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Glossy Ibises Are Like 21st-Century Pterodactyls

Along the Atlantic coast, summer afternoons arrive on the wings of the glossy ibis (Plegadis falcinellus). These dark birds seem to appear magically, suddenly haunting shallow mud flats and wet meadows where just minutes earlier none had been.

Johann Schumacher

Even in the velvety late afternoon light, it is hard to call the glossy ibis beautiful. It seems as if every ibis hides an inner dinosaur. Up close, there is something primitive about them, almost vulture-like, and even in flight â€" where their grace is on display to its greatest visual effect â€" their long outstretched necks seem to hark back to something more ancient than lovely.

Ibises’ charms are never wasted on children, though, who are generally more familiar with dinosaur books than ield guides, and frequently make comments like: “Look, Mommy, a pterodactyl!”

They probably are not far from right, and theories about modern birds’ reptilian ancestry aside, the ibis’s ancient lineage plays nicely against a 21st-century New York City skyline.

Until recently ibises were not a part of this modern landscape. Indeed, for a beginning bird-watcher in the early 1970s, an ibis was a bird of some note, worth a visit to Jamaica Bay in Queens or Pelham Bay in the Bronx. Glossy ibises first arrived in South America from Africa in the mid-19th century. They have been steadily expanding their range northward since. The bird is quite cosmopolitan and can be found in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

In flight, an ibis is easily distinguished from other waders like herons and egrets, as it flies with its neck outstretched, an odd posture that serves to further emphasize its long, down-swept bill.

Johann Schumacher

The birds use their bills as highly effective probing tools, searching the soft mud with their heads bobbing up and down like sewing machines. When the bill hits the bird’s preferred prey (crustaceans, worms, snakes, small fish and mollusks), the unfortunate food item is quickly dispatched with a simple nod of the head. At times, just the tip of a hapless tail remains briefly in view until it, too, is maneuvered down the bird’s long gullet.

At a distance ibises appear to be uniformly dark, which accounts for one of their early common names, black curlew. When observed through binoculars or a spotting scope, however, the birds are a rich chestnut brown, with a greenish or purplish iridescence spreading across their shoulders, lower backs and wings. Their interesting beaviors and unusual colors have sold many pairs of binoculars over time, as the bird fascinates many a neophyte bird-watcher.

Glossies have made themselves at home along our shorelines and now breed within New York City. The birds build twig nests in low shrubs on the city’s remote islands, generally in mixed colonies of other long-legged wading birds like egrets and herons. Ibises depend upon soft mud and open water for survival, so come September, the birds can be observed making their way southbound to the Carolinas and beyond, well ahead of fall’s first frosts.



Week in Pictures for June 28

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include a rally in the Village after a ruling on same-sex marriage, umbrellas at Jones Beach and a retirement celebration for a beloved principal.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday’s Times, Clyde Haberman will speak with The Times’s Danny Hakim, Jim Dwyer, Eleanor Randolph, Doroty Samuels, David Chen and J. David Goodman. Also, Norman Siegel, a civil liberties lawyer, and Colum McCann, an author. Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

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.



‘Catfish’ Returns to Average Numbers

In January, “Catfish: The TV Show,” the documentary series on MTV that follows Nev Schulman and his videographer Max Joseph, enjoyed a brief moment in the spotlight when when Manti T’eo became the most high-profile example of someone being “catfished,” that is, the victim of a hoax involving a faked online identity. But so far, any interest from that incident has not translated into higher ratings for the show.

The Jan. 21 episode, which ran after the Manti T’eo story broke, propelled the series to a high of 2.8 million viewers. The Season 2 premiere on Tuesday had only 2.5 million total viewers, barely above the average viewership of Season 1, which was 2.4 million.

It should also be noted that original airings of Season 1 were scheduled at 11 p.m., aking the ratings for those episodes more impressive. The Season 2 premiere, however, unfolded in primetime, at 10 p.m., a higher-profile time slot but also a more competitive one.



The Week in Culture Pictures, June 28

David Morse, left, and Rich Sommer in the play, “The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin” at the Laura Pels Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times David Morse, left, and Rich Sommer in the play, “The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin” at the Laura Pels Theater.

Photographs More photographs.

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



The Week in Culture Pictures, June 28

David Morse, left, and Rich Sommer in the play, “The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin” at the Laura Pels Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times David Morse, left, and Rich Sommer in the play, “The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin” at the Laura Pels Theater.

Photographs More photographs.

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



Anatomy of a Scene Video: ‘Laurence Anyways’

Xavier Dolan, the writer, director and editor of “Laurence Anyways,” discusses a scene from his film about the male-to-female transition of Laurence, played by Melvil Poupaud. In this scene, after Laurence comes out to his mother (Nathalie Baye) as transgender, the two have a conversation.



Ask a Location Scout

The final subject in Metropolitan’s Q. and A. series will be Kevin Breslin, a location scout for television commercials who has arranged thousands of shoots, including the New York Lottery “If I Had a Million Dollars” spots.

Kevin BreslinMichael Kirby Smith for The New York Times Kevin Breslin

Negotiating a Saturday night shoot in Times Square? Check. Shutting down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway for an early-morning setup? Check. Filming atop the eagles on the 61st floor of the Chrysler Building? That too.

