and especially governors in New York, including Mr. Cuomo.) And little has been done to update state election law in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, which in 2010 made it legal for corporations and unions to make unlimited expenditures in political campaigns so long as they do so independently of candidates.

The state has no law requiring individuals and corporations to disclose independent spending that falls short of directly advocating the election or defeat of candidates, for example, a problem Mr. Cuomo said he would seek to address.

“If an individual is doing the election campaign, it's not covered,” Mr. Cuomo said. “If a corporat ion that's not a not-for-profit is doing the activity, it's not covered. You have all these national not-for-profits that aren't registered in New York but we were just watching their advertising during the presidential campaign; I want them covered also.”

Few other details of Mr. Cuomo's proposal were made available on Tuesday night. A potential deal with the Legislature could do more than make existing regulations tighter and more clear. Mr. Cuomo could also seek to issue new regulations that would affect the state's tax treatment of donations to politically active nonprofits, for which New York donors have long been a major source of cash, or require tax-exempt groups to more frequently disclose their political activity, which Mr. Schneiderman cannot do.

Caro on Johnson Tops Historians\' Poll, but Seward Book Is Close Behind

To perhaps no one's surprise, “The Passage of Power,” the latest installment of Robert Caro's acclaimed biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, has topped the History News Network's online poll to choose the best history book of 2012.

But perhaps more interesting is what a good year William Seward, the former secretary of state who died in 1870, is having.

First, Seward - who served two presidents and engineered the purchase of Alaska - got a splashy turn in Steven Spielberg's “Lincoln,” thanks to the actor David Strathairn. And now, Walter St ahr's biography, “Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man,” has been narrowly edged out by Mr. Caro's book  in the poll, while blowing past mainstream critical favorites like David Nasaw's biography of Joseph Kennedy, “The Patriarch,” which finished way back at No. 5.

The voters, who were mainly professional historians, according to David Austin Walsh, the network's editor, also applauded two more purely scholarly volumes: Jim Downs's “Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction”at No. 3, and E llen Stroud's “Nature Next Door: Cities and Trees in the American Northeast,” which finished fourth.

“There's always been a gap between professional/academic historians and biographers,” Mr. Walsh said in an email. “But thoughtful, well-researched biography and popular history still can melt the most hardened of academic hearts.”

History News Network, a Web site that seeks to put current events into historical perspective, presented the poll as an upbeat followup to a hard-fought contest in July to choose the worst history book in print. The winner (if that's the word) was David Barton's “Jefferson Lies,” which was subsequently withdrawn from print by its publisher.

Sandy 12-12-12 Benefit Concert Live Blog

Tonight Jon Pareles is live blogging the 12-12-12 benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Sandy from Madison Square Garden. Watch the show here too beginning at 7:30 and share your thoughts about the concert in the comments field below.

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More \'Arrested Development\' Is On the Way

The television comedy “Arrested Development” will not have an arrested season. “Deadline Hollywood” reports that Netflix has allowed the show's creator, Mitch Hurwitz, to produce more than the originally scheduled 10 episodes. “At this time, we are not confirming or announcing the final episode count but we are sure fans will be thrilled when we do,” a Netflix spokeswoman said, according to “Deadline Hollywood.”

20th Century Fox TV and Imagine TV are producing the series with Mr. Hurwitz, who is currently reviewing the material that has already been filmed with an eye to resuming work at the end of January.

Book Titles With That Indie-Rock Feel

Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Smith of The Cure.

When Douglas Coupland, born in 1961, called a novel “Girlfriend in a Coma,” after the song by the Smiths, it made perfect generational sense. The song was released when Mr. Coupland was 25. But certain bands - the Smiths, R.E.M., the Cure - continue to hold a special place for bookish listeners of new generations, and to influence writers looking for titles.

Some among us may be alarmed to learn it's been almost 19 years since Morrissey, the former Smiths leader, released “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get.” Two novelists, Jo Brand and Travis Nichols, have written novels titled “The More You Ignore Me.” Ms. Brand's book features a mother and daughter obsessed with the singer. Mr. Nichols's book, scheduled to be published in June, is told from the perspective of an unwelcome commenter on a wedding blog.

Andrew Porter's novel “In Between Days,” published in September, is named after a 1985 hit by the Cure. Mr. Porter has said “the song's lyrics (that sense of being in a time of transition) resonate perfectly” with one of his character's conflicts.

Next year comes Allie Larkin's novel, “Why Can't I Be You,” which takes its name from a song rec orded by the Cure when Ms. Larkin was 10. (The Cure has shown that literary inspiration works both ways. The band's controversial “Killing an Arab” was modeled after the Albert Camus novel “The Stranger,” and its song “Charlotte Sometimes” quotes directly from the 1969 children's book of the same name by Penelope Farmer.)

