Week in Pictures for April 5

See the slide show

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include a baby giraffe, the Yankees’ opening day and political corruption.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in the Sunday newspaper, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Patrick Healy, Charles V. Bagli, Michael M. Grynbaum and Eleanor Randolph, as well as Joseph J. Lhota, a candidate for mayor.

A sampling from the City Room blog is featured daily in the main print news section of The Times. You may also browse highlights from the blog and reader comments, read current New York headlines, like New York Metro | The New York Times on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Mad, Mad World

Each week, the author Sloane Crosley and the journalist Logan Hill will chat here about all things “Mad Men.”

RELATED

Talking ‘Mad Men’: Catching Up Before the New Season Begins

The Sane Women Behind the Unraveling Men

The Man Behind ‘Mad Men’ Is Back: Matthew Weiner Talks Season 6

Mad, Mad World

Each week, the author Sloane Crosley and the journalist Logan Hill will chat here about all things “Mad Men.”

RELATED

Talking ‘Mad Men’: Catching Up Before the New Season Begins

The Sane Women Behind the Unraveling Men

The Man Behind ‘Mad Men’ Is Back: Matthew Weiner Talks Season 6

Mad, Mad World

Each week, the author Sloane Crosley and the journalist Logan Hill will chat here about all things “Mad Men.”

RELATED

Talking ‘Mad Men’: Catching Up Before the New Season Begins

The Sane Women Behind the Unraveling Men

The Man Behind ‘Mad Men’ Is Back: Matthew Weiner Talks Season 6

A New Element for a Lawyer’s Victory, Long After Death

Associated Press Samuel Leibowitz, second from left, conferring in 1935 with seven of the nine black youths convicted of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Ala. Leibowitz took on their case and won a major Supreme Court decision.

The vote on Thursday by Alabama lawmakers to issue posthumous pardons to the nine Scottsboro Boys would have pleased Samuel S. Leibowitz of Brooklyn.

Leibowitz, who died 35 years ago, was a lawyer for highflying underworld figures, including Al Capone, during Prohibition. Without charging a fee, he took the case of the nine black youths convicted of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Ala., in 1931. They ranged in age from 13 to 19, and all but the youngest were sentenced to death.

Leibowitz saved their lives after the Supreme Court agreed in 1935 that blacks had been systematically and unconstitutionally excluded from the jury. Charges were later dropped for four of the nine. Most of the rest served prison sentences after being retried. The last of the defendants died in 1989.

“If there’s anything else I can take to my grave, it’s that I got the first black man on a jury in the South in the history of the United States,” Leibowitz said when he retired.

As a defense lawyer, Leibowitz coupled courtroom histrionics with diligent homework to win 139 of the 140 murder cases he defended. The one defendant who was convicted was sentenced to death. One observer later wrote that the defendant “lied himself into the hot seat with a facility that astonished his counsel and convinced the jury.”

Later, Leibowitz became a Criminal Court and State Supreme Court justice and was famous for meting out tough sentences - 30- and 60-year terms for muggers and robbers, which prompted a fellow jurist to recall: “We didn’t have many recidivists from Sam Leibowitz.”

The Search for 9/11 Remains Goes On

April 5: The office of the chief medical examiner is sifting through 590 cubic yards of material excavated from around the World Trade Center in search of fragments that may be human remains. On Thursday, 12 such fragments were recovered from “C-Grid,” an area around the World Financial Center. That brought the total to 51 since work began on April 1; all are from C-Grid.

To date, no identifiable remains have been recovered for 1,119 victims â€" more than one-third of those who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. In his April 4 About New York column, Jim Dwyer wrote, “The startling possibility exists that the remains of a large number of people could be found and identified in the months ahead, nearly 12 years after the attack.”

Office of the Mayor The current search for human remains involves material excavated from three areas around the World Trade Center: “C-Grid” at the World Financial Center, West Street, and the Vehicle Security Center. The sites of the twin towers, “WTC 1″ and “WTC 2,” are now the memorial pools.

The Search for 9/11 Remains Goes On

April 5: The office of the chief medical examiner is sifting through 590 cubic yards of material excavated from around the World Trade Center in search of fragments that may be human remains. On Thursday, 12 such fragments were recovered from “C-Grid,” an area around the World Financial Center. That brought the total to 51 since work began on April 1; all are from C-Grid.

To date, no identifiable remains have been recovered for 1,119 victims â€" more than one-third of those who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. In his April 4 About New York column, Jim Dwyer wrote, “The startling possibility exists that the remains of a large number of people could be found and identified in the months ahead, nearly 12 years after the attack.”

Office of the Mayor The current search for human remains involves material excavated from three areas around the World Trade Center: “C-Grid” at the World Financial Center, West Street, and the Vehicle Security Center. The sites of the twin towers, “WTC 1″ and “WTC 2,” are now the memorial pools.

How Do I Get My Child Into _____

Alli Dunn Robert Sanft

Next up in the Metropolitan section’s Q. and A. series with New Yorkers who have behind-the-scenes jobs that keep the city running is Robert Sanft, the chief executive of the Office of Student Enrollment in the city’s Education Department.

Mr. Sanft and his team oversee the limited number of prekindergarten spots, gifted-and-talented admissions and the high school matching process, placing tens of thousands of students a year.

Wondering how to get your child into Baruch College Campus High School How G. and T. admissions really work The best address to send Mr. Sanft flowers and chocolates Share your questions in the comments box below. We’ll pass along the best to Mr. Sanft, with some of our own, and publish the answers next weekend. And if there’s another issue in the city that puzzles you, let us know and we’ll keep it in mind for future interview subjects.

