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The Week in Pictures for Sept. 20

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include a fire on the Jersey Shore, prayers at the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Queens, and vote counting in Brooklyn.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in the Sunday newspaper, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Eleanor Randolph, Kate Taylor, Russ Buettner and Thomas Kaplan. Also, Bill de Blasio, the Democratic mayoral candidate, and Diane Ravitch, an education historian. 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.



Williamsburg Waterfront, 1:25 P.M.

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times


Pretty but Unwelcome

Dave Taft

Thick, twining and handsome, Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculata) has been introduced into countless gardens since the mid-19th century. In the wet dark weather of fall, the vine covers itself with orange and yellow berries. Some sources claim it is these strongly contrasting berries from which bittersweet derives its name. Whatever the source, every autumn I find myself lamenting that “bittersweet” more perfectly describes the ecological havoc that this beautiful nonnative plant wreaks upon habitats so far from its home in China, Japan and Korea.

You have to admire a plant that can make itself at home in so many places, through so many means, under so many conditions. Bittersweet is comfortable gracing the fancy, fall-inspired table settings and centerpieces of florists and caterers; it is the perfect complement to pumpkins, autumn leaves, gourds and grapes. It is equally at home in our local woodlands. I would be hard-pressed to find a grassy verge, a forest, a fence line or a meadow in any of New York City’s five boroughs without it.

Oriental bittersweet does its worst in a blaze of autumn glory.

The mechanism is fairly simple. Bittersweet is spread by the many birds that eat its berries and distribute them wherever they perch. The thick, leafy vines rapidly overtake trees, shrubs, even grasses, outcompeting and eventually smothering them. Supporting plants break under the weight or die from excessive shading. During Hurricane Sandy, woodlands with large amounts of bittersweet seemed to suffer more downed trees, as the vines produced additional drag during the storm’s intense winds. Especially in coastal areas where sandy soils cause trees to grow shallow surface roots, the vines can topple trees.

Another rather specific threat posed by the explosion of Oriental bittersweet is its gradual displacement of Celastrus scandens, our closely related native bittersweet. With flowers and berries growing only at the tips of its new growths (Oriental bittersweet grows berries from leaf axils along the length of its stems), American bittersweet has become quite rare. With similar flowering periods and overlapping habitats, Oriental bittersweet outcompetes its American counterpart and, more insidiously, often hybridizes with it. The offspring are often intergrades between the two species, displaying aspects of each parent.

In a few short weeks, the woods will be alive with bittersweet’s yellow and orange berries. Gathering the vines’ long, twisted strands for holiday wreaths has become a useful and popular public program in parks and other sites plagued by masses of the plant. The best time for these activities is now, just before the orange centers of the berries are exposed. But be sure you are actually making a wreath from the nonnative plant, because American bittersweet has become a threatened plant in our area. Perhaps more important, be sure to remove and destroy the berries on your wreath before disposing of it, lest you spread more of this beautiful problem to places not yet graced by its bittersweet beauty.



Emmys Watch: Robert Carlock on ’30 Rock’

Say “30 Rock” and odds are that most viewers think about Tina Fey. But where would she be without Robert Carlock â€" friend, writer, show runner and self-described set-up man?

Call them the Face and the Force â€" she, the public persona; he, the guy who gets things done behind the scenes. After spending four years in the late ‘90s with Ms. Fey in the writers’ room of “Saturday Night Live,” Mr. Carlock headed to California to fine-tune his storytelling technique on “Friends” and its floundering Matt LeBlanc spin-off, “Joey,” easing into the production side of things as well.

But then Ms. Fey came calling, and despite a new house and a 9-month-old baby, the offer to work on a show starring her and Alec Baldwin was too good to ignore. So back he headed to New York, where eight seasons later the rest is sitcom history, including another Emmy nomination for comedy series writing for Mr. Carlock.

In a recent phone interview, he reminisced about the old times (like competing against the Aaron Sorkin drama “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”), speculated on the new ones and admitted there’s a part of him that wants to commit a burglary. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q.

You’ve won three Emmys on “30 Rock” already, for outstanding comedy series. Does getting nominated ever get old?

A.

No, because you can just see when it’s going to end. It’s nice to have someone love us. We need it so badly. That’s the sad part.

Q.

Tina has been the show’s public face. Was it hard being behind the scenes?

A.

Oh, no. I know no one wants to look at me. I put myself in the show this year. I played a German lawyer in Alec’s office. I just figured I had to, at some point, give myself a line. And then I watch it, and we’re editing it, and I’m like, “What am I doing with my head there?” I just didn’t know how to move my body when the camera is pointed at me. So I know where my place is.