Wondering how he sweet-talks his way into these situations? How he discovers new spots in the city? The craziest place he has ever taken a crew?

Please share your questions in the comments section below./p>

We will pass on the best to Mr. Breslin with some of our own, and publish the answers next week.



Christie’s Leader Returns Ancient Bronzes to China

At a ceremony in Beijing on Friday, the family of one of France’s wealthiest businessmen officially returned to China two bronze animal heads that were among the treasures looted in the 19th century from the imperial Summer Palace near Beijing by invading British and French troops.

The businessman, François-Henri Pinault, chief executive officer of Kering, the luxury goods company that owns Christie’s auction house, attended the ceremony at the National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square along with senior Chinese and French government officials, including China’s highest-ranking female politician, Liu Yandong, vice premier of the powerful State Council.

“This donation is a token of our family’s appreciation for China as well as our passion for the preservation of art and cultural heritage,” Mr. Pinault said,according to a statement.

The two bronzes, a rat head and a rabbit head, were unveiled from beneath red silk covers by Ms. Liu and Mr. Pinault’s father, Francois Pinault, Reuters reported.
For the Chinese, the looting of the palace symbolizes the humiliation it suffered at the hands of imperial Western forces during the Second Opium War. The two bronzes were among 12 animal heads, replicating the Chinese zodiac, featured in a central fountain clock at the palace.
Mr. Pinault, whose company has significant stakes in China, made the offer to return the two bronzes when he accompanied the French president, François Hollande, on his first visit to the country in April.

Also in April, Christie’s announced it had been granted a license that would enable it to become the first international auction house to operate independently on the Chinese mainland, where the art market has grown fast.

Li Xiaojie, vice minister of culture and head of China’s state administration of c! ultural heritage, said: “The Pinault family’s donation is a friendly gesture to the people of China and demonstrates great support for the preservation of China’s cultural heritage.”



Big Ticket | Park-Centric Luxury for $17.53 Million

The sale of a floor-through apartment at 18 Gramercy Park South comes on the heels of two other sales there; several more units are in contract.Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times The sale of a floor-through apartment at 18 Gramercy Park South comes on the heels of two other sales there; several more units are in contract.

Three is a charm for the collaboration of Zeckendorf Development and its go-to architect, Robert A.M. Stern, at 18 Gramercy Park South. As a sequel to the jaw-dropping sales they logged by building the billionaire magnet 15 Central Park West, this smaller-scale but equally park-centric luxury condominium represents their first crack at refurbishing a landmark in a fussy historic district, and their third closing of the month again netted the most expensie sale of the week, according to city records. Several more of the 16 homes there are in contract.

This time the floor-through residence was No. 11 (the previous sales were Nos. 9 and 5). The cost was precisely $17,539,356.25 â€" the original asking price of $17,225,000 plus transfer taxes. And the closing gift from the sponsor was the usual $350 key that opens the locked gates of Gramercy Park, Manhattan’s only truly private park.

The key to No. 11 will unlock a turnkey residence in the 18-story Georgian Revival building; the unit provides 4,207 square feet of prewar charm and modern amenities. It has 40 feet of park frontage â€" and 134 feet overlooking historic Irving Plac! e â€" as well as 34 windows and 4 exposures. The northward views from the living room extend across the green canopy of the park to the Chrysler Building, and in another signature feature throughout 18 Gramercy Park South, all of the windowsills are marble. The monthly carrying charges are $11,225.26.

A private elevator landing opens into a foyer connected to the 7-foot-by-15-foot windowed gallery; the eat-in kitchen has a center island, hand-painted Smallbone of Devizes cabinetry, Lefroy Brooks fittings, and bianco perlino marble countertops and backsplashes. The kitchen is adjacent to the family room to encourage mealtime socializing.

There are four bedrooms, all with en-suite baths, and a powder room is lined in black onyx. The 27-foot-by-14-foot master bedroom has his-and-hers windowed baths, a Gris Souris marble slab shower, a Calacatta caldia marble slab steam shower, and a free-standing cast-iron soaking tub.

Zeckendorf Marketing handled the sale. The buyer, using a rustic limited-lability-company moniker, Sky View Ranch, and a law firm address in Warren, N.J., was represented by Stan Ponte and Randall Gianopulos of Sotheby’s International Realty.

Farther downtown, in TriBeCa, a sophisticated penthouse at the Hubert, a 2003 Art Deco condo at 7 Hubert Street, was the week’s runner-up, at $15.6 million. Unlike its neighbor, PHC, notable for having its own private jogging trail, PHB maximizes its 4,200 square feet of loft-style indoor space with a Bulthaup kitchen and a living/entertainment area with a bronze-clad wood-burning fireplace. The unit has three bedrooms, three baths and a powder room, as well as prime views of the downtown cityscape; the asking price was $17.5 million, with monthly carrying costs of $8,643.

The sellers, Washington and Laurie Druker, were represented by Raphael De Niro of Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The buyer, based in Rowayton, Conn., used a limited-liability company, JLM Hubert Street, in the transaction.