(Last week, Jeffrey Tascarella, the general manager of the NoMad, answered questions about how restaurants really work.)

The Week in Culture Pictures, April 5

Chad Batka for The New York Times Tyler, the Creator, the pillar of Odd Future, was at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last month as part of his first solo tour.

More photographs.

A slide show of photographs of cultural highlights from this week.

The Week in Culture Pictures, April 5

Chad Batka for The New York Times Tyler, the Creator, the pillar of Odd Future, was at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last month as part of his first solo tour.

More photographs.

A slide show of photographs of cultural highlights from this week.

Rundown and Cluttered, a Sacred Space for Music Prepares to Move

Four-fifty West 41st Street, a rundown blue-tiled former warehouse by the Lincoln Tunnel, is the unimpressive sort of city architecture that you walk by without noticing. A shaky elevator ride up to the sixth floor, and the rooms behind the white door hold a trove of bland metal desks overflowing with papers and office plants growing down a shelf of books.

There are dusty carpets, a broken toilet, a stained brown couch and no potable water. But to musicologists professional and amateur, this is sacred space: home of the cryptically named Association for Cultural Equity, better known as the Alan Lomax archive for the folklorist who traveled to the Soviet Union, Haiti, the Deep South and points across the globe to preserve musical traditions on tape, film and paper.

Now the association is moving to smaller digs across town, at a building on 25th Street and First Avenue that, like the 41st Street building, is part of the Hunter College campus. As it prepares to relocate in June, the association is shedding some of its scruffier assets in a rolling eBay auction.

The new offices will be sleeker and far more organized. And while Lomax’s beat-up office guitar, Tandberg tape recorder and Steenbeck film editing table have gone on the auction block, the archive’s continuing effort to digitize its holdings assures the preservation and dissemination of the historic recordings and books. The items being sold, the association says, are relatively insignificant pieces of Lomax’s legacy and not worth preserving with the rest of the archive, much of which has gone to the Library of Congress.

Association for Cultural Equity Alan Lomax in 1942.

Still, said the archive’s curator, Nathan Salsburg, something will be lost in the move: a physical connection to the man who recorded Woody Guthrie and Muddy Waters, and the feel of being a guest in Lomax’s overflowing living room, which he schlepped with him around the city to various apartments until his death in 2002.

“It’s almost a shantytown feel,” Mr. Salsburg said the other day, “perfect for Alan’s work.”

Tacked on the wall are photos of Italian tuna fishermen singing and Mississippi Fred McDowell on the porch of a sharecropper’s shack. A visitor may hear an Uzbek folk ensemble or a prison chain-gang chant. Overstuffed filing cabinets painted powder blue, Lomax’s favorite color, are marked with typewritten notes like “ideas unrealized” or scrawled with names of countries. Shelves groan under the weight of old 78 rpm records.

By the brown couch sits a blue electric typewriter. A cache of Debbie Gibson LPs testifies to the breadth of Lomax’s curiosity.

Matthew Barton, who toiled for long hours in the space as Lomax’s assistant, remembered lonely moments surrounded by tapes and records.

“Then I realized I wasn’t alone,” said Mr. Barton, now a curator of recorded sound at the Library of Congress. “I had the whole world for company at this place.”

Lomax recorded New York, too. The archive holds his tape of a street performer “hamboning” a version of “Jingle Bells” by rhythmically slapping his arms and legs, as well as letters from New York friends, like Woody Guthrie, who wrote to tell Lomax of his son Arlo’s first 13 steps in their home on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island.

Anna Lomax Wood, the association’s president and Lomax’s daughter, said that when she is in the office, “I still feel him there.”

Still, she said her father would be proud that the archives are now reaching more people online than ever before. His life, she said, was a constant state of migration as he found bigger and bigger spaces to hold his archives. This will be the first time he won’t go with them.

Rundown and Cluttered, a Sacred Space for Music Prepares to Move

Four-fifty West 41st Street, a rundown blue-tiled former warehouse by the Lincoln Tunnel, is the unimpressive sort of city architecture that you walk by without noticing. A shaky elevator ride up to the sixth floor, and the rooms behind the white door hold a trove of bland metal desks overflowing with papers and office plants growing down a shelf of books.

There are dusty carpets, a broken toilet, a stained brown couch and no potable water. But to musicologists professional and amateur, this is sacred space: home of the cryptically named Association for Cultural Equity, better known as the Alan Lomax archive for the folklorist who traveled to the Soviet Union, Haiti, the Deep South and points across the globe to preserve musical traditions on tape, film and paper.

Now the association is moving to smaller digs across town, at a building on 25th Street and First Avenue that, like the 41st Street building, is part of the Hunter College campus. As it prepares to relocate in June, the association is shedding some of its scruffier assets in a rolling eBay auction.

The new offices will be sleeker and far more organized. And while Lomax’s beat-up office guitar, Tandberg tape recorder and Steenbeck film editing table have gone on the auction block, the archive’s continuing effort to digitize its holdings assures the preservation and dissemination of the historic recordings and books. The items being sold, the association says, are relatively insignificant pieces of Lomax’s legacy and not worth preserving with the rest of the archive, much of which has gone to the Library of Congress.

Association for Cultural Equity Alan Lomax in 1942.

Still, said the archive’s curator, Nathan Salsburg, something will be lost in the move: a physical connection to the man who recorded Woody Guthrie and Muddy Waters, and the feel of being a guest in Lomax’s overflowing living room, which he schlepped with him around the city to various apartments until his death in 2002.

“It’s almost a shantytown feel,” Mr. Salsburg said the other day, “perfect for Alan’s work.”

