Mean to Bees

Dave Taft

The pink lady’s slipper orchid, or moccasin flower (Cypripedium acaule), is the queen of springtime wildflowers. It is also one of nature’s most beautiful liars.

The pink lady’s slipper is irresistible to newly hatched worker bees, who emerge, not accidentally, at about the same time as the flower blooms. These worker bees are attracted to elaborate markings on the flower’s soft pink pouch (the modified petal known as the lip, or labellum), which falsely advertises a nectar reward inside.

Once the bee is within, slick walls and edges rolled inward prevent it from escaping back the way it came in. A successful bee (unsuccessful ones often don’t live to tell the tale) escapes â€" without any reward â€" through one of a pair of holes at the back of the flower, and, while squeezing through the narrow space, is smeared with a waxy, viscid pollen.

The bee, shaken but very much alive, collects itself and sets off to try yet another orchid. This next flower combs off the pollen and is consequently pollinated.

Relying on inexperienced worker bees is a good strategy for this plant, but even a bumblebee figures out that this fun-house pollination experience is ultimately unrewarding, and eventually learns to stop visiting Cypripedium flowers. But by the time this lesson is learned, the orchids’ brief flowering season is over, and these now-experienced bees will not live to see another year’s bloom. Perhaps because of this elaborate process, pollination rates for these orchids are very low.

If Georgia O’Keeffe never painted the pink lady’s slipper orchid, she must have thought its sexuality was just too obvious. Close examination of the hairy, luridly pink-veined flowers can make people uncomfortable. After all, it is a flower named “Cypripedium” â€" Greek for the “slipper of Venus,” the goddess of love. Examined in the cold, objective light of biology, this flower is the embodiment of plant reproduction. Why shouldn’t it look the part?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pink lady’s slipper is extremely rare within the city’s five boroughs. Orchids can thrive only where soil conditions include specific fungi that partner with the plants, and enable them to effectively absorb nutrients. Pink lady’s slippers prefer the thin, highly acidic soil where blueberries, pines and oaks dominate.

Fortunately, finding this most exotic of urban wildflowers requires hours of pleasant searching among the flowering trees, the colorful migrating birds, and the amorous calls of mating tree frogs in some of New York City’s most beautiful woodlands. If you are lucky enough to find a pink lady’s slipper, enjoy it with your camera or sketch pad; do not disturb it, as the plant cannot survive for long without its fungal partner. No matter how much soil you take with it, the orchid simply wastes away once removed from its surroundings.

The Week in Pictures for May 10

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 Cinco de Mayo celebration in the Bronx, art on Randalls Island and a new cooperative space at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

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 Hugo Lindgren and Patrick Healy. Also, John C. Liu, the city comptroller and a mayoral candidate, and Diane Paulus, Mark Brokaw and Jerry Mitchell, directors of Tony-nominated musicals.

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

Isabella Rossellini’s Sly Maternal Instinct

Some Mother’s Day tributes are less wholesome than others, and thank heaven for that. “Mammas,” a set of short films (two to three minutes each) appearing Sunday on the Sundance Channel and sundancechannel.com, reflects the distinctive character of its creator, Isabella Rossellini â€" a blend of innocence, sophistication and sly smuttiness. It’s a long way from flowers, chocolates and brunch.

Ms. Rossellini did an earlier set of shorts for Sundance about animals’ sex lives (“Green Porno”). In “Mammas” she claims to be investigating what constitutes the maternal instinct (which leaves a lot of space for the discussion and depiction of sex and reproduction). What she’s really doing is sending up some of the typical, or stereotypical, complaints about motherhood.

Upset by your stretched-out, child-bearing belly? You could be a cichlid fish, which carries its eggs in its mouth and actually loses weight during pregnancy. Frustrated by trying to feed your family on your spouse’s paltry salary? You could be a dunnock, a bird whose females practice polyandry, taking on two or three husbands when food is scarce.

Ms. Rossellini imparts these lessons by enacting the animals herself, in whimsical and often highly unflattering costumes involving elaborate headgear, extensive padding and lots of plastic garbage bags. The films have the appearance of colorful, mildly surrealistic children’s theater, but the scenes â€" with Ms. Rossellini’s straight-faced gravitas â€" are often playfully but strictly adult, as when a cardboard-cutout male cichlid fish (complete with dastardly mustache) sprays what looks like white silly string in her face, fertilizing the eggs in her mouth.

The tone of “Mammas” is questioning and satirical â€" celebrating a female spider that turns its body into food for its children, Ms. Rossellini asks, with an increasingly fretful expression: “What’s greater than self-sacrifice? It’s what makes a woman a woman. Isn’t it?”

But she allows herself one quick, quiet moment of Mother’s Day sentiment. Discussing a bird that will pretend to be wounded in order to draw predators away from its nest, she says: “If I were as talented at pretending as the piping plover, I would be a Sarah Bernhardt. An Ingrid Bergman.”

13-Year-Old Playwright Awaits His Big Night

Andy Abrahams Kyle Abrahams

Kyle Abrahams had never tried to write a play before his drama teacher, John McEneny, required him to try for a middle school class in Brooklyn. Kyle had always liked acting - he recently performed in a production of “Frankenstein.” Now, though, he’d be the one giving other actors instructions.

And Kyle, 13, never imagined that the people reading his lines would be professional actors at the Clurman Theater on West 42nd Street.

But that is exactly what is going to happen. Kyle’s first play, “Death by Unicycle,” will be performed on Saturday evening, having been selected by writers from the “Late Show With David Letterman” as the funniest play in the Worldwide Plays Festival Competition. Kyle also won $2,500 in cash from Mr. Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants.

The competition was sponsored by the Writopia Lab, a New York nonprofit group that offers creative writing workshops to school-age children. The competition was open to children ages 6 to 18 from across the country. Two plays from each of three categories - elementary school, middle school and high school - were chosen to be directed and performed by professionals during a festival that began Wednesday and ends Saturday.

“Death by Unicycle” was picked as one of the two best plays from the middle-school level and as the funniest play over all, though not all plays in the contest were comedies. Mr. McEneny. the drama program director at William Alexander Middle School 51 in Park Slope, helped Kyle through the writing process and encouraged him to submit his play for the Worldwide Plays Festival.

“It was all very silly, but all handled in a surprisingly deft way, and the odd details along the way just kept it spicy and surprising,” said Steve Young, one of the contest’s judges and a writer on Mr. Letterman’s show for 23 years.

