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‘Murder Ballad’ to Close

The Off Broadway musical “Murder Ballad,” one of several new shows hoping to draw audiences with an immersive theater experience and nightclub atmospherics like cocktails, will close on July 21 after 17 preview performances and 70 regular performances, the producers announced on Thursday night.

A rock musical about sexual betrayal among four young New Yorkers, “Murder Ballad” received critical acclaim at the nonprofit Manhattan Theater Club last fall and attracted a team of commercial producers, who re-mounted the show in May at the Union Square Theater downtown. The commercial production cost $1.6 million; it will close at a financial loss.

The vibe of the show is reflected in the bar onstage, which serves beer and wine before performances to audience embers, some of whom sit at cocktail tables in the playing area where the actors perform, fight and make up around them. Other Off Broadway shows that are aiming for a club feel â€" and a club crowd â€" include “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” running in a tent in the meatpacking district, and “Here Lies Love,” at the nonprofit Public Theater through July 28. Some producers have been eyeing “Here Lies Love” for a commercial transfer after the Public run concludes.



At a Tepid London Auction, a Self-Portrait Is the Star

London â€" A brooding self-portrait that the Italian-born artist Rudolf Stingel painted in 2007 sold at Phillips auction house here on Thursday night for about $993,345 or $1.2 million with fees. The price was just above its low $919,000 estimate.

Dressed in a suit, holding a lit cigar with a pensive, faraway stare, “Untitled (Bolego)’’ was one of finest works in an otherwise tepid sale. The Italian-born Mr. Stingel has had a high profile this summer. In Venice he covered the Palazzo Grassi with his own Persian-inspired carpeting on which he hung his abstract and Photo Realist paintings. The exhibition became one of the most popular events during the preview days of the Biennale. (The exhibition is on view there until the end of the year.)

Earlier this month at Art Basel, other self-portraits by him were for sale in several galleries. Three of his works, each priced around $2 million â€" at Massimo De Carlo, a gallery with spaces in Milan and London; Sadie Coles from London; and the Gaosian Gallery â€" were reported sold within the first few days of the fair. (Some of them were considerably larger, about 8-feet by 10-feet.) Still, the price an unidentified telephone bidder paid at Phillips on Thursday night seemed cheap by comparison. “Perhaps there was resistance to its small size,’’ said Michael McGinnis, the auction house’s chief executive after the sale. (The canvas measured only about 1.2-feet by 1.7-feet.) “We had a ton of people interested in the painting but when it came time to bid they disappeared,’’ he said. “It’s quite an intimate painting.’’

(Final prices include the buyer’s commission to Phillips: 25 percent of the first $100,000; 20 percent of the next $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)



Life in the Rivers, Streets and Skylines of American Cities

When I started my first job in journalism, at the architecture and design magazine Metropolis, I was driven by my own ignorance to read compulsively about the field. Beyond the survey courses I’d endured in college, I knew nothing. So I pored over monographs, and studied Ada Louise Huxtable’s work and the marvelous collection of Michael Sorkin’s Village Voice columns from the 1980s. Both of these critics understood and appreciated aesthetics, but also pressed into deeper issues of how people live and interact in cities. Ultimately, this is what interested me, and it opened up a whole world of books. Jane Jacobs’s “Death and Life of Great American Cities” and Robert Caro’s “Power Broker” are among the canonical texts that hardly need further endorsement. Here are a few of the others that left strong impressions:

Chicago has inspired many of my favorite books, including Mike Royko’s “Boss,” about the legendary Mayor Richard Daley, and Richard Cahan’s “They All Fall Down,” the tragic tale of Richard Nickel, an amateur architectural photographer who battled to save historic buildings from Daley’s wrecking crews. But “Nature’s Metropolis,” William Cronon’s sweeping ecologically oriented history of the city, has the broadest shoulders of all. Though a little repetitive and not the most fluidly written, “Nature’s Metropolis” changed the way I see cities. It explains, with memorable detail and sharp analysis, how the entire Midwest â€" the vast farmlands and forests, the buffalo-filled plains â€" was thrust into the service ! of Chicago’s voracious commodities markets. Provincial New Yorker that I am, I had no idea that timber was transported in rivers, and that logjams could be miles long and had to be broken up with dynamite. I briefly aspired to write a book that looked at New York and Wall Street through the same lens, but now I just wish that somebody else would do that and I could read it.

“The Algiers Motel Incident,” by John Hersey, is a spare, wrenching account of the killing of three black men by Detroit police officers during the 1967 riot. I am embarrassed for the schools that educated me that until I read this book, a couple of years after college, I did not remotely grasp the severity of the urban riots of the late 190s. I was truly riveted (and horrified) by Hersey’s reporting, though I gather it was considered hasty and prejudicial by some critics. Reviewing it for The Times on July 7, 1968, Robert Conot concluded: “Mr. Hersey’s is a major talent whose overall reputation will no more suffer from this minor disaster than Beethoven’s did from the ‘Battle Symphony.’ ” If this is what gets called a minor disaster, we should all be lucky enough to have one. By the way, it is worth noting that although Hersey leaves little doubt as to the guilt of the officers, none went to prison.