Tacked on the wall are photos of Italian tuna fishermen singing and Mississippi Fred McDowell on the porch of a sharecropper’s shack. A visitor may hear an Uzbek folk ensemble or a prison chain-gang chant. Overstuffed filing cabinets painted powder blue, Lomax’s favorite color, are marked with typewritten notes like “ideas unrealized” or scrawled with names of countries. Shelves groan under the weight of old 78 rpm records.

By the brown couch sits a blue electric typewriter. A cache of Debbie Gibson LPs testifies to the breadth of Lomax’s curiosity.

Matthew Barton, who toiled for long hours in the space as Lomax’s assistant, remembered lonely moments surrounded by tapes and records.

“Then I realized I wasn’t alone,” said Mr. Barton, now a curator of recorded sound at the Library of Congress. “I had the whole world for company at this place.”

Lomax recorded New York, too. The archive holds his tape of a street performer “hamboning” a version of “Jingle Bells” by rhythmically slapping his arms and legs, as well as letters from New York friends, like Woody Guthrie, who wrote to tell Lomax of his son Arlo’s first 13 steps in their home on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island.

Anna Lomax Wood, the association’s president and Lomax’s daughter, said that when she is in the office, “I still feel him there.”

Still, she said her father would be proud that the archives are now reaching more people online than ever before. His life, she said, was a constant state of migration as he found bigger and bigger spaces to hold his archives. This will be the first time he won’t go with them.

Big Ticket | $10.2 Million for Sweeping Vistas

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times The brick-and-limestone Barbizon/63 at 140 East 63rd Street, which towers over its neighbors, has 70 condos; from the 11th floor up, no two are alike.

A duplex penthouse distinguished by a pair of romantic Moorish-style arched brick terraces near the top of the Barbizon/63, at 140 East 63rd Street, sold for $10,182,500 and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

The condominium, PH2, had boomeranged on and off the market since 2007, when its initial asking price was $12.5 million, and despite a brief stint as a $35,000-a-month rental, it has never been lived in. The most recent listing price of the unit, which shares the 17th and 18th floors of the Barbizon with PH1, a similar terraced duplex bought by the Italian jeweler Nicola Bulgari, was $10.75 million.

The 3,252-square-foot residence has four bedrooms, one of them designated as a library, and four and a half marble bathrooms.

The terraces on the 18th floor add 1,000 square feet of outdoor space. Both terraces have sweeping city vistas, and the west-facing one offers views of Central Park sunsets. Interior floors are Bolivian rosewood; the six-foot-high French casement windows are double-paned for soundproofing, and the kitchen is by Valcucine. The monthly carrying charges are $10,055.04.

There are five penthouses at the 23-story Barbizon/63, which underwent a total conversion in 2006 and 2007, yielding 70 apartments but preserving the building’s brick-and-limestone facade and roseate windows at its peak. From the 11th floor to PH5 â€" a duplex on the 22nd and 23rd floors at the pinnacle of the neo-Gothic building â€" no two apartments are alike.

The 1927 building, formerly the Barbizon Hotel for Women, where 9-by-12-foot cubicles were called home by single starlets like Grace Kelly and aspiring writers like Joan Didion, received landmark status last year. Men were not permitted to live at the 700-unit hotel until 1981, and a year later it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Among the on-site amenities are an Equinox gym and spa, the Barbizon’s original swimming pool, and a new SoulCycle studio. Residents of note include the British comedian Ricky Gervais, who bought a unit on the ninth floor in 2008 and another on the 12th floor in 2011. Half the units are pieds-à-terre.

The hotel suffered through several unsuccessful reincarnations, its last as the Melrose Hotel, before BPG Properties, now known as Equus Capital Partners, undertook its conversion to condominiums, hiring the design firm CetraRuddy to provide a chic, European-flavored makeover and high-end finishes.

PH2, which was one of the last of the Barbizon sponsor units (all of the apartments except for two penthouses sold in the initial offering), was sold by Barbizon Hotel Associates to a buyer from San Francisco who used a limited-liability company, Trate East, for the transaction. Danielle Englebardt of Sotheby’s International Realty, who owns a condo in the building, was the listing broker; the buyer was represented by Spencer Means of the Corcoran Group.

Ms. Englebardt said that the penthouse had lingered because it was “overpriced” at $12.5 million, but that when the asking price was ultimately reduced to $10.75 million in January, there was a flurry of interest from Upper East Side penthouse-hunters appreciative of the building’s prewar charm.

Big Ticket includes closed listings from the previous week, ending Wednesday.

Graphic Books Best Sellers: Batman Team Back on Top

The unstoppable team of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo is at No. 1 on the graphic books hardcover best-seller list this week, with “Batman: The City of Owls,” in which the caped crusader combats an evil tied to the earliest days of Gotham City. The top spot is not unfamiliar to Mr. Snyder and Mr. Capullo â€" they were there last month with “Batman: Night of the Owls,” another chapter in the superhero’s battle against the Court of Owls.

When I reviewed “Night of the Owls,” my main problem with that collected edition was the supplemental parts of the saga, which took place in issues of “Nightwing,” “Batgirl,” “Batwing” and other series. Some of them were good, some of them were not. I wanted more of the main event, as supplied by the team of Mr. Snyder and Mr. Capullo. “The City of Owls” is almost exactly what I ordered â€" this collected edition is more tightly focused on the issues they worked on. The script is action-packed and emotional, while the artwork is detailed and dynamic. This is one of my favorite interpretations of Bruce Wayne and Batman.