The play’s main character is Devin, a normal 13-year-old who has just transferred to Harvey H. Humphries Middle School for the Gifted and Talented, or “H to the Third,” as some of the students call it.

He struggles to make friends at the school, where the jock culture that dominates most hallways has been turned on its head. Here, the cool kids brag about their protractor collections. Devin doesn’t fit into either world. He once built a car that runs on vegetable oil for a science project, but he also watches sports.

“He’s used to the type of school that he was at, so then he goes there, and he expects it to be more of the same,” Kyle said, “but it’s just nowhere near what he thought it was.”

In one scene, Devin approaches some other boys in the hallway and tries to strike up a conversation:

Devin: Did you guys see the game last night?

Eugene: You mean the chess match between Svetlana Petrovic and Yuri Sychowitz?

Devin: No, I meant the Lakers and the Knicks.

Cornelius grabs his protractor and shoves Devin against the lockers. He puts the protractor against his throat. Cornelius is so weak that Devin pulls him gently off of him with little energy.

Cornelius: Ball games? Is that what you take us for? Really? You heathen. You are regressing. We’re so past organized sports feeding the general proletariat - fantasy war games! I am so sick of sports filling one-third of every newspaper, every newscast, and the discussions of every “World of Warcraft” chat room. Like every guy has to find it fun to watch a bunch of Neanderthal thugs in kneepads and matching costumes beat each other senseless. Oh no! Not here. When I joined H to the Third, I gave up that oppressive life. And you will, too. Join us, Devin. We’ll show you a world with so much potential.

Devin: I made a car once.

Eugene: I made a bigger car. I made a spaceship. I’ve designed fighter jets for a secret army of a developing country that will go to your house and blow it up.

In an attempt to fit in, Devin ditches his designer clothes for a nerdier look and eventually wins the approval of Eugene and Cornelius. But the friendship doesn’t last long; there is a plot twist near the end.

Kyle is already thinking of writing another play - possibly another comedy. “I feel like they’re the most fun to write,” he said. “When they do a joke right and everybody laughs, it’s just a really good feeling.”

Keeping Peace in a Vertical Village

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Doug Weinstein

As director of operations and compliance for AKAM Associates, a property management company for luxury co-op and condominium buildings in New York City, Doug Weinstein is responsible for all physical projects in 125 buildings. He fields daily calls from cooperative and condominium boards about everything from code issues to job bids. Mr. Weinstein started in the business nearly 30 years ago, working for his cousin, Martin Raynes, of M. J. Raynes Inc., a large real estate developer in the city in the 1980s.

Q.

What is the difference between co-ops and condos, in simple terms?

A.

In a condominium, the owner of the unit owns the actual real estate. In a co-op, the apartment is not even owned. It’s assigned shares, so the person is a shareholder in the co-op corporation. Condos historically have less restrictive policies dealing with subletting and sales.

Q.

What are three things that can immediately boost market value in a building?

A.

One is curb appeal. When you walk into a building, if a potential buyer sees a well-decorated lobby, a clean lobby, not something that looks a little threadbare or worn around the edges, that’s one of the big items that buyers look for. The other is to have good financials and to make sure the board is on top of financial details. Third, amenities. That could be anything from a health club facility or a gym in the building to a shared rooftop. Nowadays, buyers are looking for such things as dog grooming rooms, which are becoming very popular, or private wine storage areas, in buildings. There has been a big surge in prewar buildings trying to utilize basement areas or other common areas in the building to match some of the amenities you’re seeing in new construction.

Q.

What’s the most useless feature for a building?

A.

One of the things that a lot of people will look for is rear courtyard space in a building. And we find that in buildings that do have that, that do go through beautifying it, we find, across the board, that it gets very little use.

Q.

Who picks the doorman’s uniform?

A.

Doorman uniforms are usually selected by the board or a subcommittee of the board. The managing agent will provide samples from numerous uniform companies. There are some buildings that want to have a very fancy uniform and then there are other buildings that want to get away from that and go very simple, let’s say blazer and turtleneck, more toward the look of the boutique hotel rather than the standard epaulets with braids and scrawling writing on them. We’ve had instances where we’ve had existing doormen model the uniform for the board so they can see what it looks like on an individual. It’s one of the issues where a considerable amount of time can be spent.
There are some buildings that want to do a certain type of fabric or do a certain weight fabric. We’ll recommend that they go to a heavier blend or a different blend because we’ve seen that in the past where you have uniforms like the ones they’re choosing, they only last one season. It’s up to them ultimately, but we need to bring all options to them.

Q.

Any advice on achieving harmony within a building?

A.

In buildings where there is disharmony among residents or residents and boards, it basically points to one big area and that’s lack of communication. We find that frequent communication bridges a lot of what could have been difficult or tense situations in terms of a viewpoint of us versus them. You’re living in a little confined community; it is a breeding ground for rumors and stories that are not true, and a little bit more communication could alleviate that.

Q.

Any real life examples from buildings you’ve managed? Any nightmare scenarios?

A.

This is a business where you’re dealing a lot with people’s emotions because you’re dealing with where they live. And you’re dealing a lot with instances where these emotions can get heated. You also have different personalities living in what can best be described as a vertical town so that you’re going to have personality conflicts. Our job is a lot of social work, psychology and patience.
We’ve had buildings where at annual meetings, we’ve had to break up fist fights, to seeing furniture thrown in meetings. There was an argument that started between a board member and a resident having to do with parking spots in a building. And they felt that the board member was getting a preferential parking spot because they were on the board. I physically had to step in between the two of them.

Q.

You must get complaints and calls all day long.

A.

It’s a job that has a lot of pressure. One of the ways we try to blow off steam is we try to tell funny stories. The most recent story: we were able to nab a resident who we had long suspected of allowing their dog to go to the bathroom in the hallway. We were never able catch them, and then we did some surveillance and we were able to identify the person. At the building, the board and I viewed the evidence with quite a bit of satisfaction.

Q.

Do you own a co-op or a condo?

A.

Not presently. I live in a house. Dealing with the industry on a day-to-day basis, it’s my relaxation to get to somewhere where there’s a little more space involved.
When I still lived in the city, I did own a co-op on the Upper West Side.

Q.

A lot of our readers who wrote in signed their questions with signatures like “Hopes to Never Own a Co-op Again.” Do you relate to that?

A.

Oh, absolutely. But one of the best possible remedies for that is to help the situation and volunteer. If you’re unhappy, there are avenues you can go to become a voice of change in your building.

Q.