Growing up in Manhattan, I regarded the pre-war apartment towers of the Upper East and Upper West sides as natural formations, as if carved out of rock by glaciers. They looked like they’d always been there. Well, “New York, New York,” by Elizabeth Hawes, elegantly explains what really happened. Through the first half of the 19th century, wealthy New Yorkers lived in private houses. To them, writes Ms. Hawes, “the idea of ‘cohabitation’ was a shocking, even immoral proposition, for it offered no more privacy or propriety than the tenements inhabited by the poor.” But as forward-thinking developers started erecting palaces like the Dakota and the Ansonia (which had a fountain in the lobby with live seals), well, it was obvious that they offered a few advantages over tenements. And the high-rise Manhattan that we love (and sometimes don’t) rapidly took shape, a great deal faster than a glacier.

Hugo Lindgren is the editor of The New York Times Magazine.



Zach Braff to Make His Broadway Debut in ‘Bullets Over Broadway’

Zach BraffTodd Williamson/Invision, via Associated Press Zach Braff

The Emmy Award-nominated actor Zach Braff (“Scrubs”) will make his Broadway debut next year in “Bullets Over Broadway,” the musical adaptation of Woody Allen’s 1994 film, the show’s producers announced on Thursday. Mr. Braff will take on the role of a young playwright in 1920s New York who, in order to get his work produced, is forced to cast a mobster’s talentless girlfriend, to be played on Broadway by Hélene Yorke. (John Cusack and Jennifer Tilly played the roles on screen.) The show is to begin previews at the St. James Theater on March 11, 2014, with opening night set for April 10.

In addition to Mr. Braff, the production will feature Vincent Pastore, who played Sal (Big Pussy Bonpensiero in “The Sopranos,” in the role of a mob boss. Other actors in the 29-member ensemble will include Brooks Ashmanskas, Betsy Wolfe and Lenny Wolpe. Still to come are the casting of two roles: the stage diva Helen Sinclair, played on film by Dianne Wiest in an Oscar-winning performance, and the gangster Cheech, a role for which Chazz Palminteri received an Oscar nomination.

Earlier this year it was announced that the Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Susan Stroman will take over both duties for the show. Mr. Allen is adapting his original screenplay, written with Douglas McGrath, for Broadway.

Although onstage Mr. Braff is known for his work in plays (“Trust,” “Twelfth Night”), “Scrubs” often featured musical segments in which his character broke into song.



Zach Braff to Make His Broadway Debut in ‘Bullets Over Broadway’

Zach BraffTodd Williamson/Invision, via Associated Press Zach Braff

The Emmy Award-nominated actor Zach Braff (“Scrubs”) will make his Broadway debut next year in “Bullets Over Broadway,” the musical adaptation of Woody Allen’s 1994 film, the show’s producers announced on Thursday. Mr. Braff will take on the role of a young playwright in 1920s New York who, in order to get his work produced, is forced to cast a mobster’s talentless girlfriend, to be played on Broadway by Hélene Yorke. (John Cusack and Jennifer Tilly played the roles on screen.) The show is to begin previews at the St. James Theater on March 11, 2014, with opening night set for April 10.

In addition to Mr. Braff, the production will feature Vincent Pastore, who played Sal (Big Pussy Bonpensiero in “The Sopranos,” in the role of a mob boss. Other actors in the 29-member ensemble will include Brooks Ashmanskas, Betsy Wolfe and Lenny Wolpe. Still to come are the casting of two roles: the stage diva Helen Sinclair, played on film by Dianne Wiest in an Oscar-winning performance, and the gangster Cheech, a role for which Chazz Palminteri received an Oscar nomination.

Earlier this year it was announced that the Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Susan Stroman will take over both duties for the show. Mr. Allen is adapting his original screenplay, written with Douglas McGrath, for Broadway.

Although onstage Mr. Braff is known for his work in plays (“Trust,” “Twelfth Night”), “Scrubs” often featured musical segments in which his character broke into song.



Italian Police Recover Trove of Etruscan Antiquities

One of the urns recovered by the police.Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale One of the urns recovered by the police.

ROME - Italy’s specialized art theft police force has recovered a trove of Etruscan objects described by officials as being “of inestimable economic and scientific value.”

The archeological artifacts, mostly dating to the third and second century B.C., had been discovered several years ago during a construction project in a neighborhood of modern day Perugia and were illegally excavated and trafficked on the clandestine art market before being traced by the police.

“This is one of the most important recoveries of the past 30 years,” said Luigi Malnati, director general of antiquities at Italy’s cultureministry, during a presentation Thursday of the artifacts that had been recovered under a police operation called “Operation Iphigenia.”

Among the items recovered were 23 travertine marble funerary urns dating to the Hellenistic period from a single tomb complex identified as belonging to the Etruscan Cacni family. Police also recovered other objects from the tomb dig, including a bronze helmet and various ceramic bowls.

Five people are under investigation for unauthorized excavation of archeological artifacts, possession of artifacts that belong to the state, and receiving stolen goods.