On a sadder note, Carmine Infantino, one of the giants of the comic book industry, died Thursday. He was 87. Mr. Infantino was particularly noted for his work on the Flash, but he also added to the Batman mythology, including the addition of the yellow oval to Batman’s chest emblem in 1964 and the creation of Batgirl in 1967. His artwork has inspired many who followed in his footsteps. Two of my favorites examples of his work are a pin-up shot of Batman and Robin on a rooftop that, over the years, has become Nightwing and Speedy, Batman and Captain Atom and other combinations; and the classic cover of “The Flash” No. 123, in which the original and modern-day versions of the character, on opposite sides of a brick wall, race to save a civilian. Many artists have had fun with the image.

As always, the complete best-seller lists can be found here, along with an explanation of how they were assembled.

Two Dog Owners Arrested on Animal Cruelty Charges

A.S.P.C.A. Vampiro was abandoned at a pet store in Brooklyn.

Bentley, a fluffy shih tzu mix who lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was administered a beating that fractured his skull and jaw and caused brain hemorrhaging, animal welfare officials said. Vampiro, a 6-year-old Chihuahua, was abandoned in a skeletal state in a Brooklyn pet store, the authorities said.

Both dogs’ owners now face cruelty charges, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals announced Friday.

A.S.P.C.A. Bentley, a shih tzu mix, sustained a fractured skull and brain trauma when his owner beat him, the authorities said.

Bentley’s owner, Alex Dykes, 49, was arrested on Wednesday on a felony charge of aggravated animal cruelty, which carries up to two years in jail, the association said.

Vampiro’s owner, Venus Laventure, 50, of East New York, is being charged with misdemeanor cruelty, the association said. The two cases are unrelated.

Both animals are recovering, the association said. Bentley is being fostered, and Vampiro will soon be available for adoption.

Two Dog Owners Arrested on Animal Cruelty Charges

A.S.P.C.A. Vampiro was abandoned at a pet store in Brooklyn.

Bentley, a fluffy shih tzu mix who lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was administered a beating that fractured his skull and jaw and caused brain hemorrhaging, animal welfare officials said. Vampiro, a 6-year-old Chihuahua, was abandoned in a skeletal state in a Brooklyn pet store, the authorities said.

Both dogs’ owners now face cruelty charges, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals announced Friday.

A.S.P.C.A. Bentley, a shih tzu mix, sustained a fractured skull and brain trauma when his owner beat him, the authorities said.

Bentley’s owner, Alex Dykes, 49, was arrested on Wednesday on a felony charge of aggravated animal cruelty, which carries up to two years in jail, the association said.

Vampiro’s owner, Venus Laventure, 50, of East New York, is being charged with misdemeanor cruelty, the association said. The two cases are unrelated.

Both animals are recovering, the association said. Bentley is being fostered, and Vampiro will soon be available for adoption.

The Sweet Spot | Amateur Pursuits

People do the darndest things. In this week’s episode, David Carr and A. O. Scott scour The Times’s newsroom for moonlighting musicians, dancers and artists.

Popcast: New Albums by the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Josh Haner/The New York Times Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs performing with the band at the South by Southwest Music Festival in March. The band’s new album, “Mosquito,” comes out later this month.

On this week’s Popcast, Jon Pareles, the chief pop critic for The Times, talks to the host, Ben Ratliff, about two new albums by New York bands: the Strokes, formed in 1998, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, formed in 2000.

Both helped end a mysterious drought in the New York rock; the local rally never stopped. But as the scene and the city have evolved, both bands have had to wrestle with the question of how to expand and evolve from a deceptively simple baseline sound. The Strokes’ “Comedown Machine” filters ’80s light-pop references through hand-played weariness; the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Mosquito” builds dense, atmospheric sonic experiments into dance-punk.

“Every band should have a constant identity crisis,” says Mr. Pareles, “which is what both of these albums are.” That’s the good news.

For the rest of the story, listen above, download the MP3 here, or subscribe in iTunes.

RELATED

Lizzy Goodman on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the New York Times Magazine.

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
Tracks by artists discussed this week. (Spotify users can also find it here.)

With Little Fanfare, a Women’s Team Takes the Field

Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Sarah Schkeeper, center, of the New York Sharks, an all-women football team, paused between running defensive drills during a practice in Brooklyn, days before the start of their regular season.

Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Julia Colangelo, a player for the New York Sharks, waited on the sideline during practice.

The players on the offensive line, wearing helmets and shoulder pads, were crouched down on the field in Brooklyn. “Green 20! Green 20! 10 hut!’’ shouted the quarterback. The football was handed off to a running back who rushed up the middle before being tackled by several defenders. The whistle blew. Soon practice was over and the team’s coach, Richard Harrigan, offered words of praise, “Good job, ladies, bring it home. Sharks on three. One. Two. Three. Sharks!”

The “ladies” - players on the New York Sharks â€" were preparing to face off on Saturday against the Central Maryland Seahawks at the Aviator Sports Complex in Brooklyn to inaugurate the 2013 season of the Women’s Football Alliance. Yes, it’s opening day for the women’s football league, and while the players might be excited, they might be the only ones.

Men’s professional football, of course, is a staple of American sports culture. The National Football League is a multibillion dollar empire with bulging player salaries, rabid fans, exhaustive and lucrative television coverage, and enormous stadiums.

The women’s version is the opposite: teams play in front of a few hundred people, games can be watched mostly on the Internet and there are no salaries. In fact, players have to pay to play - an $850 per-player fee to finance things like travel, staff, referees and use of fields. The fee does not cover equipment, which the players also must pay for. “I’ve probably spent close to $10,000,” said Karen Mulligan, 35, the Sharks’ quarterback, who has played women’s football for 11 years.

But women’s football has managed to chug along, spreading out across the country among various leagues. “We have no money to advertise, no budgets to put the word out and yet it just grows exponentially,’’ said Andra Douglas, 53, the owner of the Sharks.