Or move to New Jersey and buy a house?

A.

No, I’d rather sit and fight.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

El Museo del Barrio’s Board President to Leave

El Museo del Barrio’s board president, who was named in a recent discrimination claim by the museum’s former director, will leave her position at the end of her term on June 30, museum officials said on Friday. The official, Yas Hernandez, is departing as the museum searches for a new director and struggles to find its fiscal footing.

“I deeply believe in El Museo’s mission to honor Latino, Caribbean and Latin American cultures and believe the institution has a bright future,” Ms. Hernandez said in a statement released Friday. “Because of my other board commitments, I will be stepping down as president of El Museo’s board when my term expires in June. However, I will remain actively involved, and my husband, Valentín Hernández, has been proposed to join the board because of my family’s deeply held commitment to the success of the institution.”

The museum, at 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street in East Harlem, is a major center for Latino art and culture. But its fundraising has slipped, its days of operation have been slashed from six to four and roughly a fifth of its staff was laid off this year.

Margarita Aguilar, the former director, was fired in February. She filed a claim in February with the New York State Division of Human Rights, naming Ms. Hernandez and Tony Bechara and alleging gender discrimination and the creation of a hostile workplace. Among other things, she said Ms. Hernandez gave her unsolicited advice on how to shape her eyebrows and told her that she could afford a better wardrobe.

The museum says she was dismissed for poor performance, including ineffective leadership. “The claims made against El Museo are without merit,” Mr. Bechara said in an emailed statement on Friday.

The Week in Culture Pictures, May 10

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times Robert Fairchild and Tiler Peck performing in Christopher Wheeldon’s “A Place For Us” at the New York City Ballet spring gala at the David H. Koch Theater on Wednesday night.

More photographs.

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

Band Members Say Slayer Guitarist Died of Cirrhosis of the Liver

The surviving members of the metal band Slayer said that the guitarist Jeff Hanneman had died of alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver, not from an infection of flesh-eating bacteria.

When Mr. Hanneman died last week at a hospital in Hemet, Calif., there were unconfirmed reports that his death had something to do with a horrific case of flesh-eating bacteria that developed in his right arm in 2011 after he was bitten by a spider. The surgery to stop the infection â€" necrotizing fasciitis â€" had nearly cost him his arm, threatening his livelihood.

That seemed to some fans an appropriately ghoulish death at age 49 for a man who wrote songs about torture, Nazi concentration camps, terrorist acts and the horrors of war.

But it was not true, it turns out: The band posted a notice on its Web site on Thursday saying that Mr. Hanneman’s liver had given out because of drink.

“We’ve just learned that the official cause of Jeff’s death was alcohol related cirrhosis,” the posting said. “While he had his health struggles over the years, including the recent necrotizing fasciitis infection that devastated his well-being, Jeff and those close to him were not aware of the true extent of his liver condition until the last days of his life.”

The remaining band members â€" the front-man and bassist Tom Araya, the guitarist Kerry King and the drummer Dave Lombardo â€" also said they planned a public celebration of Mr. Hanneman’s life later this month, though they gave no details.

A Record-Setting Gala for Lincoln Center, With a Bonus Tribute for Reynold Levy

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts raised $9.4 million at its spring gala on Thursday night, a record for the organization. The gala honored Lincoln Center’s president, Reynold Levy, who is stepping down in December after 11 years. The evening started with the total at $8.2 million, but during the speeches Katherine Farley, Lincoln Center’s chairwoman, announced that an additional $1.2 million had been raised for the creation of the Reynold Levy Fellowship for Harvard Business School graduates interested in nonprofit organizations.

Mr. Levy, who is known for his dogged fundraising skills, said in his remarks that his middle name was “gala” and that he was grateful for the fellowship created in his honor. “$1.2 million I didn’t have to raise,” he said. The gala featured Audra McDonald, who performed in a packed Avery Fisher Hall before the seated dinner for 1,200 in a tent on Damrosch Park. Those in attendance included the actress Anne Hathaway, the talk show host Kelly Ripa and the late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon.

A Record-Setting Gala for Lincoln Center, With a Bonus Tribute for Reynold Levy

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts raised $9.4 million at its spring gala on Thursday night, a record for the organization. The gala honored Lincoln Center’s president, Reynold Levy, who is stepping down in December after 11 years. The evening started with the total at $8.2 million, but during the speeches Katherine Farley, Lincoln Center’s chairwoman, announced that an additional $1.2 million had been raised for the creation of the Reynold Levy Fellowship for Harvard Business School graduates interested in nonprofit organizations.

Mr. Levy, who is known for his dogged fundraising skills, said in his remarks that his middle name was “gala” and that he was grateful for the fellowship created in his honor. “$1.2 million I didn’t have to raise,” he said. The gala featured Audra McDonald, who performed in a packed Avery Fisher Hall before the seated dinner for 1,200 in a tent on Damrosch Park. Those in attendance included the actress Anne Hathaway, the talk show host Kelly Ripa and the late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon.

Band Members Say Slayer Guitarist Died of Cirrhosis of the Liver

The surviving members of the metal band Slayer said that the guitarist Jeff Hanneman had died of alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver, not from an infection of flesh-eating bacteria.

When Mr. Hanneman died last week at a hospital in Hemet, Calif., there were unconfirmed reports that his death had something to do with a horrific case of flesh-eating bacteria that developed in his right arm in 2011 after he was bitten by a spider. The surgery to stop the infection â€" necrotizing fasciitis â€" had nearly cost him his arm, threatening his livelihood.

That seemed to some fans an appropriately ghoulish death at age 49 for a man who wrote songs about torture, Nazi concentration camps, terrorist acts and the horrors of war.

But it was not true, it turns out: The band posted a notice on its Web site on Thursday saying that Mr. Hanneman’s liver had given out because of drink.

“We’ve just learned that the official cause of Jeff’s death was alcohol related cirrhosis,” the posting said. “While he had his health struggles over the years, including the recent necrotizing fasciitis infection that devastated his well-being, Jeff and those close to him were not aware of the true extent of his liver condition until the last days of his life.”

The remaining band members â€" the front-man and bassist Tom Araya, the guitarist Kerry King and the drummer Dave Lombardo â€" also said they planned a public celebration of Mr. Hanneman’s life later this month, though they gave no details.

Big Ticket | $16.295 Million for Wraparound Views

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times The reinvented 1920 brick building at 535 West End Avenue has 22 condos.