Quants Ask: What Crisis in the Humanities?

Two recent reports on the beleaguered state of the humanities have had pundits of all stripes scrambling to explain what many see as a dismal statistic: the proportion of college students graduating with degrees in subjects like English or history has fallen to a mere 7 percent in 2010, down from 14 percent in 1966.

Is the state of the economy to blame? The obsession with the so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math)? The anti-humanities rhetoric of right-wing politicians? The ideological excesses of left-wing professors?

Now one number-crunching historian has pointed the finger in an unexpected direction: women.

At the blog Sapping Attention, Ben Schmidt, a doctoral candidate in history at Princeton University, notes that between 1950 and 2002, the percentage of male college students who major in the humanities nationally remained steady at roughly 7 percent. The percentage of female college students majoring in the humanities, however, fell dramatically, to 9 percent from 15 percent.

To Mr. Schmidt, this gives the lie to the idea, advanced in a recent Op-Ed column by David Brooks of the New York Times, that the humanities “committed suicide” by focusing on “class, race and gender” at the expense of eternal questions. Instead, he suggests (tongue in cheek), they may have been murdered by egalitarians who made other fields more welcoming to women.

Some women may have shifted to the sciences. But the biggest change, according to charts Mr. Schmidt made a few years ago as part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Humanities Indicators Project, may be business majors.

“Between 1970 and 1985 , women jumped from 10 percent of all business degrees to 50 percent,” he said in an e-mail. Within the liberal arts, he added, the biggest shift was to the social sciences and what survey data nebulously referred to as “interdisciplinary liberal arts.”

Mr. Schmidt€™s gender analysis is only the latest quantitative assault on the “crisis in the humanities” story that has taken hold since the release of the two reports, produced by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and by Harvard University.

In a post earlier this month, Mr. Schmidt, who is currently completing a fellowship at Harvard’s “Culturomics” project, which is tries to quantitatively study of human culture, noted that the big plunge ! in humani! ties majors in fact came in the 1970s, following an anomalous boom in the 1960s. (The past decade, contrary to popular perception, has not seen large declines.)

Nate Silver of the New York Times blog FiveThirtyEight has also weighed in. The panic over the seemingly dismal number of humanities majors, he says in a recent post, has omitted once crucial fact: far more
Americans are attending college than ever before.

The crucial statistic, he says, is not the percentage of college graduates who receive humanities degrees, but the percentage of the entire college age population who earn such degrees.

The number of college graduates, he says, is much higher than in 1971, when there were 26.7 bachelor’s degrees granted for every hundred 21-year-olds in America. By 2011, that number had risen to 43.4, an increase of about 60 percent.

Tre, the distribution of degrees has shifted away from English and history and towards more obviously job-friendly fields like marketing, health care administration and criminal justice. “But these degrees may be going to students who would not have gone to college at all in prior generations,” he writes.

Even English â€" named the seventh most useless major last year by Newsweek â€" may not be in such bad shape, Mr. Silver says, or at least not any worse shape than before. The overall percentage of the college-age population receiving English degrees â€"roughly 1.1 percent of all 21-year olds in Americaâ€" is roughly the same as it was 20 years ago, he notes.

Mr. Silver sees a similar pattern in many of the STEM fields, which are often presumed to be thriving at the expense of the humanities. The fields that do see big increases, both in ! relative ! and absolute terms, are ones like hospital administration, criminal justice and business, which feed students into jobs that might not have required a college degree at all 20 or 30 years ago.

The real question, Mr. Silver maintains, is not how many students major in the humanities, but how much of a humanities education non-majors receive.

“Perhaps we should at once encourage and require college students to take coursework in English - and tell them to be wary about majoring in it,” he writes.

But is an English degree really such a bad investment? At The Atlantic, Jordan Weissman cites a 2011 study from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce showing that in 2010-2011, recent graduates with degrees in English and history had unemployment rates of 9.8 percent and 9.5 percent, respecively â€" nearly on par with graduates in computer and math fields (9.1 percent) or psychology and social work (8.8 percent), and ahead of economics majors (10.4 percent) and political science majors (11.1 percent).

“Score one for the lit nerds,” Mr. Weissman writes.



London Theater Journal: Daniel Radcliffe as Cripple Billy

Pat Shortt, left, and Daniel Radcliffe in Johan Persson Pat Shortt, left, and Daniel Radcliffe in “The Cripple of Inishmaan.”

LONDON â€" Everybody in the village thinks it’s a hoot that the lad known as Cripple Billy dreams of becoming a movie star. Even his doting aunts agree that any girl who would consider kissing Billy would have to be both blind and backward. They regularly go through fond but ruthless checklists of what makes their nephew so unprepossessing, which includes not just his gnarled body but his face, his eyes and his personality.

It says much about the spell cast by Michael Grandage’s revival of “The Cripple of Inishmaa,” which opened recently at the Noel Coward Theater, that these inventories provoke no self-conscious laughter in the audience, the kind that says, “Ho ho, we know better, don’t we?” Never mind that Inishmaan’s least likely candidate for movie stardom is played by Daniel Radcliffe, the star of one of the most successful franchises in film history.