The Women’s Football Alliance has more than 60 teams separated into 13 divisions with each team playing eight regular-season games. The season culminates in a championship; this year it will be on Aug. 3 in San Diego, at a site to be determined. (Last year’s title game was played at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh).

The rules are the same as the N.F.L., except the women play with a slightly smaller football. But while N.F.L. teams carry a 53-man roster, the 40 or so players on the women’s teams often have to play multiple positions because there are not enough to fill all of the slots. “I’m not sure about this year, but last year I was backup QB, I was starting tight end, wide receiver, free safety, punter and holder,” said Laura Baden, a Sharks player.

Whatever women’s professional football lacks in recognition or money, it makes up for in talent and passion. Most players have full-time jobs and families, yet they sacrifice social events, nights, weekends and their bodies, for the sheer joy of the sport. “I’m willing to pay for it, raise funds, be out until midnight two nights a week after I work an 11-7 shift at work because I’m showing myself, the world, my family, that everything is possible,” said kicker Julia Colangelo, 25, who is a social worker.

Elle Cartabiano, who owns her own company and is a wide receiver on the Sharks, played in a women’s football league that has attracted widespread attention - the Lingerie Football League. But as the name implies, that organization is as much about who is wearing the uniform - and they do wear skimpy underwear - than what they are doing with the football.

“It’s night and day,” said Ms. Cartabiano, 23, referring to the two leagues. “Both the girls and athletes and the team structure and the game, everything is better. It’s way better. This is so much more of a real team that I’m used to. The Lingerie Football League was not a very team-oriented environment.”

The New York Sharks were formed in August 2000 after Ms. Douglas used $20,000 of her savings to buy the team and have them join a women’s league. “I bought it so we could play,’’ said Ms. Douglas, who used to be the team’s quarterback. “I didn’t get it to get into owning a sports team.”

But she might not be the owner much longer. “Well, this is no secret, I actually, I want to sell the team,” she said. “Wonderful things happened these past 13, 14 years, and part of me wants to just kind of end it and not let bad things happen.”

Book Review Podcast: Planet of the Ape

Corbis

This week in The New York Times Book Review, David Quammen reviews Monte Reel’s “Between Man and Beast,” the story of the 19th-century explorer Paul Du Chaillu, who returned from Africa with evidence that a creature of myth â€" the gorilla â€" actually existed. Mr. Quammen writes:

No one from the Western world, as far as we know, had laid eyes on a kangaroo until 1770. Emus, orangutans and Komodo dragons came as surprises. The earliest scientific description of a dinosaur, based on mystifying new fossils, appeared only in 1824. But the most provocative of zoological novelties was the gorilla, a Victorian sensation, for two reasons: because it was presented (falsely) as a menacing, aggressive behemoth and because it seemed, in delicious paradox, much too similar to humans for comfort. The gorilla’s very existence suggested â€" at just the time Charles Darwin was also suggesting â€" heretical ideas about the origin and nature of mankind.

On this week’s podcast, Mr. Reel talks about “Between Man and Beast”; Leslie Kaufman has notes from the field; Ada Calhoun discusses Mike Piazza’s memoir; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

Book Review Podcast: Planet of the Ape

Corbis

This week in The New York Times Book Review, David Quammen reviews Monte Reel’s “Between Man and Beast,” the story of the 19th-century explorer Paul Du Chaillu, who returned from Africa with evidence that a creature of myth â€" the gorilla â€" actually existed. Mr. Quammen writes:

No one from the Western world, as far as we know, had laid eyes on a kangaroo until 1770. Emus, orangutans and Komodo dragons came as surprises. The earliest scientific description of a dinosaur, based on mystifying new fossils, appeared only in 1824. But the most provocative of zoological novelties was the gorilla, a Victorian sensation, for two reasons: because it was presented (falsely) as a menacing, aggressive behemoth and because it seemed, in delicious paradox, much too similar to humans for comfort. The gorilla’s very existence suggested â€" at just the time Charles Darwin was also suggesting â€" heretical ideas about the origin and nature of mankind.

On this week’s podcast, Mr. Reel talks about “Between Man and Beast”; Leslie Kaufman has notes from the field; Ada Calhoun discusses Mike Piazza’s memoir; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

Renovations and Hope on a Block Once Marked by Blight

David Gonzalez/The New York Times

You do not want to mess with Arnaldo Rivera on Kelly Street. He had heard plenty about this crescent-shaped block off Longwood Avenue in the South Bronx. Drug dealers and addicts had holed up in filthy, crumbling apartments scattered among five buildings that were among the city’s worst.  He was ready.  He had a gun.

A caulking gun.

Mr. Rivera is the new super for these five newly renovated buildings on Kelly Street, a block that had earned its place in South Bronx lore for having spawned a generation of urban homesteaders who took abandoned buildings in the 1970s and turned them into homes for working people. More recently, that block was infamous for the five buildings that had been ravaged by fire, drugs and squatters while rent-paying tenants lived in sooty apartments with mold the size of mice and rats the size of cats.

Not anymore.

“I heard this was not a good area,” admitted Mr. Rivera, who became the super three months ago. “But thank God I’m working here now. The neighborhood changed a lot. And I have to say, the tenants are good. You can see. I talk to them and say, I provide a service, but you have to help, too. We all live here.”

The transformation is almost impossible to believe. To Harry De Rienzo, it’s just another page in the block’s history.  He has been working with tenants here since he was fresh out of college.  He helped organize them as they took over and fixed several buildings that became the foundation for the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association.