A pristine 12-room sponsor unit at 535 West End Avenue, a 1920 brick building reinvented, expanded and marketed as a luxury destination by the Extell Development Company, sold for $16.295 million and was the most expensive residential sale of the week, according to city records. The 6,637-square-foot residence, No. 16, had an original listing price of $16.9 million.

Besides being one of the largest of the 22 condominiums in the building, No. 16 is the only unit graced with a private 1,814-square-foot wraparound terrace, with views to the north and east. Monthly carrying costs of the six-bedroom, six-and-one-half-bath unit are $8,148. Building amenities include an indoor pool, a gym and a billiards room.

The living room, which has a fireplace, and the master bedroom suite, which offers his and hers bathrooms of Calacatta and Thassos marble, both have access to the terrace. There is a Smallbone kitchen with La Cornue, Miele and Sub-Zero appliances; a staff suite has river views.

The listing brokers were Lisa Lippman and Scott Moore of Brown Harris Stevens. Epo In-Manning of Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyer. Extell used a limited-liability company, Imico West End, on the city paperwork; the buyer also used a limited-liability company, Toutou Ouest. But according to signatures on the deed, the new owner is David Sekiguchi, a founder of QFR Capital and a former managing director of Deutsche Bank, where he was the global head of emerging markets.

Another high-priced sale this week involved a brick town house at 54 East 64th Street. Marketed as a residence by Dolly Lenz of Douglas Elliman Real Estate, it is best known as the former headquarters of The Observer and is categorized in city records as an office building. It sold for $18 million, which was $10 million below the asking price. The buyer used a limited-liability company, 54 East 64th Street Townhouse, as did the foreign seller, SM 64th Street Holdings, which had paid $20 million for the property in 2011.

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

Kiefer Sutherland and the Fox Ratings

Fans of the Fox drama “Touch,” which stars Kiefer Sutherland, would be wise to savor the Season 2 finale on Friday. A day before, the network announced that this episode would in fact be the series finale.

Although there might not be many fans left. Ratings for “Touch” were strong out of the gate when the show drew 12 million total viewers for its series premiere in January 2012, but by the end of the first season, its audience had dwindled to 4.6 million. And the ratings were even worse for this season, when the show was moved to Friday nights and averaged only 2.7 million total viewers.

Almost immediately after the announcement of the show’s end, rumors began swirling that Mr. Sutherland would renew his real-time battle against terrorism as Jack Bauer in “24″ on Fox. According to Deadline.com, a possible 12-episode limited series is under discussion, with the former “24″ executive producer David Fury stating on Twitter that he would be “pulling double duty” between “24″ and the FX pilot “Tyrant.”

Katherine Boo’s ‘Beautiful Forevers’ Headed to the Stage

Patricia Wall/The New York Times

Katherine Boo brought the Annawadi slum to vivid life in “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” one of the most acclaimed books of 2012. The National Theater in London hopes to do the same in a stage version of the book next year.

The playwright David Hare will adapt Ms. Boo’s book, and Rufus Norris, one of the theater’s associate directors, will direct the production. It’s scheduled to appear in the Olivier auditorium as part of the National Theater’s fall 2014 season.

Ms. Boo spent more than three years in the slum to write the book. Reviewing the book for The Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Novelists dream of defining characters this swiftly and beautifully.”

Katherine Boo’s ‘Beautiful Forevers’ Headed to the Stage

Patricia Wall/The New York Times

Katherine Boo brought the Annawadi slum to vivid life in “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” one of the most acclaimed books of 2012. The National Theater in London hopes to do the same in a stage version of the book next year.

The playwright David Hare will adapt Ms. Boo’s book, and Rufus Norris, one of the theater’s associate directors, will direct the production. It’s scheduled to appear in the Olivier auditorium as part of the National Theater’s fall 2014 season.

Ms. Boo spent more than three years in the slum to write the book. Reviewing the book for The Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Novelists dream of defining characters this swiftly and beautifully.”

A Parade of Vintage Trains, Unnoticed in the Harlem Night

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesSee the slide show

The trains lurched through the Harlem darkness, rattling above an all-night pawnshop, a swell of reggaeton music and a man in a headdress, squawking from his bicycle.

The name on the side of each passing car made for train buff poetry at East 125th Street â€" the Babbling Brook, the Birken, the Kitchi Gammi Club.

They were led by a train car called the Hickory Creek, due south like the rest to Grand Central Terminal, where, in 1948, then-general Dwight D. Eisenhower presided at the car’s welcome ceremony.

From the rails, some travelers waved to no one in particular, taking a curtain call for a feat that the commuters of Metro-North Railroad seemed to ignore. Others slept aboard the cars they had purchased and refurbished and, finally, delivered to Midtown Manhattan for a gathering unlike any in the hub’s 100 years: the most exhaustive collection of privately owned train cars ever assembled at Grand Central, to be displayed Saturday and Sunday.

But this was the spectacle before the spectacle, the part that had to come first. It is the vintage convertible driven through Brooklyn traffic to film a climactic period scene on the cobblestones, the circus elephant led through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel before the tents go up.

Sixteen cars were pulled by two separate locomotives, about 90 minutes apart late Thursday night and into Friday morning â€" hard-charging flashes of the barbershop seating, stainless steel and master bedrooms of the rails.

And yet, Harlem appeared unmoved. A Mercedes scorched tire marks into a 24-hour parking lot, its sharp turn coaxing fumes to the track level. A man on the platform begged for charity, the left arm of his black jacket dangling. He had lost a limb in war, he said.

Nearby, Allen Boes and Fiona O’Leary of Yonkers were finishing their date. Mr. Boes handed her a bouquet of lilacs. “I’m a very old soul,” he said.

Stu Brown, 77, sat alone on a bench, with his newspaper and umbrella in a Starbucks bag. A train approached, convulsing the bench. “I’m getting a call,” he said. Strange. No one there.

The man in the jacket returned to petition another traveler. This time, his right arm was missing.

Around 11:10 p.m., the first old collection arrived. A few riders looked up, then back down. It was not their train. But the man in the black jacket was on the move.

“Time to go,” he said, as a police officer chased him to an exit.

The man jogged down the stairs, and the officer followed. A few eyes tracked them, toward the ticket area and into the night. When they looked back, the train was gone, too.

A Parade of Vintage Trains, Unnoticed in the Harlem Night

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesSee the slide show

The trains lurched through the Harlem darkness, rattling above an all-night pawnshop, a swell of reggaeton music and a man in a headdress, squawking from his bicycle.