Mr. Radcliffe, who became famous became playing the little wizard who could in the “Harry Potter” series, makes his entrance in this fetching production of Martin McDonagh’s dark 1997 comedy to the sound of no applause whatsoever. This is partly because London theatergoers do not share their New York equivalents’ habit of thunderously greeting anyone onstage whose name appears regularly in boldface.

But it’s ! also because Mr. Radcliffe blends right into the scenery and the ensemble. Billy is technically an anomaly in Inishmaan, by virtue of his physical deformity. But on this barren rural island, where being bored is the dominant pastime, he’s part of the same old landscape of familiar, irritating people.

Only when Mr. Radcliffe turns the blue laser of his gaze directly on the audience, as Billy contemplates his terminally limited lot in life, do we detect an uncommon intensity. But that look, when you think about it, is just a more naked expression of what all the characters in this play feel.

That would be the sense that they are trapped and thwarted to the point of suffocation. Billy may be the title character of “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” but finally he’s nothing special. Mr. Radcliffe, having appeared on Broadway in the spotlighted roles of a psychically maimed teenager in “Equus” and a singing corporate ladder climber in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” delivers his finest stage performance to date as a grotesque who fades into the crowd.

“Inishmaan” is the third - and for me, the most satisfying â€" production from the newly formed Michael Grandage Company, a troupe notable for its illustrious leading players. (Mr. Grandage previously had a flourishing reign as the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse here.) Earlier offerings were a revival of Peter Nichols’s “Privates on Parade,” starring Simon Russell Beale, and the premiere of John Logan’s “Peter and Alice,” with Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw. Still to come: Jude Law in “Henry V.”

Mr. Grandage’s interpretations of “Privates” and “Peter and Alice,” though enjoyable enough, underlined both plays’ more sc! hematic e! lements. In contrast, “Inishmaan” feels completely organic. Designed by Christopher Oram, Mr. Grandage’s frequent collaborator, the show has a heightened picturesqueness that is equally cozy and bleak, echoed in Alex Baranowski’s lonely penny-whistle music.

Daniel Radcliffe in Johan Persson Daniel Radcliffe in “The Cripple of Inishmaan.”

If you’re thinking this all sounds a bit corny, you’re not wrong. With its oh-so-quaint rustic characters, “Inishmaan” has the highest twee factor of any play by Mr. McDonagh, whose works for stage (“The Lieutenant of Inishmore”) and screen (“Seven Psychopaths”) are notorious for their violence and body counts. But make no mistake: “Inishmaan” has its own sharp teeth, rather like a ferret that seems adorable until you get up in its cute little face.

Achieving the right tone in performing this work isn’t easy. The 1998 New York premiere of “Inishmaan” was too precious by half, and it wasn’t until I saw Garry Hynes’s straightforward staging, for the Druid and Atlantic Theater Companies a decade later, that I began to think more fondly of it. My affection has only deepened with Mr. Grandage’s version, which unobtrusively melds the play’s sentimental and snarling sides.

Like most of Mr. McDonagh’s Irish settings, Inishmaan is such an uneventful place that the most humdrum gossip inflates into big, distorted news.! So when ! the word spreads that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is shooting a film in nearby Inishmore, the excitement is unprecedented. (“Inishmaan” was inspired by the making of Flaherty’s 1934 movie “Man of Aran.”)

It’s a surprise when the gnarled Billy, who spends most of his free time staring at cows, makes the pilgrimage to Inishmore. Even more astonishing: Billy is taken to Hollywood to become a film (pronounced in two syllables) actor. Or so rumor has it.

Most of “Inishmaan” is devoted to the passing, amplification and dissection of rumors, which include such hot topics as the mysterious simultaneous disappearances of a goose and a cat. The chief dispenser of gossip is Johnnypateenmike (Pat Shortt, looking like a yokel from a Cruikshank illustration), who may or may not know the real story behind the death of Billy’s parents, who were drowned shortly after he was born.

Mr. McDonagh has a peerless gift for locting the mythologizing in small-town tittle-tattle, and the liturgical cadences in repeated phrases and actions. He also has a zesty relish for switchback narratives that keep changing directions on you. As a creator of rural gossips, seeking to enliven the monotony of their days, he is the grandest, most diabolical gossip of them all.

Each member of the ensemble here embodies this shared storytelling spirit with vivid defining differences, without overselling the surface eccentricities. Ingrid Craigie and Gillian Hanna as Billy’s storekeeping aunts â€" whose worries about their nephew drives one of them into talking to a pet stone - are pretty much perfect. But so are Sarah Greene as the rowdy, egg-smashing object of Billy’s affections, and Padraic Delaney as a quiet widower with a violent streak.

Mr. Radcliffe’s Billy fits into this company so naturally that it’s only at the end that you recognize what he’s accomplished. With his tortured walk, in which every step is an effort! , and exp! ression of gentle desperation, Billy is Inishmaan incarnate, a place where life is a strenuous, tedious, hope-busting chore that turns people into small-time monsters.