After a stint running a housing-related foundation, he returned to Banana Kelly as president, tackling the problems on five buildings that had gone from being owned by Frank Potts, a live-in landlord, to being pawns in a mortgage flipping binge after he sold them in the mid 1990s. He said the mortgages on the buildings had gone from $800,000 at the time to $5 million in 2010.

The landlords - a series of owners who appeared on paper but hardly in person - did little with that money. Fires broke out in some of the apartments. In others, fuzzy black mold covered cracked walls. In 935 Kelly Street, human waste had pooled in the basement, garbage sat in the lobby while five pitbulls were cooped up around the clock in one apartment. In the other buildings, entire windows were missing, as was heat, hot water and the super.

“The tenants were basically under siege,” said Mr. De Rienzo. “I never saw any evidence of the landlord’s investment. Maybe he did do something - I think this guy became a millionaire off the misery of the people living there.”

Mr. De Rienzo - who had been brought in by weary tenants to administer the buildings - partnered with the city’s housing agency, private developers and financiers to fix the mess. That was all Carolyn Waring and her brother Willie  needed to know. Their stepfather was Mr. Potts, who had raised her and her siblings to work with Harry in the old days.

Willie said like all of the Potts family members - many of whom still live on the block, although he recently retired to Delaware - he grew up fixing things rather than letting it slide. He helped put a new roof on one building decades ago. His sister learned how to unclog seriously backed-up basement drains.

“Pop believed in each one, teach one,” Ms. Waring said. “So whenever he did work in the building we did too.”

That carried over to the bad days, when her nominal landlord did nothing but collect rent. She cleaned her hallway, swept the sidewalk and even paid for hallway lights.

While the building was being renovated, she stayed with her sister down the block, keeping an eye on the progress. The day she spied new appliances being delivered, she could barely contain herself.

“”It was like Christmas morning,” she said. “I wanted them to hurry. But I also wanted them to take their time and do it right. But the kid in me was excited!”

When she got the keys to her new, four-bedroom apartment, her own daughter was so excited, she slept on blanket spread out on the new living room floor. Ms. Waring has since joined her, marveling at the little things: a well-lighted hallway, a modest bedroom closet, and a pass-through to the kitchen - the first time this building had a hole in the wall that was done on purpose. And just like Pop taught her, she’s bringing a friend to the next meeting of the block’s garden club.

She plopped herself down on her new sofa and beamed.

“I got the best of it,” she said. “I got to see history being made here. I was part of the devastation and the rehabilitation. We were living in the depths of hell. Now it’s bright and airy. It’s so new. And hopeful.”

This Week’s Movies: ‘Trance,’ ‘Upstream Color’ and ‘The Company You Keep’

In this week’s video, Times critics review “Upstream Color,” “Trance” and “The Company You Keep.” Find all of this week’s reviews here.

This Week’s Movies: ‘Trance,’ ‘Upstream Color’ and ‘The Company You Keep’

In this week’s video, Times critics review “Upstream Color,” “Trance” and “The Company You Keep.” Find all of this week’s reviews here.

Mark Knopfler Cancels Shows in Russia

Mark Knopfler canceled two concerts in Russia on Thursday to protest what he sees as the government’s harassment of human rights groups there, the BBC reported.

Mr. Knopfler, the former Dire Straits frontman, said he was calling off his performances planned for June in Moscow and St. Petersburg because Russian authorities had searched the offices of several organizations, among them Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. He called the searches a “crackdown.”

“I hope the current climate will change soon,” he wrote on his Web site. He added: “I have always loved playing in Russia and have great affection for the country and the people.”

Human rights groups and other non-governmental organizations have complained recently about unwarranted searches by prosecutors, the justice ministry and tax officials. But Russian officials say the searches are routine and legal. Pavel Chikov, a member of the country’s presidential Human Rights Council, said about 2,000 organizations have been inspected and searched in the last month.

Louis C. K. and the Ballad of Jack Dall

FX Louis C. K. and David Lynch in a scene from the FX series “Louie.”

When Louis C. K. gets excited about something, he really gets excited. Case in point: in a recent interview in The Times’s Arts & Leisure section, he expounded on many subjects, including his coming HBO special, “Oh My God,” his work with Woody Allen on “Blue Jasmine” and the number of years he believes he has left in his career. But when the topic of conversation turned to David Lynch, the “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Dr.” filmmaker, a certain gleam appeared in his eye. Over the next several minutes, Louis C. K. enthusiastically recounted the story of how he cast Mr. Lynch on “Louie” in the role of Jack Dall, an inscrutable entertainment-industry veteran who trains the Louie character fo a fateful audition to replace David Letterman on “Late Show.”

Here, in more words than could reasonably fit into one newspaper, is that story:

To me, it was Ben Gazzara. I was doing Ben Gazzara [for "Louie" producer Vernon Chatman], making him laugh, and I’m doing all these lines: “Listen, champ - that’s short for champion.” It was supposed to be this old, grizzly guy, telling you that’s short for champion, like you’re too stupid to know it. We’re laughing, and we’re like, “This is going to be amazing.” So Vernon Googles Ben Gazzara while we’re talking. He died an hour before he Googled it. I think it’s possible, the minute I said, “I think this is Ben Gazzara,” he dropped dead. “Let’s get Ben Gazzara.” [makes sound of flat-lining] Those two things happened at the exact same moment, which is crazy. So I finished writing it and then we went looking for who else can do this.

I sent it to Jerry Lewis. Jerry Lewis’s system of approval is a fax machine in his office. You fax it to him and you wait to hear from him. We got a phone call from his personal secretary saying, “Jerry is not interested at this time.” We reached out to Woody Allen, who said, “I can’t contribute to this right now.” I got a really nice email from Al Pacino. Martin Scorsese said, [Scorsese voice] “Louie’s terrific, I enjoy the program, I can’t be any part of this right now.” What I learned is that the level I’m at now, I get polite nos. It used to just be nothing but silence.