The week’s most epic ! closing w! as celebrated, or more likely suffered through, by the actress Mary-Louise Parker, who finally sold her rambling 10-room duplex at 32 Washington Square West, a 1925 15-story co-op on the northwest corner of Washington Square Park, for $7.45 million. This spring, after two unproductive years on and off the market, the apartment, No. 14W, was accorded a new broker, underwent a spruce-up session, had its asking price reduced to $6.99 million, and suddenly became the locus of a bidding war so fierce it could have been scripted for the Broadway stage Ms. Parker frequents. The duplex, which has five bedrooms, four and a half baths, beamed ceilings and two fireplaces, sold in a week.

The first couple to tour it after its minor face-lift, Charles O’Kelley and Elizabeth Rovere, were enchanted and made an offer, but so did the next house hunters, and the next. Ultimately Mr. O’Kelley, the chief executive of AppNexus, and Ms. Rovere, a clinical psychologist, upped the ante and proffered the winning bid. The were homesick for the West Village after selling their penthouse there last year to follow the stampede of Manhattanites to Brooklyn. They had paid $7.3 million for a modern town house at 40 Willow Street, which at the time was the highest assessed single-family home in Brooklyn Heights. Although it is against the vogue, they have now sold the house and are departing Brooklyn for Manhattan.

“The whole thing was like a fairy tale, with both the buyers and the seller just delighted by the outcome,” said Laura Rozos, the Corcoran Group broker who took over Ms. Parker’s listing in March after it had failed to sell at prices ranging between $7 million and almost $8 million. The monthly maintenance is $6,623.

“It really is the quintessential Manhattan apartment in a beautiful location,” Ms. Rozos said, “and its owner was understandably exasperated by the time I came into the picture.” The buyers were represented by Deborah Rieders, also from Corcoran.

Big Ticket includes cl! osed sale! s from the previous week, ending Wednesday.



The Sweet Spot Video: Parks and Trepidation

In this week’s video, A. O. Scott and David Carr are joined by the architecture critic Michael Kimmelman to talk about public spaces and projects which, at times, can lead to political upheaval … and even revolution.



Book Review Podcast: The Fall of Galleon

Illustration by Eduardo Recife; photograph of Raj Rajaratnam by Daniel Barry for The New York Times

In The New York Times Book Review, Frank Partnoy reviews “The Billionaire’s Apprentice,” Anita Raghavan’s detailed look at the spectacular fall of the Galleon Group hedge fund when its founder, Raj Rajaratnam, and Rajat Gupta, the former head of McKinsey & Company, were each convicted of securities fraud. Mr. Partnoy writes:

The book’s prefatory Cast of Characters sets a big, complex stage. My edition of “Hamlet” lists just 18 named dramatispersonae at the outset, whereas “The Billionaire’s Apprentice” lists 81. For Wall Street insiders, there are large dollops of gossip about the bit players. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, idolizes Bruce Springsteen and calls his father a “tiger dad.” Judge Richard J. Holwell mispronounces the name of Goldman Sachs’s chief executive Lloyd Blankfein. Raghavan’s coverage is encyclopedic. Some readers will wish she had heeded Elmore Leonard’s advice and left out the parts people tend to skip.

But the details of the two cases support a larger edifice, what Raghavan calls “the rise of the Indian-American elite.” Vijay Prashad, a scholar who has written extensively about South Asian history and Indian immigration, argues that men like Rajaratnam and Gupta benefited from two of the greatest social movements of the past century: independence in India and the struggles for civil rights in America. Those were the changes that made them “twice blessed.”

On this week’s podcast, Ms. Raghavan discusses her new book; Jon Mooallem talks about “Wild Ones,” his look at the haphazard nature of our efforts to protect endangered species; Adam LeBor on the difficulty of writing thrillers; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.



London Theater Journal: The Empire Crumbles

A scene from Robert Day A scene from “Mission Drift.”

LONDON â€" The empire is so over. No, not the British one. That’s been dead for ages. I mean the American one, which I have now had the chance to watch disintegrating on both sides of the Thames. My first show in London was Lucy Kirkwood’s sold-out “Chimerica” (at the Almeida in Islington), which portrayed the waxing of the East (as in China) versus the waning of the West (as in you know where).

When I slipped over to the South Bank the other night, to the National Theater, I was treated to the spectacle of the American dream evaporating like a mirage in the desert or Las Vegas, to be exact. That was in a musical called “Mission Drift,” which for the month of June has occupied the Shed, a provisional structure set up by the National in its courtyard while its Cottesloe Theater (soon to be reincarnated as the Dorfman) is being revamped.

The Shed turned out to be the perfect spot for this lively production from the theatrical collective called the TEAM. (You’ll probably like its members better if you don’t know what the acronym stands for.) For “Mission Drift” makes the case that the United States is a temporary set-up, too, at least as a nation of endless reach and endless opportunity.

Unlike “Chimerica,” a British production, “Mission Drift” is American-born. It was staged at the COIL Festival in New York last year, where it! was astutely reviewed by my colleague Charles Isherwood. I decided to see “Mission Drift” basically because I wanted to spend some time in the Shed (which sounds kind of sinister, doesn’t it?). And yes, it was appealingly shedlike, though far more comfortable than anything Stella Gibbons might have envisioned for her “Cold Comfort Farm.”