They’re all freaks in Inishmaan. What human being isn’t, if you look closely enough? Mr. McDonagh’s awareness of this sad, funny fact of life is what makes his portraits of the bored so fascinating. Mr. Radcliffe grasps that perception with sensitivity and firmness. His performance is remarkable precisely because you realize that his character is not.



Random House Project to Rewrite Shakespeare

Jeanette Winterson.Andrew Testa for The New York Times Jeanette Winterson.

There is still a rogue faction of literary scholars and obsessive amateurs who claim that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford. But there’s no debate about the identity of the first two authors who will be rewriting the plays as part of a major new project announced by Random House’s Hogarth imprint.

Jeanette Winterson will be reworking “The Winter’s Tale” and Anne Tyler will be tweaking “The Taming of the Shrew” as part of the new series, to be called the Hogarth Shakespeare. Thefirst two volumes will be released in 2016, in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

Clara Farmer, Hogarth’s publishing director, told The Guardian that Random House was happy to hear from authors who wanted to participate in the project, which is expected to cover the entire Shakespeare canon. (“We need people to step up for the tragedies,” she said.)

For Ms. Winterson, the choice of “The Winter’s Tale” was easy. “All of us have talismanic texts that we have carried around and that carry us around,” she told The Guardian. “I have worked with ‘The Winter’s Tale’ in many disguises for many years. This is a brilliant opportunity to work with it in its own right. And I love cover versions.”



With Tote Bags, Police Try to Combat a ‘Blessing Scam’

Detective Kevin O'Donnell handed out bags in Flushing, Queens, on Wednesday, as part of the Police Department's campaign against a “blessing scam.”Niko J. Kallianiotis for The New York Times Detective Kevin O’Donnell handed out bags in Flushing, Queens, on Wednesday, as part of the Police Department’s campaign against a “blessing scam.”

On a street corner in Flushing, Queens, on Wednesday afternoon, Ping Fan, 56, clutched a new tote bag with an unusual provenance: it was a gift from police officers who handed it to her as she strolled down Kissena Boulevard.

The bag, Ms. Fan learned, was intended to be armor of sorts.

Over the last year, New York’s Chinatowns, in Flushing and in Manhattan, have been plagued b an unusual crime known as the “blessing scam” that plays on the traditional spiritual beliefs of Chinese immigrants.

Scammers approach victims, usually elderly Chinese women, telling them they look haggard and unlucky. The solution, the women are told, is to shove all of their valuables in a sack to be blessed, and to be unsealed several days later.

But its only when the bundles are opened that the victims realize truly how unlucky they are: the sacks are invariably empty except for crushed newspaper, water bottles and rice, having been swapped for an identical bag long before. And the helpful stranger is now nowhere to be found.

(In one of the latest examples, the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Thursday announced that five people had been accused of attempting to scam a 67-year-old woman in Chinatown earlier this month.)

To combat the problem, th! e police have begun a multipronged awareness campaign, aimed at older people with talks at nursing homes and announcements on Chinese television programs. The latest weapon in their arsenal: a cloth shopping bag.

The bright blue bags, 1,000 of which were on hand at a booth set up by the police on a Flushing street corner on Wednesday, are emblazoned with words of warning about the crime in both Chinese characters and English. It says:

“Blessing frauds.
Beware of street scams!
Please call 911 if you are a victim or witness of a scam.”

It also has the Police Department logo and the name of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.

“All the Chinese people are losing money,” said Ms. Fan as she took her bag. “I need to be careful.”

The bag, said Inspector Brian Maguire of the 109th Precinct in Flushing, “is a way to let a potential perpetrator who wants to commit a crime think that, ‘Oh maybe I shouldn’t go near that person because they’re aware of this cam.’”

The police believe the thievery often goes unreported because of the embarrassment of being so stupendously duped, Inspector Maguire said.

“They play on superstitions that members of the Chinese culture have where they believe their family will be affected by bad luck, and evil spirits,” he said, adding, “We had to think outside the box.”

Mei-Yu Liu contributed reporting.



‘Downton Diddy’ to be a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

Sean Combs, left, in “Diddy Downton,” a Funny or Die spoof. Sean Combs, left, in “Diddy Downton,” a Funny or Die spoof.

Might Lord Wolcott grace the halls of Downton Abbey after all?

Sean “Diddy” Combs had some fun in May with a Twitter hoax that claimed he was joining the cast of the popular PBS costume drama. The tweets turned out to be plugs for “Downton Diddy,” a Funny or Die spoof that starred the rapper-actor-mogul as a previously unknown nobleman named Lord Wolcott, strategically inserting him into key scenes alongside Lord Grantham, the Dowager Couness and the rest.

Among those charmed by “Downton Diddy,” it turns out, was Julian Fellowes, the creator of “Downton Abbey.” On Wednesday the producer told The Telegraph that he “absolutely adored” Diddy’s spoof and was open to giving him a cameo in the actual series.