When Scorsese said no, I thought, Oh, directors. I Googled [Francis Ford] Coppola to see if he had acted in anything. And on the page I was at: directors, David Lynch. The thing is, I love David Lynch. I’ve always loved him, like a warm love for him - not just thinking he’s great. His movies are a massive thing for me. He gives you this license to do whatever you want. [David Lynch voice] I remember him on Letterman and he speaks like this Midwest, Nebraska, American broadcaster of the 1940s. [normal voice] And I thought, “That would be really weird. It doesn’t make any sense. It makes no sense.” I put him in my head and I read the script and I’m like, “This is way better than any of those guys. This is the only guy that could ever do it. If I don’t get David Lynch, I’m not doing it.”

He has a lawyer and an assistant. So I sent the script with a letter, and I said, “If I never get to say anything else to you, thank you for your work and what it’s meant to me. This is a guy I think you would be perfect playing.” The first response came from his assistant, Mindy, who was very nice and said, “He loves the script, he thinks it’s really excellent. He doesn’t want to mess it up for you. He doesn’t think he’s right for it. He doesn’t like traveling either.” So I wrote back and said, “I want you to know that I’m not expecting you to play this guy the way he reads on paper. I’m not expecting you to play a different kind of person than you. The idea is that you, being the way you are naturally, the way you speak, delivering these lines, is what I’m looking for - that’s what I want to see.” And then he wrote back and said, “Aren’t there 10,000 other people that could do this better than me And I don’t like traveling.”

I wrote back and I said, “I can’t argue with the traveling. You want to be with your family. We’ll certainly give you the best possible accommodations and travel. But if there were 10,000 other people, I would get one. And I’m really good at this. I know what works on my show. I’m never wrong. I don’t know what it’s going to be like. There’s not some expectation that you have to measure up to. I’m excited to be wrong here.” He would always write back through his assistant, earnestly and sincerely and gently saying no. And then finally I got one where they said, “Can it be done in two days, and can he wear his own clothes And no.” And I was like, “I got him.” It took like two months and we got him. Once I got him, I’m like, “Is this a good idea”

I’ve learned when you work with people that are heroes to you, you have to be really careful, especially if you’re directing them. It’s unsettling to act and you feel a little untethered, and the director makes you feel like someone else is in control and it helps you. So when the director is someone going, “Oh my God, I’m like the biggest fan of you” - when he showed up, I said “Hi” to him, quickly. “You have any questions Thank you for coming.” And I stayed away from him. And we just started shooting. The first thing we shot was him coming to say goodbye to me, his last scene. And he comes and sits down and he just says, “Well, I’ve done my part. Now it’s up to you. It’s just, if you can do it.” I’m sitting there in character, going, “I can’t believe how good everything he says is. This is way better than I thought it would be.” He had it perfectly memorized. He had something to prove as an actor.

When we did the scene in the office where I dance around, it was really humiliating. I’m doing this in front of this guy, who I love, and it gave me a stomachache. At one point, out of self-consciousness, I said, “This isn’t even funny.” And David said, “No, it’s not funny. It’s not supposed to be.” He said, “Jack doesn’t give you the extra week ‘cause he thought you were funny - don’t make any mistake of that. He gave you the extra week because you did something. He finally got you try and do something. And by the way, that extra week was pretty close to, you didn’t get it.” He had a few things to say like that. I got to hang out with him, smoke cigarettes with him, even though I haven’t smoked in a year. I love the guy. I love him.

Louis C. K. and the Ballad of Jack Dall

FX Louis C. K. and David Lynch in a scene from the FX series “Louie.”

When Louis C. K. gets excited about something, he really gets excited. Case in point: in a recent interview in The Times’s Arts & Leisure section, he expounded on many subjects, including his coming HBO special, “Oh My God,” his work with Woody Allen on “Blue Jasmine” and the number of years he believes he has left in his career. But when the topic of conversation turned to David Lynch, the “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Dr.” filmmaker, a certain gleam appeared in his eye. Over the next several minutes, Louis C. K. enthusiastically recounted the story of how he cast Mr. Lynch on “Louie” in the role of Jack Dall, an inscrutable entertainment-industry veteran who trains the Louie character fo a fateful audition to replace David Letterman on “Late Show.”

Here, in more words than could reasonably fit into one newspaper, is that story:

To me, it was Ben Gazzara. I was doing Ben Gazzara [for "Louie" producer Vernon Chatman], making him laugh, and I’m doing all these lines: “Listen, champ - that’s short for champion.” It was supposed to be this old, grizzly guy, telling you that’s short for champion, like you’re too stupid to know it. We’re laughing, and we’re like, “This is going to be amazing.” So Vernon Googles Ben Gazzara while we’re talking. He died an hour before he Googled it. I think it’s possible, the minute I said, “I think this is Ben Gazzara,” he dropped dead. “Let’s get Ben Gazzara.” [makes sound of flat-lining] Those two things happened at the exact same moment, which is crazy. So I finished writing it and then we went looking for who else can do this.

I sent it to Jerry Lewis. Jerry Lewis’s system of approval is a fax machine in his office. You fax it to him and you wait to hear from him. We got a phone call from his personal secretary saying, “Jerry is not interested at this time.” We reached out to Woody Allen, who said, “I can’t contribute to this right now.” I got a really nice email from Al Pacino. Martin Scorsese said, [Scorsese voice] “Louie’s terrific, I enjoy the program, I can’t be any part of this right now.” What I learned is that the level I’m at now, I get polite nos. It used to just be nothing but silence.