But I also wound up having a high old time at “Mission Drift,” along with the mostly, refreshingly young audience that packed the place. Directed by Rachel Chavkin (who staged the New York hit “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” - and written by the TEAM, in collaboration with Heather Christian and Sarah Gancher - “Mission Drift” finds plenty of show-biz spark in a world of ashes

The show tracks four centuries of American pioneering as it follows a Dutch husband and wife (both eternally 14, and immortal) from little old New Amsterdam in the 1600s across a series of new frontiers. They end up in Las Vegas, building an empire of hotels meant to include their chef d’oeuvre, the Ark. (Apocalypse anyone?)

But they’re derailed in 2008 by the housing bust, which also takes its toll on the show’s second couple, a 21st-century cocktail waitress and the cowboy who loves her. Libby King and Brian Hastert play the forever-young Dutch kids, who keep changing their names but not their entrepreneurial spirit. And Amber Gray and Ian Lassiter are the latter-day casualties of their predecessors’ pioneering.

“Mission Drift” is as thick on economic and historical data as it is on allegory, which could be tedious. This is largely avoided, thanks to the presence of a jaded, sultry lounge singer named Miss Atomic. (Well, you knew that atomic bomb testing would figure ! in this, ! didn’t you?) She is portrayed by Ms. Christian, who has written a tasty slew of torchy, bluesy, burning-down-the house numbers for her and the TEAM troupe to sing and dance to.

So maybe toward the end, when the show mostly exchanges singing for sermonizing, I started to feel the weight of the centuries and the previous couple of hours. But having seen six full-length shows in four days, I was grateful for the opportunity to watch talented and dedicated young things playing in the sand (which is kept onstage in bottles to be spilled when the occasion requires) and drinking beer. Yeah, beer. That’s what we call it back in the States.

Simon Russell Beale in Johan Persson Simon Russell Beale in “The Hothouse.”

Whskey was the tipple on offer in the other state-of-a-nation show I caught that day, in a matinee at Trafalgar Studios. That amber-colored fuel (or its simulacrum) was deployed most entertainingly by the great Simon Russell Beale, who stars in Jamie Lloyd’s revival of “The Hothouse” by Harold Pinter. Mr. Beale’s character gets drunk on the stuff, for sure, but he also flings it repeatedly - and with crack vaudeville timing - into the face of a snidely insinuating employee.

The nation under the microscope in this case is Great Britain in the late 1950s, which is, it seems, already a madhouse run by the insane. (Told you the empire was long gone.) This early work from Pinter is set in a sanitarium where the patients are known only as numbers and have a way of mysteriously disappearing or becoming pregnant.

Itâ€! ™s hard f! or the man in charge, Roote (Mr. Beale), to keep them all straight, and he would appear to be having the sort of full-fledged nervous breakdown that befalls dim-witted, rule-obsessed bureaucrats in satires of that era. Eyes in full bulge and brow in full beetle, Mr. Beale sputters and fulminates expertly through a series of music-hall-style encounters with employees played by a sly-footed John Simm, a sly-curved Indira Varma and a sly-tongued John Heffernan.

These characters have monosyllabic names to match their personalities: Gibbs, Cutts and Lush. And the innocent new worker there, played by Harry Melling of the “Harry Potter” films, is called Lamb. He is sacrificed, needless to say, and in ways that anticipate Pinter’s late-career examinations of political torture.

Mr. Lloyd’s production, designed with moody end-of-days shabbiness by Soutra Gilmour, is better at conveying the comedy than the terror. (Ian Rickson’s revival for the National in 2007 was more successfully double-edged.) Written in 1958, and put aside by its author for more than two decades, “The Hothouse” shows a young writer under the influence of absurdist predecessors.

Might these have included “The Goon Show”? Featuring more outright slapstick and dizzy dialogue than any of Mr. Pinter’s later plays, “The Hothouse” suggests that the master of the comedy of menace might have pursued an alternate career as a writer for Monty Python. The interest for Pinter purists lies in looking for clues of things to come, particularly in the portrayal of Woman.

She is lusciously embodied by Ms. Varma as an artificial erotic construct, who crosses and uncrosses her legs in beguiling and threatening ways that foreshadow the Sphinx wife of “The Homecoming.” ! Mr. Simmâ! €™s balletic footwork of obsequiousness and officiousness is a treat.

Mr. Beale, his generation’s most complex Hamlet, reminds us that he can deliver lunacy in more keys than one. And this “Hothouse,” like “Mission Drift,” reminds us of the theatrical energy to be minded from enervated empires.



Billy Crystal Reads for an Audience, Prompting Laughter and a Surprise

When Billy Crystal read selections from his forthcoming book on Thursday night, the audience was expecting an evening of laughs. They got them â€" but they also got something they were not expecting.

Speaking at the Cantor Auditorium at his alma mater, New York University, Mr. Crystal was delivering chapters from “Still Foolin’ Em: Where I’ve Been, Where I’m Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys?” (Macmillan). The book, which will go on sale Sept. 10, is part memoir and part standup routine committed to paper, with musings on life, complaints about getting older and jokes about his reproductive equipment that are unprintable here. The purpose of the reading, he explained beforehand, was to record some of the book before a live audience so that he could slip those chapters into the coming audiobook.