Mr. Fellowes would never say never to the notion, he said, “though I imagine he’d steal the scene, even if it was a small part.”

No word on whether the appearance would come with underwriting support from Ciroc.



‘Downton Diddy’ to be a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

Sean Combs, left, in “Diddy Downton,” a Funny or Die spoof. Sean Combs, left, in “Diddy Downton,” a Funny or Die spoof.

Might Lord Wolcott grace the halls of Downton Abbey after all?

Sean “Diddy” Combs had some fun in May with a Twitter hoax that claimed he was joining the cast of the popular PBS costume drama. The tweets turned out to be plugs for “Downton Diddy,” a Funny or Die spoof that starred the rapper-actor-mogul as a previously unknown nobleman named Lord Wolcott, strategically inserting him into key scenes alongside Lord Grantham, the Dowager Couness and the rest.

Among those charmed by “Downton Diddy,” it turns out, was Julian Fellowes, the creator of “Downton Abbey.” On Wednesday the producer told The Telegraph that he “absolutely adored” Diddy’s spoof and was open to giving him a cameo in the actual series.

Mr. Fellowes would never say never to the notion, he said, “though I imagine he’d steal the scene, even if it was a small part.”

No word on whether the appearance would come with underwriting support from Ciroc.



Gay Landmarks, Found and Lost

A passer-by read the new plaque at the Church of the Village, Seventh Avenue and 13th Street, noting that it was the birthplace of Pflag (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) in 1973.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times A passer-by read the new plaque at the Church of the Village, Seventh Avenue and 13th Street, noting that it was the birthplace of Pflag (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) in 1973.

A year ago, if the old Portofino at 206 Thompson Street in Greenwich Village was remembered at all, it would have been as the restaurant where Elaine Kaufman cut her teeth in the early ’60s, before opening her own place uptown.

This year, now the Malt House, it is a landmark in American history â€" minor, to be sure, but a landmark all the same. The case of United States v. Windsor, which culminated on Wednesday when the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, can be traced to an evening in 1963 when Edith S. Windsor met Thea Clara Spyer over dinner at Portofino. After half a lifetime together, they were married in 2007.

The rediscovery of Portofino is a reminder that social landmarks don’t make their significance readily apparent. A bit of context is often needed to appreciate the triumphs, disasters and dramas that have played out in thes! e buildings.

The Gay Pride Month 2013 guide (PDF) prepared by Christopher Brazee, Gale Harris and Jay Shockley of the Landmarks Preservation Commission is an engaging reminder that buildings can breathe with life to those who know something about them.

For instance, the Church of the Village at Seventh Avenue and West 13th Street is not obviously the birthplace of the national organization Pflag (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). On Sunday, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation unveiled a plaque at the church commemorating the first Pflag meeting there in 1973.

Bishop Alfred Johnson, who leads the church, said he was pleased to have the plaque, as a sign that the congregation is as welcoming as it was 40 years ago. “The legacy has continued,” he said.

Michael Henry Adams

(Not every church feels that way. In recent weeks, a sign at the Atlah World Missionary Church, Malcolm X Boulevard and West 123rd Street, declared: “Never in the history of America did a president make defying God’s word public policy. Lev. 18:22.” That is the verse of Leviticus translated as, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” The Rev. James David Manning, the chief pastor at Atlah, said! in a pho! ne interview that the message referred to President Obama’s support of gay rights and same-sex marriage. Acknowledging that the sign had been criticized, Mr. Manning asked, “Since when is the word of God hate speech?”)

Sometimes, landmarks come to light just long enough for admirers to bid farewell. The Bell Center of the Williams Institutional Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and West 131st Street, turned out to have been the Ubangi Club in the 1930s, a popular destination for gay audiences. It was demolished this year to make way for apartments and a new church.

In 2012, preservationists hoped to save 186 Spring Street (left) for its history as a home and meting place of gay rights advocates. It was demolished, however.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times In 2012, preservationists hoped to save 186 Spring Street (left) for its history as a home and meeting place of gay rights advocates. It was demolished, however.

And how many people knew that a nondescript building at 186 Spring Street was a home and meeting place of gay-rights advocates in the early ’70s? The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation hoped to secure landmark status for the structure, to no avail. It was torn down to accommodate a new residential development. An abutting building was also to be razed.

Paradoxically, the demolition has turned out to be an obstruction to development. A lender, Silo Capital, asserted in a lawsuit against the developer, Nordica SoHo, that 186 Sp! ring Stre! et was collateral against its $5.6 million loan and that the demolition violated the terms of the mortgage.

In its complaint, Silo stated that it was seeking an injunction “to prevent borrower and anyone else acting on its behalf from demolishing the building which still exists on the property in order to protect the collateral that secures the loan.” Nordica SoHo no longer has a listed telephone number. Arguments are to be heard in the case on Thursday.

A rainbow flag still hangs above the shuttered Rawhide bar in Chelsea.David W. Dunlap/The New York Times A rainbow flag still hangs above the shuttered Rawhide bar in Chelsea.