When Scorsese said no, I thought, Oh, directors. I Googled [Francis Ford] Coppola to see if he had acted in anything. And on the page I was at: directors, David Lynch. The thing is, I love David Lynch. I’ve always loved him, like a warm love for him - not just thinking he’s great. His movies are a massive thing for me. He gives you this license to do whatever you want. [David Lynch voice] I remember him on Letterman and he speaks like this Midwest, Nebraska, American broadcaster of the 1940s. [normal voice] And I thought, “That would be really weird. It doesn’t make any sense. It makes no sense.” I put him in my head and I read the script and I’m like, “This is way better than any of those guys. This is the only guy that could ever do it. If I don’t get David Lynch, I’m not doing it.”

He has a lawyer and an assistant. So I sent the script with a letter, and I said, “If I never get to say anything else to you, thank you for your work and what it’s meant to me. This is a guy I think you would be perfect playing.” The first response came from his assistant, Mindy, who was very nice and said, “He loves the script, he thinks it’s really excellent. He doesn’t want to mess it up for you. He doesn’t think he’s right for it. He doesn’t like traveling either.” So I wrote back and said, “I want you to know that I’m not expecting you to play this guy the way he reads on paper. I’m not expecting you to play a different kind of person than you. The idea is that you, being the way you are naturally, the way you speak, delivering these lines, is what I’m looking for - that’s what I want to see.” And then he wrote back and said, “Aren’t there 10,000 other people that could do this better than me And I don’t like traveling.”

I wrote back and I said, “I can’t argue with the traveling. You want to be with your family. We’ll certainly give you the best possible accommodations and travel. But if there were 10,000 other people, I would get one. And I’m really good at this. I know what works on my show. I’m never wrong. I don’t know what it’s going to be like. There’s not some expectation that you have to measure up to. I’m excited to be wrong here.” He would always write back through his assistant, earnestly and sincerely and gently saying no. And then finally I got one where they said, “Can it be done in two days, and can he wear his own clothes And no.” And I was like, “I got him.” It took like two months and we got him. Once I got him, I’m like, “Is this a good idea”

I’ve learned when you work with people that are heroes to you, you have to be really careful, especially if you’re directing them. It’s unsettling to act and you feel a little untethered, and the director makes you feel like someone else is in control and it helps you. So when the director is someone going, “Oh my God, I’m like the biggest fan of you” - when he showed up, I said “Hi” to him, quickly. “You have any questions Thank you for coming.” And I stayed away from him. And we just started shooting. The first thing we shot was him coming to say goodbye to me, his last scene. And he comes and sits down and he just says, “Well, I’ve done my part. Now it’s up to you. It’s just, if you can do it.” I’m sitting there in character, going, “I can’t believe how good everything he says is. This is way better than I thought it would be.” He had it perfectly memorized. He had something to prove as an actor.

When we did the scene in the office where I dance around, it was really humiliating. I’m doing this in front of this guy, who I love, and it gave me a stomachache. At one point, out of self-consciousness, I said, “This isn’t even funny.” And David said, “No, it’s not funny. It’s not supposed to be.” He said, “Jack doesn’t give you the extra week ‘cause he thought you were funny - don’t make any mistake of that. He gave you the extra week because you did something. He finally got you try and do something. And by the way, that extra week was pretty close to, you didn’t get it.” He had a few things to say like that. I got to hang out with him, smoke cigarettes with him, even though I haven’t smoked in a year. I love the guy. I love him.

Cover Story FX Apologizes for Error That Cut Off ‘The Americans’

Jeff Neira/FX Keri Russell in the FX series “The Americans.”

In this brave new world of serialized television dramas every minute counts. Miss the closing moments of your favorite show and you could lose out on crucial plot details that send its story spinning off in new and unexpected directions. But when your beloved FX cold war-era spy drama is cut off before its conclusion by your overeager DVR, whom do you blame The C.I.A. The K.G.B. HBO

Before an international incident could break out, FX swallowed its own cyanide capsule and took the blame for an error that prevented many viewers from seeing the last seven minutes of the most recent episode of “The Americans.”

“The Americans,” which stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as 1980s Soviet operatives posing as wholesome American suburbanites, broadcast its ninth episode, “Safe House,” on Wednesday from 10 p.m. to 11:07 p.m., Eastern and Pacific times. But FX said in a news release that its publicity department had given incorrect information “to television listings services that provide information to media outlets, cable and satellite providers.” As a result, an unspecified number of brainwashed DVRs simply stopped recording the episode at the one-hour mark. (FX is carried in more than 98 million homes.)

“The error is regrettable and I apologize to all the loyal fans of The Americans who were cheated out of the full viewing experience of one of the most important episodes so far this season,” John Solberg, the FX network’s senior vice president of media relations, said in a statement. “Unfortunately mistakes happen and this happened to be a very unfortunate time for this kind of mistake.”

FX said it would make the entire “Safe House” episode available online at its Web site, FXnetworks.com, until May 15. The network also pointed out that the next episode of “The Americans,” called “Only You,” runs on Wednesday from 10 p.m. to 11:03 p.m.

Shopping and Anxiety

Dear Diary:

The following exchange was heard on Good Friday in line at Bed Bath & Beyond on the Upper West Side. (Really â€" you can’t make this stuff up!)

Characters: Two middle-aged men

First man: “So, did you ask him why he thinks you need two sessions a week now instead of one”

Second man: “Yeah, he said I’m exhibiting a lot more anxiety.”

First man: “Does it feel like that to you”

Second man: “I’m not really sure. But what I am really worried about is that someday I’ll get a call that the doctor died. Then what am I going to do”

First man: “Let’s hope by then your anxiety has been cured.”

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