Giuliani Tells Donors Lhota Would Keep City From Slipping Backward

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has signed his name to a fund-raising letter for Joseph J. Lhota, the Republican candidate for mayor, highlighting how closely the campaign will work with a figure who has, at times, polarized the city’s political world.

In the letter sent by e-mail to likely supporters of Mr. Lhota on Saturday, Mr. Giuliani, who is a Republican, warned that in the hands of a Democratic mayor, the city could regress to the grim state of its not-so-distant past. “Make no mistake,” he wrote in the message. “If you don’t think the city can slip back to its unmanageable, ungovernable ways, just listen to Joe’s democratic opponents. We must elect Joe as New York’s next mayor.”

Mr. Giuliani added that Mr. Lhota, who served as the deputy mayor for operations in his second term, would “stand up to the destructive policies of tax-and-spend politicians who put New York and America in peril.”

Mr. Giuliani encouaged recipients of the e-mail to consider a donation of between $25 and $250, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times. A spokeswoman for Mr. Lhota confirmed the e-mail but declined to comment.

Since he entered the race for mayor, perhaps the biggest question looming over Mr. Lhota’s candidacy was the degree to which he would align himself with Mr. Giuliani, a candidate for president in 2008 who can draw on an extensive list of supporters and potential donors. During a forum for Republican mayoral candidates last week, Mr. Lhota rebuked a moderator who called Mr. Giuliani a “jerk” and said that the city’s transformation from a troubled municipality began with his former boss.

Proximity to Mr. Giuliani may be a mixed blessing: on one hand, he represents dramatic improvements to the city’s quality of life, including a sharp reduction in crime, changes for which Mr. Lhota would no doubt like to share credit; but Mr. Giuliani is also strongly associated with seeking to squ! ash dissent and pursuing a sometimes vindictive approach to his opponents, qualities from which Mr. Lhota may wish to distance himself.

In an interview a few months ago, Mr. Lhota said he was proud of his work with Mr. Giuliani. “I cannot be separated from Rudy Giuliani,” he said. “But I am also not Rudy Giuliani.”

In his message, Mr. Giuliani said he had seen Mr. Lhota’s skill up close, as a deputy mayor, and concluded, “I can’t emphasize enough what a great mayor Joe will be.”

A Fan Sees Rivera’s Retirement as His Own Goodbye to Baseball

Watching Mariano Rivera on Saturday announce his plan to retire at the end of the season, after nearly two decades with the New York Yankees, David Quinones said that an era was drawing to a close â€" not just for Rivera or the sport he so thoroughly dominated â€" but for his life as a fan.

“When Jeter, Petite, Mariano and Posada all retire, I told my wife no more baseball for me,” said Mr. Quinones, a lifelong Yankee fan as he watched the news conference on television while having breakfast with his wife, Evelin, at Billy’s Sport Bar & Lounge in the shadow of Yankee Stadium.

Mr. Quinones, 55, lives just blocks away on the Grand Concourse and the roar of the stadium has long been the background music of his life.

He saw his first games as a boy, but after he moved to the Grand Concourse in the early 1980s, the ballpark became an extension of his home.

For years, he would buy bleacher tickets in the old stadium for less than $10, having a few beer at home and packing sandwiches â€" when it was still permitted to bring food into the stadium â€" to save money and still savor the game. His two children, now 18 and 22, were reared in pinstripes.

“We are so lucky. My kids got to grow up with that whole dynasty,” he said. On their bedroom walls, starting in 1996, they would hang a banner each year the Yankees added another championship. By the time they were reaching adulthood, their walls were covered.

The family reveres Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada.

But no player symbolizes what Mr. Quinones loves about the game more than Rivera.

“He is so humble, so spiritual,” he said. “Look at the lifestyle he lives.”

And then there is what he does on the mound.

“He is always in control. Hitters would know what pitch he was going to throw and still could not hit it. Can you imagine”

Despite his deep abiding loyalty to the Yankees, Mr. Quinones said that when the old stadium closed in 20! 08, he felt a part of himself go with it.

Now, there is a park where the stadium once stood and on Saturday some kids and young men hopped a locked chain link fence to take a few swings of the bat on the snow covered field.

But Mr. Quinones, echoing complaints of other Bronx residents and baseball fans, said that the team had done little for people like him.

He is a telephone repairman and said that even before Verizon failed to renew his contract this year the prices at the new stadium were out of reach.

The bleacher seats are no longer first come, first serve and when they are available, they cost more. For his birthday, his wife, Evelin, went to buy him $5 seats that the team promoted for those who live in the neighborhood.

“They were right behind this column, so you could not even see the field,” Ms. Quinones said. “I couldn’t bring myself to buy them.

But he can still hear the roar of the crowd from his apartment and, for one more season, when he hears “Ener Sandman,” Rivera’s entrance song, echoing from the stadium, he can rest assured that the Yankees are on good hands as Mr. Rivera comes the mound.

And despite feeling taken for granted by the ball club he loves, he grew nostalgic as he watched Mr. Rivera say this would be his final season.

“Soak in the moment,” he said. “You are not going to see a man like him again anytime soon.”

A Presto, Change-O Opening Night at SXSW

Michael Buckner/Getty Images From left, Steve Carell, Olivia Wilde and Jim Carrey at the opening night South by Southwest screening of “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.”

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" Magic was on the streets and on the screen here in Austin on Friday at the opening night of the South by Southwest film festival. This year’s selection, “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” featured a starry cast in telling its story about a Vegas-performing magic duo (Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi) and a new kind of magician (Jim Carrey) who threatens to steal their thunder. Olivia Wilde also stars as a magician’s assistant aspiing to be a bigger part of the act.

The film, with its mixture of broad, traditional, sometimes subtle and other times gross-out humor played big to the audience at the Paramount Theater. A film about magicians and their different styles proved to be an interesting way to showcase the divergent comedy styles of Mr. Carrey, Mr. Carell and also Alan Arkin, who appears as a legendary magician.

Ben Glass/Warner Brothers Pictures Mr. Carell as Burt Wonderstone in the film.

Mr. Carell, Ms. Wilde and Mr. Carrey attended the screening, and while they were on the red carpet, a man was performing magic tricks steps away on the sidewalk. A few more aspiring magicians were in the audience, at least as seen by a s! how of hands during the lively, and also quite funny, post-screening question-and-answer session with the cast and some crew.

One audience member asked Ms. Wilde about her work on the television series “Continuum,” a show on which she does not appear. That show stars Kiera Cameron, but the embarrassing identity mix-up was fodder for a number of jokes throughout the session.

Another audience member asked Mr. Carell and Mr. Carrey what they thought their funniest facial expressions were and if they could perform one onstage.

“This is the most risky face that I do; just the normal one,” Mr. Carrey replied. “But thank you for the challenge.”

Mr. Carell was asked about the extreme tan his character maintains in the film.

“I got sprayed every week,” he said. “What I didn’t realize until the last two days of shooting is you only see my face and my chest. But I had a head-to-toe tan, for really no reason whasoever.”

When a woman, and aspiring magician, from the audience asked Ms. Wilde what it was like working in a male-dominated cast, Mr. Carell comically whispered to Ms. Wilde, “Say what I told you!”

Her answer: “The way Hollywood has changed dramatically recently with women opening movies to huge box office numbers and allowing the studios to realize women can open comedies, women can open action movies. That paved the way for the rest of us. And the same things needs to happen in magic.”

“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” opens in theaters nationwide March 15.