Diane Awerbuck's 2003 novel “Gardening at Night” was named for one of R.E.M.'s first recorded songs. Ms. Awerbuck once told an interviewer why she favors song titles for her work: “I do it partly because it's an in-joke, and people who get the joke get an extra frisson. They do some of my work for me by subconsciously adding their own experience of the song to the story.”

Then there are those authors who listen a bit less closely, like the several who have named books for R.E.M.'s “Losing My Religion.” These books tend to deal explicitly with religious faith, even though the singer Michael Stipe has explained the phrase as a southern idiom that means running out of patience.

Taylor Swift Is Back on Top of the Charts

Chad Batka for The New York Times Taylor Swift at Madison Square Garden.

On the music charts this week, Taylor Swift returns to No. 1 after a brief exile in second place, outselling new releases by Wiz Khalifa and Kesha as well as a blizzard of holiday-themed albums.

“Red” (Big Machine), Ms. Swift's latest release, had blockbuster sales when it came out in October, holding at No. 1 for its first three weeks before relinquishing the top slot to a succession of new albums by One Direction, Rihanna and Alicia Keys. “Red” never dipped below No. 2, however, and this week it takes the pinnacle for a fourth time with 167,000 sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In its seven weeks out, the album has sold nearly 2.4 million copies.

In second place this week is the Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa - if you have seen a Steelers game in the last two years, you have probably heard his song-turned-anthem “Black and Yellow” - with his latest release, “O.N.I.F.C.” (Rostrum/Atlantic), which sold 141,000. The next-biggest new album is Kesha's “Warrior” (Kemosabe/RCA); the single  “Die Young” has been inescapable on pop radio, but the album starts at No. 6 with a modest 85,000 sales.

Among the other big sellers this week, it's no surprise that a lot are Christmas records, which each year tend to be decent sellers and are occasionally big hits. Rod Stewart's “Merry Christmas, Baby” (Verve) has stayed in the Top 10 for six weeks, holding at No. 3 this wee k with 127,000 sales; Michael Bublé's “Christmas” (Warner Brothers), regifted from last year, sold 106,000 to reach No. 5 this week; Blake Shelton, the country singer and judge on “The Voice,” is No. 9 with 68,000 sales of his seasonal album, “Cheers, It's Christmas” (Warner Brothers).

Also this week, One Direction's “Take Me Home” (Syco/Columbia) holds at No. 4 with 107,000, and Ms. Keys's “Girl on Fire” (RCA), last week's best seller, fell to No. 7 with 77,000.

Bill Seeks to Make Resale of Tickets for Benefit Concerts Illegal

As public outrage continues to simmer over scalpers' profiting from the resale of tickets to the “12-12-12″ benefit concert for hurricane victims at Madison Square Garden, a state senator submitted a bill on Wednesday in Albany that would make it illegal to resell tickets to charitable events for more than their face value.

Sen. Daniel L. Squadron, a Democrat from Lower Manhattan, said his bill would also require promoters to stamp charitable tickets with a warning that they cannot be resold for a profit.

“Events like this are about artists donating their time for a good cause,” Senator Squadron said. “Yet today, profiteers are able to co-opt charity events to line their own pockets - creating false ticket shortages for consumers and undermining events meant to help those in need. And that's simply unacceptable.”

On StubHub on Wednesday afternoon, there were still 318 tickets listed for sale for the “12-12-12″ concert that night, featuring the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney, among other stars. Those tickets ranged from $790 to $6,500, many times their face value. Organizers say the 13,500 tickets to the concert sold out in a few minutes, grossing $30 million for the cause. It remains unknown how many of those tickets were snapped up by middlemen and resold for a profit.

The chances of passage for Senator Squadron's bill  remain uncertain. He has sponsored legislation in the past to revamp New York's law on ticket resales to rein in profiteering on all concerts, not just benefit concerts, but those bills have died.

In 2007  the legislature removed restrictions on the price of resold tickets, allowing a free market to flourish. Before that, reselling tickets for profit had been illegal in New York State.

Since the law changed, however, an industry has grown up around the resale market. These days many concert promoters, ticket brokers, tick et-resale Web sites and even major performance spaces are in favor of preserving an unfettered free market for reselling tickets, and their allies in the legislature have beaten back attempts to limit the profits. Senator Squadron's previous bill would have capped profits on  resold tickets at 20 percent.

The legislature will be forced to take up the issue again, since the current law expires in April.