This was Mr. Crystal’s crowd, a hometown audience for a Bronx-born entertainer. He read like the comedy professional that he is, using an iPad as a teleprompter and occasionally repeatng lines he botched so that the audiobook producers could edit a clean version. The crowd, who paid $250 to get in â€" the money will finance a scholarship named for Mr. Crystal’s late mother â€" both tittered and roared with laughter.

But then Mr. Crystal got to his final selection of the evening, about buying a burial plot, and reached a few lines about hoping that he dies before his wife Janice, because “I would miss her.” And he stopped talking. He choked up. The audience went still, as if a few hundred people were holding their breath at an unscripted and very real moment in a polished performance â€" and for many of them, choking up as well, and probably thinking of their own lives and spouses.

And then, chaos. Mr. Crystal fumbled at the iPad and knocked it off its stand, barely catching it before it could skitter off the lectern and crash to the floor. And he cursed, floridly and with great force. “This is why I miss PAPER!” he shouted, regaining his comic timing, but st! ill discombobulated as the tablet refused to show him his text. “Now I know how George Bush got through the White House,” he joked.

And he got back to reading, repeating, “I would miss her” and talking through a list of things, big and small, that have made up their lives together since he first saw Janice Goldfinger in a bikini at the age of 18.

He finished, and the crowd was on its feet with a standing ovation that lasted a very long time. Then they went out into a night full of rain and resolutions to seize the day.

John Schwartz writes as @jswatz on Twitter.



Video Reviews of ‘The Heat,’ ‘White House Down’ and ‘I’m So Excited!’

In this week’s video, Times critics share their thoughts on “White House Down,” “The Heat” and “I’m So Excited!” See all of this week’s reviews here.



Video Reviews of ‘The Heat,’ ‘White House Down’ and ‘I’m So Excited!’

In this week’s video, Times critics share their thoughts on “White House Down,” “The Heat” and “I’m So Excited!” See all of this week’s reviews here.



Billy Crystal Reads for an Audience, Prompting Laughter and a Surprise

When Billy Crystal read selections from his upcoming book on Thursday night, the audience was expecting an evening of laughs. They got themâ€"but they also got something they were not expecting.

Speaking at the Cantor Auditorium at his alma mater, New York University, Mr. Crystal was delivering chapters from “Still Foolin’ Em: Where I’ve Been, Where I’m Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys?” (Macmillan). The book, which will go on sale Sept. 10, is part memoir and part standup routine committed to paper, with musings on life, complaints about getting older and jokes about his reproductive equipment that are unprintable here. The purpose of the reading, he explained beforehand, was to record some of the book before a live audience so that he could slip those chapters into the coming audiobook.

This was Mr. Crystal’s crowd, a hometown audience for a Bronx-born entertainer. He read like the comedy professional that he is, using an iPad as a TelePrompter and occasionally repeating lnes he botched so that the audiobook producers could edit a clean version. The crowd, who paid $250 to get in - the money will fund a scholarship named for Mr. Crystal’s late mother â€" both tittered and roared with laughter.

But then Mr. Crystal got to his final selection of the evening, about buying a burial plot, and reached a few lines about hoping that he dies before his wife Janice, because, “I would miss her.” And he stopped talking. He choked up. The audience went still, as if a few hundred people were holding their breath at an unscripted and very real moment in a polished performance â€"and for many of them, choking up as well, and probably thinking of their own lives and spouses.

And then, chaos. Mr. Crystal fumbled at the iPad and knocked it off its stand, barely catching it before it could skitter off the lectern and crash to the floor. And he cursed, floridly and with great force. “This is why I miss PAPER!” he shouted, regaining his comic timing, but still discom! bobulated as the tablet refused to show him his text. “Now I know how George Bush got through the White House,” he joked.

And he got back to reading, repeating, “I would miss her” and talking through a list of things, big and small, that have made up their lives together since he first saw Janice Goldfinger in a bikini at the age of 18.

He finished, and the crowd was on its feet with a standing ovation that lasted a very long time. Then they went out into a night full of rain and resolutions to seize the day.

John Schwartz writes as @jswatz on Twitter.



Channel Surfing: ‘Dexter’

Showtime’s venerable drama about a serial killer in search of his soul may be called “Dexter,” but it’s always been the Dexter & Deb show. The performances of Michael C. Hall as the diffident psychopath Dexter Morgan and Jennifer Carpenter as his ferocious, intensely vulnerable, hilariously profane adopted sister, Deb, are the yin and yang of the series. Dexter’s protectiveness of Deb helps to redeem him; she is, in Ms. Carpenter’s hands, so vivid and appealing that we like him for loving her.

The truth of this was brought home last year in the show’s seventh season, after the producers gave in to the pressures of time and common sense and had Deb finally discover Dexter’s true nature. This solved one narrative problem â€" she’s supposed to be a talented detective, after all, working in the same building as her forensics-technician bother â€" while creating others. The relationship was less interesting once the secret was reveaked, and the new Deb, who helped Dexter cover up his crimes and eventually committed murder herself, didn’t square with the committed, relentless cop we’d been watching for six years. Their bond was the explanation, of course, but it didn’t feel quite sufficient. The writers had burned the character to prolong the show.