The name on the side of each passing car made for train buff poetry at East 125th Street â€" the Babbling Brook, the Birken, the Kitchi Gammi Club.

They were led by a train car called the Hickory Creek, due south like the rest to Grand Central Terminal, where, in 1948, then-general Dwight D. Eisenhower presided at the car’s welcome ceremony.

From the rails, some travelers waved to no one in particular, taking a curtain call for a feat that the commuters of Metro-North Railroad seemed to ignore. Others slept aboard the cars they had purchased and refurbished and, finally, delivered to Midtown Manhattan for a gathering unlike any in the hub’s 100 years: the most exhaustive collection of privately owned train cars ever assembled at Grand Central, to be displayed Saturday and Sunday.

But this was the spectacle before the spectacle, the part that had to come first. It is the vintage convertible driven through Brooklyn traffic to film a climactic period scene on the cobblestones, the circus elephant led through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel before the tents go up.

Sixteen cars were pulled by two separate locomotives, about 90 minutes apart late Thursday night and into Friday morning â€" hard-charging flashes of the barbershop seating, stainless steel and master bedrooms of the rails.

And yet, Harlem appeared unmoved. A Mercedes scorched tire marks into a 24-hour parking lot, its sharp turn coaxing fumes to the track level. A man on the platform begged for charity, the left arm of his black jacket dangling. He had lost a limb in war, he said.

Nearby, Allen Boes and Fiona O’Leary of Yonkers were finishing their date. Mr. Boes handed her a bouquet of lilacs. “I’m a very old soul,” he said.

Stu Brown, 77, sat alone on a bench, with his newspaper and umbrella in a Starbucks bag. A train approached, convulsing the bench. “I’m getting a call,” he said. Strange. No one there.

The man in the jacket returned to petition another traveler. This time, his right arm was missing.

Around 11:10 p.m., the first old collection arrived. A few riders looked up, then back down. It was not their train. But the man in the black jacket was on the move.

“Time to go,” he said, as a police officer chased him to an exit.

The man jogged down the stairs, and the officer followed. A few eyes tracked them, toward the ticket area and into the night. When they looked back, the train was gone, too.

A Parade of Vintage Trains, Unnoticed in the Harlem Night

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesSee the slide show

The trains lurched through the Harlem darkness, rattling above an all-night pawnshop, a swell of reggaeton music and a man in a headdress, squawking from his bicycle.

The name on the side of each passing car made for train buff poetry at East 125th Street â€" the Babbling Brook, the Birken, the Kitchi Gammi Club.

They were led by a train car called the Hickory Creek, due south like the rest to Grand Central Terminal, where, in 1948, then-general Dwight D. Eisenhower presided at the car’s welcome ceremony.

From the rails, some travelers waved to no one in particular, taking a curtain call for a feat that the commuters of Metro-North Railroad seemed to ignore. Others slept aboard the cars they had purchased and refurbished and, finally, delivered to Midtown Manhattan for a gathering unlike any in the hub’s 100 years: the most exhaustive collection of privately owned train cars ever assembled at Grand Central, to be displayed Saturday and Sunday.

But this was the spectacle before the spectacle, the part that had to come first. It is the vintage convertible driven through Brooklyn traffic to film a climactic period scene on the cobblestones, the circus elephant led through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel before the tents go up.

Sixteen cars were pulled by two separate locomotives, about 90 minutes apart late Thursday night and into Friday morning â€" hard-charging flashes of the barbershop seating, stainless steel and master bedrooms of the rails.

And yet, Harlem appeared unmoved. A Mercedes scorched tire marks into a 24-hour parking lot, its sharp turn coaxing fumes to the track level. A man on the platform begged for charity, the left arm of his black jacket dangling. He had lost a limb in war, he said.

Nearby, Allen Boes and Fiona O’Leary of Yonkers were finishing their date. Mr. Boes handed her a bouquet of lilacs. “I’m a very old soul,” he said.

Stu Brown, 77, sat alone on a bench, with his newspaper and umbrella in a Starbucks bag. A train approached, convulsing the bench. “I’m getting a call,” he said. Strange. No one there.

The man in the jacket returned to petition another traveler. This time, his right arm was missing.

Around 11:10 p.m., the first old collection arrived. A few riders looked up, then back down. It was not their train. But the man in the black jacket was on the move.

“Time to go,” he said, as a police officer chased him to an exit.

The man jogged down the stairs, and the officer followed. A few eyes tracked them, toward the ticket area and into the night. When they looked back, the train was gone, too.

A Jay-Z Sighting … in 1939 Harlem

Sid Grossman, courtesy New York Public Library Original gangster? Some have noted a resemblance to a certain hip-hop mogul in this 1939 photo.

Yes, the New York Public Library swears, the old photo of the guy who looks scarily like Jay-Z really is an unretouched, un-Photoshopped image from 1939. “We’re 100 percent certain it’s legitimate,” Adenike Olanrewaju, a library spokeswoman, said on Friday.

The photo, the library explains on its Tumblr blog, is “Harlem Loiterers” by the street photographer Sid Grossman (no further details are known about it, unfortunately), and it was stumbled across recently by a curator at the library’s Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture.

Courtesy New York Public Library Brad Pitt? Mark Wahlberg? Neither? Both?

This is not unprecedented at the library. In 2011, someone noticed a prisoner in an 1857 photo from the library’s collection who looked kind of like a cross between Brad Pitt and Mark Wahlberg (or so some say).

This kind of thing is bound to happen from time to time with a digital collection of thousands of old photographs and a human brain wired to recognize faces and see similarities.

Perhaps if you browse through the collection you’ll find more? If you do, let us know.

Singer Accused of Trying to Hire Hitman Pleads Not Guilty

Prosecutors say the lead singer of the band As I Lay Dying, who is accused of trying to hire someone to kill his estranged wife, handed an envelope containing $1,000 in cash to an undercover officer, along with instructions, a photograph, an address, security gate codes and dates when he would have an alibi, The Associated Press reported.

Those details emerged in court in Vista, Calif., on Thursday as the singer, Tim Lambesis, 32, pleaded not guilty to charges of solicitation of murder. A judge set bail at $3 million.

Claudia Grasso, a deputy San Diego County district attorney, told the court that the undercover agent, identified only as “Red,” had recorded Mr. Lambesis as he stated he wanted his wife slain. In addition, the singer is said to have twice in the last month told a man at his gym that he was looking for an assassin, complaining that his wife had made it hard for him to visit their three adopted children.