The new bill banning profiteering on charity events will not be taken up until after the legislature convenes in January. It has the support of consumer groups like the New York Public Interest Research Group and the Consumer's Union, but will doubtless face opposition from ticket brokers and promoters.

“The winds blow strong around this issue in Albany and its been very hard on behalf of the regular-person concertgoer to fight back against this law” Senator Squadron said.  “But every one can agree relative to charitable events, it is particularly pro blematic.”

 

Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington Avoids Eviction

The Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, which won this year's Tony Award for best regional theater, won another victory on Tuesday â€" this time in court â€" and staved off the threat of eviction from its 7th Street home in the Lansburgh building.

Throughout the past year the theater company has been feuding with its landlord â€" the nonprofit organization Lansburgh Theater, Inc. â€" and the building's owner, the real estate developer Graham Gund, over the Shakespeare company's yearly contribution. The Lansburgh charity was created in 1992 for the sole purpose of supporting the Shakespeare Theater Company. In a statement, the Lansburgh maintained that the building needs $6.8 million worth of repairs, which cannot be covered by the yearly $70,000 that the Shakespeare company pays. It added that if the Shakespeare company “is no longer willing to reinvest in the premises that brought it such success, Lansburgh Theater Inc. has no choice but to seek another deserving arts organization to occupy and care for our very special stage.”

But Randall K. Miller, the Shakespeare company's lawyer, accused Mr. Gund and his associates of manipulating what was supposed to be a charitable venture for his personal profit. Judge John Ramsey Johnson of Superior Court in the District of Columbia issued an order forbidding anyone associated with Lansburgh or Mr. Gund from “taking any action to evict or displace” the Shakespeare company. “The order prevents the charity from being abused at the hands of a for-profit real estate developer,” Mr. Miller said. The Lansburgh issued a statement that applauded the court for rejecting the Shakespeare Theater Company's bid to remove two members of its board, which it characterized as an “attempte d hostile takeover.”

New York Voters Open to Coalition Leadership of State Senate

About half of New York State voters would prefer that a coalition of Democrats and Republicans share control of the State Senate rather than one party, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

The poll, by Quinnipiac University, was conducted after five dissident Democrats announced last week that they had reached a power-sharing agreement with Republicans to preside over the Senate. Democrats are expected to hold a numerical majority in the chamber, and many have condemned the coalition plan, saying it would rob voters of the Democrat-controlled Senate that they elected.

But the poll suggests that a large number of voters, eager for politicians from both parties to work together, are willing to give the arrangement a chance.

Forty-eight percent of voters said they preferred that a bipartisan coalition run the Senate, accord ing to the poll, compared with 31 percent who said they wanted Democrats to control the chamber and 17 percent who said they supported Republican leadership. A majority of Democratic voters said they preferred that their party preside over the Senate in a traditional manner, but the share of Democrats who preferred a bipartisan coalition â€" 40 percent â€" was sizable.

Told by pollsters the specifics of the power-sharing arrangement, 53 percent of voters â€" the same fraction among Democrats as well as Republicans â€" said it was “a good way to create effective government.” Thirty percent, on the other hand, said it was an effort to amass power by a small number of lawmakers.

“So far, voters like the coalition,” said Maurice Carroll, the director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Pollsters also asked about Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's suggestion to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton some time ago that she run for mayor next year. Mrs. Clinton was not interested in running, and voters did not seem poised to persuade her otherwise: 51 percent of New York City voters said Mrs. Clinton should not make a bid for City Hall.

The poll, conducted by telephone from last Wednesday to Monday, included 1,302 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Saving a Life at the Stage Deli

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times The Stage Deli on Seventh Avenue, known for its overstuffed sandwiches, closed after 75 years.

Dear Diary:

As a heart surgeon, the closing of the Stage Deli reminds me of the annual meeting of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery in 1975.

Having grown up in Manhattan, I sought out the Stage Deli for lunch with a friend, also a cardiothoracic surgeon. In the midst of pastrami on rye, I noticed an older gent at the next table keel over. In front of his horrified wife, and long before 911, public defibrillat ors or E.M.T.s, my friend and I put him on the floor and began CPR. Someone called an ambulance, and â€" leaving our food behind â€" we desperately maintained CPR while the ambulance careened through the city streets to the then St. Clare's Hospital on 51st Street.

As soon as we reached the emergency room and got the drugs into him that we needed, we were able to defibrillate his heart. It transpired that he was a tourist from California who arrested in the right place at the right time â€" in front of two cardiothoracic surgeons. We learned later that he recovered completely and lived 11 more years. (His wife sent greeting cards on each anniversary.)