“Dexter” begins its final 12-episode season on Sunday night, and in the first-rate premiere (written by the show runner, Scott Buck), the Deb problem has been dealt with effectively. Saying much of anything about the status of the characters will spoil some of the carefully timed revelations of Mr. Buck’s story, which takes place six months after Deb killed her boss, Captain LaGuerta. So stop reading here if you don’t want to know that she’s bottomed out, walking away from the Miami police department. Strung out on guilt and furiou! s at her brother, she’s regained the renegade vibe that was missing while she agonized through last season.

As the show heads to its much anticipated conclusion â€" will there be an ever after for Dexter, happy or not? â€" it’s become more complicated and less primordially entertaining. Dexter’s seasonlong battles with rival serial killers played by charismatic actors like John Lithgow and Jimmy Smits had a Gothic splendor along with a single-minded, pulpy energy. Now the show is focused on resolving the currents of love and guilt between the siblings, and in the early episodes of the season there’s no larger-than-life villain for Dexter to test himself against.

As compensation there’s Charlotte Rampling, bringing her authority, intelligence and dry humor to the role of a neuropsychiatrist and police consultant who knows a thing or two about Dexter. Whether she ultimately helps or hindrs him, it appears she’ll be on hand as a guide to the writers’ thoughts about his character; in a future episode she mentions that psychopaths are “an indispensable demographic” without which mankind wouldn’t have survived.

Also present is the show’s indispensable comic relief, the three stooges of the Miami-Dade Police Department: Angel (David Zayas), the softy; Quinn (Desmond Harrington), the train wreck; and Vince (C.S. Lee), the perv. “Dexter” has always leavened its extreme morbidity with gutter humor, and avoided the common cable-drama outcomes of solemnity at one end or triviality at the other. Literate but not overly self-serious, it’s the closest thing on television to a good page-turner, and whether it ends well, we’ll feel a pang when we finish it.



Build a Summer Blockbuster

Do you have what it takes to produce Hollywood’s next summer blockbuster?

In the comments field here, tell us the three vital elements necessary to propel a fake film pitch into box office nirvana.

In this week’s issue of Arts & Leisure, Brooks Barnes examines the problem of “frankenfilms,” Hollywood’s $100 million extravaganzas that are made by committee. Jordan Roberts, a veteran Hollywood script doctor, helped The Times develop a pitch for a fake summer movie, “Red, White & Blood,” where “The only thing faster than her car is his heart.” Read the pitch below and tell us here which three elements it needs to become the movie everyone is raving about. Then compare your ideas with the suggestions of real producers, writers and other movie insiders.

Think “Fast & Furious” meets Nicholas Sparks meets “Die Hard.”

A gang of gorgeous young car thieves, on the run from authorities in multiple countries, is forced to aid a terrorist organization when several of their girlfriends - and one husband â€" are kidnapped. To save their lives, the thieves agree (teeth clenched) to cooperate with a high-stakes mission: Against all odds, they are to secretly commandeer the president’s motorcade as he drives to the Capitol to deliver the State of the Union address.

Once the president (Ryan Reynolds? Mark Wahlberg?) is taken hostage in a thrilling heist, Congress waiting, they will force him to recite a very different speech â€"one that harshly denounces America to the world. A media circus commences, with cable pundits immediately suspecting a Chinese plot.

But the plan goes haywire. One of the car thieves, the only one without a kidnapped mate â€"Spike, a total babe (Angelina? Charlize?) â€" finds herself alone with the president! , guarding him. And then the truth comes out: Spike is actually Emily, the first girl the president ever loved, long ago, back in Ohio.

We cut back and forth to their earlier love affair: two young troublemakers, one magic summer. But come September they arrive at that fateful night when the future president had to make an impossible decision. Does he follow his heart? Or does he veer onto a straight-and-narrow political path? He leaves Emily sobbing in a car they stole together. (She still has it.)

Their love has been re-ignited. So close. So hot. But, in the end, they both realize that America must come first. Spike/Emily knows what she must do: She must turn on her thief-mates and save the president. No matter what. To show her important arc of selfish to selfless, she will â€"during a climactic gun battle __ take a bullet for the first lady (Gwyneth?) and single handedly bring down the terrorists.

She dies in the sobbing president’s arms as he brushes blood-soaked hair from her face.Her body is carried away, and everyone, including the president, salutes her.



June 28: 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

De Blasio

Thompson

Group event


John A. Catsimatidis
Republican

8:30 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

!

Bill de Blasio
Democrat

8:30 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

2 p.m.
Recognizes, together with the Fund for Public Advocacy, 10 students who completed their G.E.D.’s, outside City Hall.

5:15 p.m.
Greets shoppers, accompanied by members of the Lower Mnhattan Democrats, at the Whole Foods in TriBeCa.

Christine C. Quinn
Democrat

7 p.m.
Caps off a week of gay rights celebrations by attending Kabbalat Shabbat services with her latest endorser, Edie Windsor, the octagenarian who made the Supreme Court strike down the law depriving married same-sex couples of federal rights, and Roberta Kaplan, the litigator who took the case, at Beit Simchat Torah, a synagogue serving New York’s LGBT community, at its Chelsea sanctuary at 296 Ninth Avenue.