But a defense attorney, Anthony Salerno, told The Associated Press that Mr. Lambesis never intended for his spouse, Meggan, to be harmed. She lives in Encinitas, Calif., near Oceanside, where he was arrested on Tuesday. “Law enforcement was being fed something by someone that I strongly believe was a snitch, was out to save his own skin and was trumping things up,” Mr. Salerno said.

Mr. Lambesis faces up to nine years in prison if convicted. He said nothing in court, which was packed with his supporters.

Ms. Grasso said the singer informed his wife in an e-mail while he was on tour last year that he wanted to end the relationship and that he no longer believed in God. Meggan Lambesis later learned that her husband had been unfaithful to her with “a string of women,” Ms. Grasso added.

In divorce papers filed in San Diego County last fall, Meggan Lambesis said her husband had become obsessed with bodybuilding, seemed extremely distracted around his children, and spent thousands of dollars on tattoos. She alleged he had become an irresponsible father during the months before their break-up, citing an incident in which he fell alseep when he was supposed to be watching his children at a swimming pool.

Ms. Grasso asked the superior court judge, Martin Staven, to set bail at $20 million, saying Mr. Lambesis remains “substantially motivated to kill his wife.” Bail conditions prohibit Mr. Lambesis from contacting his wife or children.

Mr. Salerno said he expected Mr. Lambesis to make bail. The band’s planned 30-city tour that was to begin May 30 in Oklahoma City looked unlikely to happen, since the judge ruled that Mr. Lambesis can leave San Diego County only to visit his lawyer in Los Angeles.

Singer Accused of Trying to Hire Hitman Pleads Not Guilty

Prosecutors say the lead singer of the band As I Lay Dying, who is accused of trying to hire someone to kill his estranged wife, handed an envelope containing $1,000 in cash to an undercover officer, along with instructions, a photograph, an address, security gate codes and dates when he would have an alibi, The Associated Press reported.

Those details emerged in court in Vista, Calif., on Thursday as the singer, Tim Lambesis, 32, pleaded not guilty to charges of solicitation of murder. A judge set bail at $3 million.

Claudia Grasso, a deputy San Diego County district attorney, told the court that the undercover agent, identified only as “Red,” had recorded Mr. Lambesis as he stated he wanted his wife slain. In addition, the singer is said to have twice in the last month told a man at his gym that he was looking for an assassin, complaining that his wife had made it hard for him to visit their three adopted children.

But a defense attorney, Anthony Salerno, told The Associated Press that Mr. Lambesis never intended for his spouse, Meggan, to be harmed. She lives in Encinitas, Calif., near Oceanside, where he was arrested on Tuesday. “Law enforcement was being fed something by someone that I strongly believe was a snitch, was out to save his own skin and was trumping things up,” Mr. Salerno said.

Mr. Lambesis faces up to nine years in prison if convicted. He said nothing in court, which was packed with his supporters.

Ms. Grasso said the singer informed his wife in an e-mail while he was on tour last year that he wanted to end the relationship and that he no longer believed in God. Meggan Lambesis later learned that her husband had been unfaithful to her with “a string of women,” Ms. Grasso added.

In divorce papers filed in San Diego County last fall, Meggan Lambesis said her husband had become obsessed with bodybuilding, seemed extremely distracted around his children, and spent thousands of dollars on tattoos. She alleged he had become an irresponsible father during the months before their break-up, citing an incident in which he fell alseep when he was supposed to be watching his children at a swimming pool.

Ms. Grasso asked the superior court judge, Martin Staven, to set bail at $20 million, saying Mr. Lambesis remains “substantially motivated to kill his wife.” Bail conditions prohibit Mr. Lambesis from contacting his wife or children.

Mr. Salerno said he expected Mr. Lambesis to make bail. The band’s planned 30-city tour that was to begin May 30 in Oklahoma City looked unlikely to happen, since the judge ruled that Mr. Lambesis can leave San Diego County only to visit his lawyer in Los Angeles.

Singer Accused of Trying to Hire Hitman Pleads Not Guilty

Prosecutors say the lead singer of the band As I Lay Dying, who is accused of trying to hire someone to kill his estranged wife, handed an envelope containing $1,000 in cash to an undercover officer, along with instructions, a photograph, an address, security gate codes and dates when he would have an alibi, The Associated Press reported.

Those details emerged in court in Vista, Calif., on Thursday as the singer, Tim Lambesis, 32, pleaded not guilty to charges of solicitation of murder. A judge set bail at $3 million.

Claudia Grasso, a deputy San Diego County district attorney, told the court that the undercover agent, identified only as “Red,” had recorded Mr. Lambesis as he stated he wanted his wife slain. In addition, the singer is said to have twice in the last month told a man at his gym that he was looking for an assassin, complaining that his wife had made it hard for him to visit their three adopted children.

But a defense attorney, Anthony Salerno, told The Associated Press that Mr. Lambesis never intended for his spouse, Meggan, to be harmed. She lives in Encinitas, Calif., near Oceanside, where he was arrested on Tuesday. “Law enforcement was being fed something by someone that I strongly believe was a snitch, was out to save his own skin and was trumping things up,” Mr. Salerno said.

Mr. Lambesis faces up to nine years in prison if convicted. He said nothing in court, which was packed with his supporters.

Ms. Grasso said the singer informed his wife in an e-mail while he was on tour last year that he wanted to end the relationship and that he no longer believed in God. Meggan Lambesis later learned that her husband had been unfaithful to her with “a string of women,” Ms. Grasso added.

In divorce papers filed in San Diego County last fall, Meggan Lambesis said her husband had become obsessed with bodybuilding, seemed extremely distracted around his children, and spent thousands of dollars on tattoos. She alleged he had become an irresponsible father during the months before their break-up, citing an incident in which he fell alseep when he was supposed to be watching his children at a swimming pool.

Ms. Grasso asked the superior court judge, Martin Staven, to set bail at $20 million, saying Mr. Lambesis remains “substantially motivated to kill his wife.” Bail conditions prohibit Mr. Lambesis from contacting his wife or children.

Mr. Salerno said he expected Mr. Lambesis to make bail. The band’s planned 30-city tour that was to begin May 30 in Oklahoma City looked unlikely to happen, since the judge ruled that Mr. Lambesis can leave San Diego County only to visit his lawyer in Los Angeles.

Popcast: Hip-Hop Stars as Disposable Spokesmen

Rick Ross in a Reebok commercial. The company cut ties with the rapper over his offensive lyrics.