Not every disappearance involves demolition. The gay bar Rawhide, on Eighth Avenue and West 21st Street, closed in March after 34 year, priced out of the space. J. P. Sutro, a broker at Lee & Associates, which is marketing the 1,320-square-foot storefront, said most inquiries are coming from local restaurants. “Almost all prospective tenants know about Rawhide and their legacy,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Being in business for 34 years in N.Y.C. is an accomplishment that only few can brag about.”

The photographer Jonathan Hollingsworth produced a tribute to the bar for Out magazine. In an accompanying interview with Out, he also spoke of a larger theme.

“New York is actually more of a verb than a noun,” he said, “because it’s engaged in an endless evolution of building, tearing! down and! rebuilding. Before Rawhide was a bar, it was a candy store. In a few dozen coats of paint, it will probably be a bar again. The great and terrible fact of this city is that as soon as you fall in love with something here, it breaks your heart by becoming something else.”

After 34 years, the Rawhide bar closed in Chelsea.Jonathan Hollingsworth After 34 years, the Rawhide bar closed in Chelsea.


Arts Endowment Names New Class of Jazz Masters

The multi-reedist and composer Anthony Braxton, the bassist and educator Richard Davis and the pianist and composer Keith Jarrett will be inducted as 2014 NEA Jazz Masters, the National Endowment for the Arts announced on Thursday.

Also among their ranks, receiving a special award for jazz advocacy, is Jamey Aebersold, who has put an indelible stamp on the culture of jazz education, with his play-along recording series and popular summer camps.

The NEA Jazz Masters award, generally considered the highest honor for a living jazz musician, has been given each year since 1982. In addition to the prestige, it comes with $25,000. The National Endowment for the Arts will hold a ceremony and concert on Jan. 13, in partnership with Jzz at Lincoln Center; the event will be streamed online, as was the case with the 2013 edition, early this year.

“On behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts,” Joan Shigekawa, the organization’s acting chairwoman, said in a statement, “I am proud to announce the newest class of NEA Jazz Masters. The NEA is committed to supporting this uniquely American art form, whether it’s through educational materials such as NEA Jazz in the Schools, supporting performance and educational activities by the Jazz Masters through Jazz Masters Live, or in this case, honoring the individuals who have devoted their lives and careers to mastering, sharing, and expanding this music.”



June 27: Where the Candidates Are Today

Planned events for the mayoral candidates, according to the campaigns and organizations they are affiliated with. Times are listed as scheduled but frequently change.

Joseph Burgess and Nicholas Wells contributed reporting.

Event information is listed as provided at the time of publication. Details for many of Ms. Quinn events are not released for publication.

Events by candidate

Albanese

Catsimatidis

De Blasio

Liu

Thompson

Weiner

Group event


John A. Catsimatidis
Republican

8:30 a.m.
Attends the Bay Ridge Boy Scouts breakfast, at Bay Ridge Manor.

6 p.m.
Attends a meeting of the Bronx Boxing Club, in Castle Hill in the Bronx.

8:15 p.m.
Participates in a candidates’ forum on recovery from Hurricane Sandy and the future of New York City flood zones, at YM-YWHA Jewish Community Center.

Bill de Blasio
Democrat

11:50 a.m.
Holds news conference to comment on last night’s passage by City Council of legislation that bans racial profiling by the police and establishes an inspector general to oversee the department, outside City Hall.

12:30 p.m.
Addresses citywide retirees’ chapter of 1199 Service Employees International Union, at union headquarters in Midtown.

8:40 p.m.
Participates in a candidates’ forum on recovery from Hurricane Sandy and the future of New York City flood zones, at YM-YWHA Jewish Community Center.

11:30 p.m.
Joins fast-food workers and union organizers at a rally calling for higher wages and better working conditions for the fast-food industry before a related City Council hearing, outside City Hall.

John C. Liu
Democrat

11:30 a.m.
Attends annual meeting of the 125th Street Business Improvement District, at Faison Firehouse in Harlem.

12:45 p.m.
Visits job fair, at Public School 40, at Union Hall Street in Queens.

6 p.m.
Attends New York Immigration Coalition “Builders of the New New York” awards ceremony, at Orensanz Foundation in downtown Manhattan.

6:45 p.m.
Attends Working Families Party anniversary gala, at John Jay College in Manhattan.

7:30 p.m.
Participates in a candidates’ forum on recovery from Hurricane Sandy and the future of New York City flood zones, at YM-YWHA Jewish Community Center.

9 p.m.
Attends the regular meeting of the Bay Terrace Community Alliance, at Chabad of Northeast Queens.

William C. Thompson Jr.
Democrat

8 a.m.
Greets morning commuters at the Prospect Park subway station in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

10:30 a.m.
Calls a news conference to promote a plan to save or create 120,000 units of affordable housing for the city’s working families, at Montgomery Street and Nostrand Avenue.

span>Anthony D. Weiner
Democrat

11:45 a.m.
Calls for an end to the ban on gay men being allowed to donate blood as part of his “Keys to the City” tour, at the New York Blood Center.