Some of Ms. Quinn’s events! may not ! be shown because the campaign declines to release her advance schedule for publication.

William C. Thompson Jr.
Democrat

8:30 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

5:20 p.m.
Attends the Orchard Beach fireworks with the Bronx borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr., and Senator Jeff Klein, in the Bronx.

9 p.m.
Attends Harlem Pride’s launch party fund-raiser, at Aloft Hotel.

Anthony D. Weiner
Democrat

8 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

7 p.m.
Attends Kabbalat Shabbat services at Beit Simchat Torah, a synagogue serving New York’s LGBT community, on a! night th! at the congregation will be hearing from Edie Windsor, at its Chelsea Sanctuary on 296 Ninth Avenue.

8:30 p.m.
Attends Harlem Pride’s launch party fund-raiser, at Aloft Hotel.

Sal F. Albanese
Democrat

8:30 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

6 p.m.
Greets voters at the Astoria Park Festival in Queens.

Adolfo Carrión Jr.
Independent

8 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.



June 28: 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

De Blasio

Thompson

Group event


John A. Catsimatidis
Republican

8:30 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

!

Bill de Blasio
Democrat

8:30 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

2 p.m.
Recognizes, together with the Fund for Public Advocacy, 10 students who completed their G.E.D.’s, outside City Hall.

5:15 p.m.
Greets shoppers, accompanied by members of the Lower Mnhattan Democrats, at the Whole Foods in TriBeCa.

Christine C. Quinn
Democrat

7 p.m.
Caps off a week of gay rights celebrations by attending Kabbalat Shabbat services with her latest endorser, Edie Windsor, the octagenarian who made the Supreme Court strike down the law depriving married same-sex couples of federal rights, and Roberta Kaplan, the litigator who took the case, at Beit Simchat Torah, a synagogue serving New York’s LGBT community, at its Chelsea sanctuary at 296 Ninth Avenue.

Some of Ms. Quinn’s events! may not ! be shown because the campaign declines to release her advance schedule for publication.

William C. Thompson Jr.
Democrat

8:30 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

5:20 p.m.
Attends the Orchard Beach fireworks with the Bronx borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr., and Senator Jeff Klein, in the Bronx.

9 p.m.
Attends Harlem Pride’s launch party fund-raiser, at Aloft Hotel.

Anthony D. Weiner
Democrat

8 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

7 p.m.
Attends Kabbalat Shabbat services at Beit Simchat Torah, a synagogue serving New York’s LGBT community, on a! night th! at the congregation will be hearing from Edie Windsor, at its Chelsea Sanctuary on 296 Ninth Avenue.

8:30 p.m.
Attends Harlem Pride’s launch party fund-raiser, at Aloft Hotel.

Sal F. Albanese
Democrat

8:30 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.

6 p.m.
Greets voters at the Astoria Park Festival in Queens.

Adolfo Carrión Jr.
Independent

8 a.m.
Participates in candidates’ forum “Revitalize, Rethink, Rebuild Neighborhoods,” at the Lighthouse International Academy Theater.



A New Home for Clemente: On a Pedestal in the Bronx

David Gonzalez/The New York Times

Like a bronze god descending from the heavens, Roberto Clemente was gently placed atop a black granite base on Monday morning. A handful of hard-hatted souls watched in wonderment as construction workers secured him. Clemente - the Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder, humanitarian and, some would say, martyr - finally graced the state park in the Bronx that bears his name.

“Clemente is home,” whispered Maritza Hernandez, the sculptor who spent much of the past two years crafting the statue. “I can’t believe it.”

In Morris Heights? Outside a playground? A slugger from Puerto Rico by way of Pittsburgh?

Believe t.

To generations of Puerto Rican New Yorkers, Clemente was the countryman who uplifted them when others shunned them. Clemente showed them, and anyone else who beheld him, pride and majesty on and off the field, breaking baseball records and racial barriers. On Sept. 30, 1972, he reached his 3,000th hit. Three months later on New Year’s Eve, he was killed in a plane crash while taking relief supplies to survivors of a devastating earthquake in Nicaragua.

This week, Clemente reached another milestone - becoming what many believe is the first Puerto Rican honored by a statue in a park in New York City.  In the Bronx, no less, the center of the known Nuyorican universe.

“This is huge,” said Felix Matos Rodriguez, a historian and president of Hostos Community College. “Clearly, not just because of what he did as a sports figure, but because of his humanitarian streak, which was exemp! lified by his death. There is also an element of Latin American solidarity with him. He is somebody everyone can embrace.”

Frances Rodriguez had recently taken over as administrator of Roberto Clemente State Park when a reporter came by in 2004 asking if the park had a Clemente statue. She thought her staff was playing a prank on their newly arrived boss. They were not. The reporter had been following the footsteps of Jesus Colón, a writer who had wondered a half-century earlier why the city had no statues honoring the accomplishments of a fellow Puerto Rican.

The encounter got Ms. Rodriguez to wondering. She consulted with the state parks commissioner and the legal staff, who encouraged her. She explored endowing a foundation to finance the statue and its upkeep.