Advertisers, theoretically, love hip-hop. They love it until it gets loud and messy, challenges taste and morals, causes offense. And then advertisers pull away.

Three examples of this response have emerged in the last few weeks: Reebok severing ties with Rick Ross and PepsiCo with Lil Wayne, both over lyrics; and PepsiCo, again, ending its relationship with Tyler, the Creator, who had been directing a series of commercials for Mountain Dew.

In a conversation, the critic Jon Caramanica and the host Ben Ratliff discuss commercial interests versus art, generational divides, what hip-hop should do and be, and to whom is it beholden. A thread in these conflicts have been the indirect dialogues between older black leaders â€" including the Rev. Al Sharpton and the author and academic Boyce Watkins â€" and rappers like Wayne and Tyler.

Listen above, download the MP3 or subscribe in iTunes.

RELATED

Jon Caramanica on Lil Wayne and other rappers running afoul of propriety.

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

The Sweet Spot: Going Way Back

In this week’s video, David Carr and A. O. Scott talk about how we’re permanently nostalgic for everything: music, clothing, our own lives, and now, the World Wide Web.

Book Review Podcast: The Origins of World War I

Seymour Chwast

This week in The New York Times Book Review, Harold Evans reviews two new books about the complicated web of events leading up to World War I: “The Sleepwalkers,” by Christopher Clark, and “July 1914,” by Sean McMeekin. Mr. Evans writes:

The historiography of World War I is immense, more than 25,000 volumes and articles even before next year’s centenary. Still, Clark, and Sean McMeekin, in “July 1914,” offer new perspectives. The distinctive achievement of “The Sleepwalkers” is Clark’s single-volume survey of European history leading up to the war. That may sound dull. Quite the contrary. It is as if a light had been turned on a half-darkened stage of shadowy characters cursing among themselves without reason. He raises the curtain at 2 a.m. on June 11, 1903, 11 years before Sarajevo. We see 28 Serbian army officers shoot their way into the royal palace in Belgrade. King Alexandar and Queen Draga, betrayed and defenseless, huddle in a tiny closet where the maid irons the queen’s clothes.

On this week’s podcast, Mr. Evans discusses “The Sleepwalkers” and “July 1914”; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Pamela Paul talks about the spring children’s books section; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.

Own a Mysterious Artifact? Go Show It to a Scientist

R. Mickens/American Museum of Natural History via Flickr These girls learned in 2011 that they were the owners of a sedimentary pudding stone (left) and a trilobite.

Life is full of mysteries. Some lives are full of mysterious objects. The necklace-looking thing you found on the beach that looks as if it probably came from an animal or maybe a plant. That rock your grandfather always told you was a meteorite. The dead turtle in a box on your desk â€" bog turtle or box turtle?

Some people prefer their mysteries unsolved. For the rest, there is Identification Day, the American Museum of Natural History’s annual spoiler fest at which museum scientists and anthropologists examine your find and tell you what it actually is, or might be.

This year’s ID Day is tomorrow, May 11, from noon to 4 p.m.

There are some ground rules. Please do not bring mammal or herpetological specimens, alive or dead (photos are fine). Bring only plants you have permission to collect. Do not bring gemstones, and do not ask that your object be appraised. This is not “Antiques Roadshow.”

Andy Newman/The New York Times Do not bring in that dead turtle in the box on your desk, but do feel free to bring in a photo of it.

Scientists will also be showing off some objects from the museum’s own collections that are normally kept out of sight, including birds that Theodore Roosevelt himself collected.

In the past, museum officials said, the scientists have identified someone’s 100-million-year-old Brazilian fish, which somehow found its way into a backyard in Hackensack, N.J. Another visitor brought in what turned out to be a fossilized walrus skull, found on a beach in Virginia.

“One of my favorites is someone found a hand ax in their summer camp in 1963 that was identified as being 2,000 to 3,000 years old,” said Kira Lacks, senior public programs coordinator for the museum.

On the other hand, the news may not be what you hoped to hear.

“What’s found very often at our anthropology table are arrowheads,” Ms. Lacks said. “Sometimes you’ll flip them over and it’ll say ‘Made in China,’ but sometimes they are identified as quite old.”

You never know.

Own a Mysterious Artifact? Go Show It to a Scientist

R. Mickens/American Museum of Natural History via Flickr These girls learned in 2011 that they were the owners of a sedimentary pudding stone (left) and a trilobite.

Life is full of mysteries. Some lives are full of mysterious objects. The necklace-looking thing you found on the beach that looks as if it probably came from an animal or maybe a plant. That rock your grandfather always told you was a meteorite. The dead turtle in a box on your desk â€" bog turtle or box turtle?

Some people prefer their mysteries unsolved. For the rest, there is Identification Day, the American Museum of Natural History’s annual spoiler fest at which museum scientists and anthropologists examine your find and tell you what it actually is, or might be.

This year’s ID Day is tomorrow, May 11, from noon to 4 p.m.

There are some ground rules. Please do not bring mammal or herpetological specimens, alive or dead (photos are fine). Bring only plants you have permission to collect. Do not bring gemstones, and do not ask that your object be appraised. This is not “Antiques Roadshow.”

Andy Newman/The New York Times Do not bring in that dead turtle in the box on your desk, but do feel free to bring in a photo of it.

Scientists will also be showing off some objects from the museum’s own collections that are normally kept out of sight, including birds that Theodore Roosevelt himself collected.

In the past, museum officials said, the scientists have identified someone’s 100-million-year-old Brazilian fish, which somehow found its way into a backyard in Hackensack, N.J. Another visitor brought in what turned out to be a fossilized walrus skull, found on a beach in Virginia.

“One of my favorites is someone found a hand ax in their summer camp in 1963 that was identified as being 2,000 to 3,000 years old,” said Kira Lacks, senior public programs coordinator for the museum.

On the other hand, the news may not be what you hoped to hear.

“What’s found very often at our anthropology table are arrowheads,” Ms. Lacks said. “Sometimes you’ll flip them over and it’ll say ‘Made in China,’ but sometimes they are identified as quite old.”

You never know.

Own a Mysterious Artifact? Go Show It to a Scientist

R. Mickens/American Museum of Natural History via Flickr These girls learned in 2011 that they were the owners of a sedimentary pudding stone (left) and a trilobite.

Life is full of mysteries. Some lives are full of mysterious objects. The necklace-looking thing you found on the beach that looks as if it probably came from an animal or maybe a plant. That rock your grandfather always told you was a meteorite. The dead turtle in a box on your desk â€" bog turtle or box turtle?