6 p.m.
Joins his wife, Huma Abedin, and a glittering coterie of prominent women she has assembled for cocktails at what is being billed as the first “Women for Anthony” fund-raiser. Event is being held at the Fifth Avenue apartment of Jill Iscol, a longtime friend and adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton who also threw Chelsea Clinton a bridal shower. Likely to draw heavily from the world of fashion and money given host comittee heavyweights like Rory Tahari, Reem Acra, Binta Brown, and Che! ryl Saban! .

Sal F. Albanese
Democrat

7:30 a.m.
Greets morning commuters at the East 86th Street subway stop, on the Upper East Side.

7 p.m.
Participates in a candidates’ forum on recovery from Hurricane Sandy and the future of New York City flood zones, at YM-YWHA Jewish Community Center.

Adolfo Carrión Jr.
Independent

7 p.m.
Participates in a candidates’ forum on recovery from Hurricane Sandy and the future of New York City flood zones, at YM-YWHA Jewish Community Center.

George T. McDonald
Republican

7 p.m.
Pa! rticipate! s in a candidates’ forum on recovery from Hurricane Sandy and the future of New York City flood zones, at YM-YWHA Jewish Community Center.

Erick J. Salgado
Democrat

7 p.m.
Participates in a candidates’ forum on recovery from Hurricane Sandy and the future of New York City flood zones, at YM-YWHA Jewish Community Center.



Baby Raccoons Not in Peril, Merely Adorably Sleeping

Baby raccoons rested in the rear of a building at 129 West 89th street.Ángel Franco/The New York Times Baby raccoons rested in the rear of a building at 129 West 89th street.

The Jaws of Life were left in the truck, thankfully unneeded, as a pair of baby raccoons reported to be stuck in wires on the Upper West Side were, instead, found to be merely sleeping, perilously close to barbed wire. The Police Department’s Emergency Services Unit decided to leave the babies be, free to dream of comfier resting places.



Rock On, or Live Long and Prosper

Dear Diary:

Robert C.J. Krasner

I was walking up Lexington Avenue the other day around 11 a.m., when just behind the Armory I looked up and noticed some bulbs were missing from the Walk/Don’t Walk sign, making it look like a hand signal from Mr. Spock.

“Live long and prosper,” I said to myself out loud.

Two much younger (and obviously “hipper”) women walking next to me heard me and they looked up at the sign.

“Rock on,” they each said.

À chacun son goût, to each his own, or maybe it’s just a generational thing.

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



New York Today: Pools of Rain

t

Water everywhere: the Thomas Jefferson Pool in East Harlem will open to swimmers today, but rain may spoil the fun.Ángel Franco/The New York Times Water everywhere: the Thomas Jefferson Pool in East Harlem will open to swimmers today, but rain may spoil the fun.

Good news: the city’s 63 outdoor public pools open Thursday. Bad news: for much of the day, thunderstorms may keep you out of the water.

A flash-flood watch is in effect starting at noon. In fact, we may set a record for the wettest June.

All we need is 0.41 inches to top the high of 10.26 inches, and the National Weather Service says we could get a half inch today and well over an inch by tomorrow night.

So if you’re going to swim, go early. And wherever you go, bring an umbrella.

Here’s what else you need to know to start your Thursday.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC â€"

- Heavy already on the upper-level G.W.B. inbound and the B.Q.E. Gowanus, 1010 WINS reports. Alternate-side parking is in effect.

- Trains are normal. Click for the latest status.

COMING UP TODAY

- James Gandolfini’s funeral is at 10 a.m. at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

-Transit riders and politicians will rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall at 11 a.m. to demand a plan to make up for service that will be lost when the R-train tunnel to Manhattan is shut down for a year.

- Bleary City Council members who were up past 2 a.m. voting to rein in the police will hold a hearing on low wages in the fast-food industry at 11:30 a.m.

- On the campaign trail: a candidate forum on flood-proofing the city and the recovery from Hurricane Sandy in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn at 7 p.m. This morning, Anthony D. Weiner will talk about a proposal to let gay men donate blood, which they currently may not.

- The N.B.A. draft will be held at the Barclays Center at 7 p.m.

- The mayor is giving a reception to high school valedictorians at Gracie Mansion.

- Cher is slated to sing at the Marquee’s Thursday night “Q” party in Chelsea.

- Free stuff in parks: Good Humor ice cream at Bryant Park from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., hepaitis and H.I.V. tests at Union Square from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

- For more Thursday events, see The Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Over the objections of the mayor, the City Council in the middle of the night approved bills to increase police oversight and expand the ability to sue over racial profiling. [New York Times]

- Anthony D. Weiner’s status as poll leader lasted exactly one day. A new poll shows him tied with Christine C. Quinn and William C. Thompson Jr. [New York Times]

- An unpleasant find, in several ways: pieces of a dismembered alligator on a street in Williamsburg. [Daily News]

This week, we’re testing New York Today, which we put together just before dawn and update until noon. What information would you like to see here when you wake up to help you plan your day? Tell us in the comments, send suggestions to anewman@nytimes.com or tweet them at @nytmetro using #NYToday. Thanks!