Gratified, we returned hurriedly to the Stage Deli, where the customers who remained from the earlier episode were delighted with news of the outcome. TV camera crews were filming, and the event later made the nightly news, giving the Stage Deli considerable publicity. Fresh sandwiches were brought to us, and we fel t â€" transiently â€" that we were being treated royally.

But we were brought down to earth when we went up to the cashier and learned that there is no such thing as a free lunch â€" at least not in New York. He offered us a 50 percent discount!

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Calling All Kids: Submit Your Escaped Zebra Drawings

Sophie, 8, Woodstock, N.Y.

There is still time to send in your submissions for our latest Kids Draw the News assignment, Runaway Zebra (and Pony).

Sophie, age 8, from Woodstock, N.Y. created the magnificent piece pictured here. She writes: “The zebra and horse are escaping toward the flowers which are meadows. They are creating a traffic jam, and there is a man taking a video in the back.”

Watch the video and read the article about Razzi the zebra and his friend Casper the pony and their romp on Staten Island. You may illustrate any aspect of the story you wish.

To submit drawings by children 12 years of age and under, follow the instructions here: Submit Artwork '

Chicago Architect Wins $200,000 Prize From Notre Dame

Thomas H. Beeby, one of the “Chicago Seven” architects who challenged modernist orthodoxy in the 1970s and 1980s, has received the 2013 Richard H. Driehaus Prize from the University of Notre Dame.

Mr. Beeby is the 11th recipient of the prize, which honors lifetime contributions to traditional, classical, and sustainable architecture and urbanism. He will receive $200,000 - and a bronze miniature of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates - at a ceremony in Chicago on March 23.

Mr. Beeby, a founding principal of HBRA Architects Inc. in Chicago, served from 1985 to 1991 as the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, where he remains an adjunct professor. At his firm Mr. Beeby spent more than 40 years as design director, leading projects like the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, and the United States Federal Building and Courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

“Tom Beeby has had a transformational role in modern architecture's return to classical and traditional design principles,” Michael Lykoudis, dean of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, said in a statement. “Beeby's recent design of the Tuscaloosa courthouse is a great example of how the rigor and richness of classicism can be used to achieve a sense of place and purpose that will be relevant well into the future.”

\'Let My People Come\' Is Coming Back To New York

One of the most sexually explicit musicals ever to play Broadway, the flesh-flaunting “Let My People Come,” is being updated by composer Earl Wilson, Jr., for a comeback this winter at the Underground, a bar and lounge on the Upper West Side, the show's producer said on Tuesday.

The original musical became a word-of-mouth sensation in 1974 for the nudity and sexual frankness on stage at the Village Gate; it ran for two-and-a-half years before moving from Greenwich Village to Broadway's Morosco Theater in June 1976, where it ran for four months of preview performances without ever officially opening. The show had long-running productions in several cities over the years, and dance-party tribute shows occasionally popped up at gay bars and elsewhere in New York.

The producer of the new staging, John Forslund, said he was working with Mr. Wilson on revising some lyrics to make the show's original songs more topical and modern. Mr. Forslund also said the new run would have “far less nudity than the original, but there will be some full-cast nudity as well as burlesque.”

Mr. Forslund, the producer of a weekly talent show at the Underground, “Bound for Broadway,” as well as several solo concerts around New York, said the new version of “Let My People Come” would have two performances on Friday nights starting Feb. 8 and run for at least eight weeks. He described the production as “a try-out to gauge the material before today's audiences and test the New York market for the show,” which, if popular, he hopes to move to an Off Broadway theater in 2014 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the musical's original downtown production.

Cory Michael Smith to Star in \'Breakfast at Tiffany\'s\'

Jason Bell Emilia Clarke as Holly Golightly.

With two well-regarded performances Off Broadway this year, in “The Whale” and “____ (The Cockfight Play),” the young actor Cory Michael Smith has landed a new role on a much bigger stage. He will play Fred, the narrator and Southern writer in the Broadway production of “Truman Capote's ‘B reakfast at Tiffany's,'” which is to begin preview performances on March 4 at the Cort Theater and officially open on March 20.

Mr. Smith will star opposite Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”), who is playing the New York society girl Holly Golightly, a role made famous by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film. The play is by Tony Award winner Richard Greenberg (“Take Me Out”), who based it on Capote's original novella set in New York City in 1943.

While the film version's main male character, played by George Peppard, became a love interest for Hepburn's Holly, the play hews more closely to the novella and its portrayal of Fred as a young gay man. Mr. Smith currently plays a Mormon missionary in the Playwrights Horizons production of “The Whale,” after his five-month run as the sexually conflicted central character John in “____ (The Cockfight Play).” “Breakfast at Tiffany's” will be directed by Sean Mathias.