Some people prefer their mysteries unsolved. For the rest, there is Identification Day, the American Museum of Natural History’s annual spoiler fest at which museum scientists and anthropologists examine your find and tell you what it actually is, or might be.

This year’s ID Day is tomorrow, May 11, from noon to 4 p.m.

There are some ground rules. Please do not bring mammal or herpetological specimens, alive or dead (photos are fine). Bring only plants you have permission to collect. Do not bring gemstones, and do not ask that your object be appraised. This is not “Antiques Roadshow.”

Andy Newman/The New York Times Do not bring in that dead turtle in the box on your desk, but do feel free to bring in a photo of it.

Scientists will also be showing off some objects from the museum’s own collections that are normally kept out of sight, including birds that Theodore Roosevelt himself collected.

In the past, museum officials said, the scientists have identified someone’s 100-million-year-old Brazilian fish, which somehow found its way into a backyard in Hackensack, N.J. Another visitor brought in what turned out to be a fossilized walrus skull, found on a beach in Virginia.

“One of my favorites is someone found a hand ax in their summer camp in 1963 that was identified as being 2,000 to 3,000 years old,” said Kira Lacks, senior public programs coordinator for the museum.

On the other hand, the news may not be what you hoped to hear.

“What’s found very often at our anthropology table are arrowheads,” Ms. Lacks said. “Sometimes you’ll flip them over and it’ll say ‘Made in China,’ but sometimes they are identified as quite old.”

You never know.

Virtual Gold: Recording Association Adds Streams in Handing Out Awards

There was a time when a gold-record single was simple to define: You got the designation from the Recording Industry Association of America when you sold 500,000 copies of your record.

But times have changed, and the old 45-r.p.m. single of yesteryear is as archaic as a typewriter. Indeed, people don’t buy many singles of any kind in brick-and-mortar stores these days, and some people aren’t even buying them as digital downloads online, preferring to listen to songs on streaming services like Spotify, Rdio or Rhapsody.

So on Thursday, the association changed its rules to incorporate on-demand streams in its calculations of gold records. It is only the fifth major change in methodology the association has made since it started handing out gold records in 1958.

But how many streams are equal to one digital sale? After a year of studying digital downloads and on-demand audio and video streams, the association decided that 100 streams is about the same as one downloaded single, what they call “an approximate barometer of comparative consumer activity.”

Under the new rules several singles that never reached the 500,000-copies-sold threshold were suddenly awarded Gold Digital Single Awards: 30 Seconds to Mars’s “This Is War,” Anna Kendrick’s “Cups”, Emeli Sandé’s “Next to Me”, Juanes’s “La Camisa Negra”, Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games”, the Weeknd’s “Wicked Games” and Wisin & Yandel’s “Follow The Leader.”

The new rules pushed other singles into platinum territory (the equivalent of 1 million copies sold under the old system). They included Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” Andy Grammer’s “Keep Your Head Up” and Whitney Houston’s ”I Will Always Love You,” which was certified as a double platinum single.

Reaching 1,776 Feet

Julio Cortez/Associated Press One World Trade Center stood at its full height on Friday above the New York City skyline in this view from Jersey City, N.J. The 408-foot spire was set into place on Friday, raising the building to its symbolic height of 1,776 feet.

Album of Unreleased Andy Kaufman Material Coming in July

Drag City The cover of “Andy and His Grandmother,” a collection of unreleased material by Andy Kaufman.

It would be just like Andy Kaufman to find a way to keep releasing records long after his death. The pioneering comedian and “Taxi” co-star’s reputation for pranks and provocations was such that, even when he died of lung cancer at the age of 35 in 1984, some fans believed that this too was one of his outrageous acts of fakery.

While there has been no second coming of Kaufman (yet), this won’t prevent the independent record label Drag City from releasing a collection of recordings he made between 1977 and 1979 on a a microtape recorder he carried around with him. Drag City said in a news release that the album, called “Andy and His Grandmother,” had been culled from more than 82 hours of material that Kaufman created. The comedy writer and producer Vernon Chatman (“Wonder Showzen,” “South Park,” “Louie”) reviewed the original tapes, selected material and produced the tracks (with titles like “Andy Goes to the Movies,” “Andy Can Talk to Animals,” “I’m Not Capable of Having a Relationship” and “Hookers.”) The album also features narration from the “Saturday Night Live” star Bill Hader and liner notes by Bob Zmuda, who was Kaufman’s frequent collaborator and partner in crime.

Assuming this isn’t the setup for Kaufman’s greatest prank yet, Drag City will release “Andy and His Grandmother” on July 16.

A Young Person’s Guide to a Hopper Painting

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art Edward Hopper’s “Tables for Ladies,” oil on canvas painting, 1930.

Dear Diary:

A few weeks ago I gave a tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to a group of second-grade children from a New York elementary school. Among the works of art we looked at was Edward Hopper’s “Tables for Ladies.” It shows a scene in a restaurant with a waitress, a cashier, and a couple sitting at a table across from each other, but not seemingly engaged.

I asked the students to make up a story based on the painting. One very energetic little girl stood up and gave a rousing account, ending with her interpretation of the couple: “I think they’re waiting for the restaurant inspector!”

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

A Young Person’s Guide to a Hopper Painting

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art Edward Hopper’s “Tables for Ladies,” oil on canvas painting, 1930.

Dear Diary:

A few weeks ago I gave a tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to a group of second-grade children from a New York elementary school. Among the works of art we looked at was Edward Hopper’s “Tables for Ladies.” It shows a scene in a restaurant with a waitress, a cashier, and a couple sitting at a table across from each other, but not seemingly engaged.

I asked the students to make up a story based on the painting. One very energetic little girl stood up and gave a rousing account, ending with her interpretation of the couple: “I think they’re waiting for the restaurant inspector!”

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

A Young Person’s Guide to a Hopper Painting

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art Edward Hopper’s “Tables for Ladies,” oil on canvas painting, 1930.

Dear Diary:

A few weeks ago I gave a tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to a group of second-grade children from a New York elementary school. Among the works of art we looked at was Edward Hopper’s “Tables for Ladies.” It shows a scene in a restaurant with a waitress, a cashier, and a couple sitting at a table across from each other, but not seemingly engaged.

I asked the students to make up a story based on the painting. One very energetic little girl stood up and gave a rousing account, ending with her interpretation of the couple: “I think they’re waiting for the restaurant inspector!”

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.