“I had no clue,” Ms Rodriguez said with a laugh. “You look up different things and the prices - $80,000, $90,000. You wonder how are you going to get that kind of money and how many fund-raisers. You figure it’s going to be a lot of work.”

Like running a park, which she did with energy, but not much spare time. The project was put on hold - until Rafael Toro visited the park for a domino tournament two years ago. Clemente held a special place in his heart. As a child, Mr. Toro once met the man, still marveling decades later how the athlete’s hand engulfed his, and how his short lifetime of superlatives inspired him.

“I looked around and thought there was something missing here,” said Mr. Toro, who is director of public relations for Goya Foods, the tournament’s sponsor. “I saw a picture of him on a wall, but was that all? I asked Frances ‘Is there a statue?’ She told me no, there’s a lack of resources.”

The thought nagged at him every time he drove pa! st the pa! rk on his way to Goya’s New Jersey offices.

“Then I thought, why don’t we do something?” he said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

Clemente had done Goya-sponsored baseball clinics in Puerto Rico. Cristobal Colon - Clemente’s close friend and the man who drove him to the airport the night he died - had been a Goya executive in Puerto Rico.

“Also, there’s no statue of a Puerto Rican in New York City,” Mr. Toro said. “And our president is a big baseball fan.”

He met with the president, Bob Unanue, and other executives. Although Mr. Toro had a list of 10 reasons the company should underwrite the statue, it was a quick meeting.

“He had us at ‘What do you think?’” Mr. Unanue said. “And I said yes.”

On Thursday, he and others - including Clemente’s sons Luis and Roberto Jr. - gathered at the park for the statue’s unveiling. Clemente towered over them, immortalized in one of his most famous poses, doffing his batting helmet as he acknowledged the cheers for his 3000th hit. Ms. Hernandez had rendered him faithfully, from his imposing physique and piercing gaze, to the folds in his uniform and the veins in his hands.

“When I was working on it I’d say ‘Ayudame Roberto! Help me,’” she recalled. “And he did.”

For now, Clemente will live by the playground. In time, he will be moved to the park’s entrance. All who enter will be greeted and challenged by his words engraved in granite.

“Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth.”

A Puerto Rican man who made a difference even though it cost him his life rests atop that pedestal. The statue - like everything else about him - is slightly larger than life.



A Library of Discards

Dear Diary:

Our co-op, in the East 50s, is surely not the only one in the city to offer shareholders a free library. On shelves by the fitness club, people drop off books they don’t want and pick up those they do â€" and can keep them for all anyone cares.

I add to, and subtract from, the shelves regularly. So the other day, when my wife insisted there was no room in our apartment for the huge Random House dictionary we’ve been storing largely unconsulted for years â€" we have the even bulkier two-volume Oxford English Dictionary, and isn’t everything on the Internet anyway these days? â€" I carried it down to the library along with a hardcover of Richard Ford’s “Canada” that I wasn’t enjoying.

That night, coming back from walking our dog, I was entering the elevator when a neighbor and his teenage son slipped in just before the doors closed and pushed the button for the floor above ours. The father was laden with my huge dictionary and “Canada.”

I was about to ntroduce myself as the donor and wish him happy reading when he said to his son, in obvious censure, “It’s stunning what people leave there.”

I nodded and smiled. What could I say? I’m the moron who left them?

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.



New York Today: The Big Escape

It's off to camp for Fresh Air Fund kids and many others this weekend.Librado Romero/The New York Times It’s off to camp for Fresh Air Fund kids and many others this weekend.

With school out, the exodus from the city begins.

On Friday morning, the Fresh Air Fund is putting hundreds children on buses at the Port Authority, headed for host families in greener pastures as far off as West Virginia. Some are leaving home for the first time. Others are reuniting with hosts from summers past. About 4,000 city children will leave town through the Fresh Air Fund this summer.

Here’s what you need to know to start your Friday â€" and the intermittently stormy weekend ahead.

WEATHER â€" Clouds, then rain, then sun, then clouds, then rain, then sun.Repeat through the weekend, with rain predominating by Sunday and highs in the low 80s. The June rainfall total now stands at 10.1 inches, only 0.17 inches shy of the record for wettest June in New York City. It will likely fall.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC â€"

- Route 95 northbound is closed for a stretch in Greenwich, Conn. Otherwise not bad so far, 1010 WINS reports. Alternate-side parking is in effect.

- Subways are normal. Click for the latest status.

COMING UP TODAY

- Gay pride weekend kicks off with a rally on Pier 26 in TriBeCa at 7 p.m.

- Gay veterans will ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

- Fireworks on the boardwalk at Orchard Beach in the Bronx just! after sunset.

- A show by pop-art icon Red Grooms opens at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan.

- The New York Asian Film Festival gets under way at Lincoln Center with the world premiere of the Hong Kong film “Tales From the Dark Part 1.”

- The Bicycle Film Festival “a celebration of bicycles through film, art, and music,” begins its 13th year of screenings at Anthology Film Archives. Valet bicycle parking is provided.

- For more Friday events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

AND FINALLY…

- After 42 years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is getting ri of its bendy metal admissions tags. They have become too expensive. On the bright side, starting Monday, the Met will be open seven days a week. [New York Times]

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!