Q.

Was that your first acting work?

A.

When I was on “SNL” at the beginning of my career, on the monologues and that kind of thing, they used the writers as people in the audience asking questions. So I would do that, more just to face that fear. I was sitting next to Tina, who was a writer at the time, before she decided to become famous, and we both had lines and Tina messed hers up. So I’ve always got that over her.

Q.

Is that how you met?

A.

I was producing “Weekend Update” when she did it with Jimmy [Fallon], and that was where we really worked together. Within “SNL” there were these little worlds, and our worlds didn’t intersect that much as writers. But when I was doing “Update,” I think we very greatly came to appreciate each other’s work ethic and sensibility and worldview, and just had a good time together but also got a lot done together. I took off to Los Angeles to get more storytelling experience on different shows and was very glad to be dragged back to New York.

Q.

So Tina requested you?

A.

Tina called up and said, “Please do this.” And my wife and I said, “Well, for Tina and Lorne [Michaels] and Alec [Baldwin], what choice is there?” It was a nice step up. I was going to run a show. And I can’t imagine what conversations went on behind the scenes. You know, “This guy’s a supervising producer on a show that was a giant disaster for us, and he’s never run a show before?” Tina and Lorne must have gone to bat for me, but I would rather not hear about the sausage-making in that particular instance. And look, we figured it would be great, but just looking at the odds, we thought we’d be back [in Los Angeles] in a couple of months, and that was over seven years ago. Even though we were stacked with Alec and Tina, “Studio 60” was out there, and that was going to be the one that stayed on TV, and obviously Aaron Sorkin is a great writer and we weren’t really on anyone’s radar.

Q.

Why did you choose to submit “Hogcock,” the first half of the series finale, which you wrote with Jack Burditt, for Emmy consideration? Ms. Fey and Tracey Wigfield were nominated for the second half.

A.

To make people say “hogcock” a lot. [Laughs] Really, the only reason. Those two last episodes â€" the two half-hours that really were an hour episode â€"our intention was to submit it as an hour and have all of our names on it. But some union nonsense kept us from doing that. And if we are lucky enough to win â€" well, I can’t imagine that Jack Burditt and I would win because it was all the set-up and Tina got write all the payoff. That’s my job, setting up Tina. And I’m happy to do that.

Q.

Tina has already won for outstanding comedy writing, right?

A.

She has. I’ve been nominated four times on this show and I’ve never won.

Q.

So is there a part of you that wants to . . . ?

A.

Yeah, there’s a part of me that wants to sneak into her apartment, just take all of her awards, especially her SAG awards. It would be lovely to win. I take pride in having run the writers’ room and it’s like a World War II bomber, with all the crosses for the German planes you’ve shot down. I like to take credit for all these shoot-downs. I live in this fantasy world where I do all of it. But I think to gird myself against disappointment is probably in my interest.

Q.

What are some favorite episodes?

A.

There was one that Matt Hubbard won an Emmy for where Jack and Liz end up going back to Liz’s high school reunion, it was one of those episodes where you say, “Boy, this feels familiar, people going back to their high school reunion,” and you try to puzzle through. “O.K., what’s our version of doing it, and how to you get Jack to agree to go?” You know, perversely sweet was my favorite place for the show to hit, when there’d be these sweet moments for the characters, our version of emotion, I guess, that were a little off. Like Liz running to go see Floyd at the airport and getting stopped because she has a special sandwich that has a sauce and so she has to choose between the man and the sandwich and realizes she can have it all, and eats the sandwich in real time â€" Tina just devouring the sandwich then running through. And I love the finale. One of my favorite moments was when we had Buzz Aldrin yelling at the moon with Liz Lemon. To me that’s just Buzz Aldrin and Tina Fey yelling atthe moon, and I wrote the words. I can just stop there.

Q.

What’s next?

A.

We’re working with two of our former writers. We sold a show to Fox that Matt Hubbard was pitching, and one to NBC from Colleen McGuinness, a little bit based on her life, about a Long Island girl who stops drinking. And Tina and I are keeping our thing under wraps for now while we work on it.

Q.

So, any desire to make like Aaron Sorkin and write a drama?

A.

Yeah but I haven’t tried. Like him, we start with the story, with the characters. But at the end of the day you can cover up some blemishes with a well-placed joke.



Morgan Museum to Make Its Entire Collection of Drawings Available Online

The Morgan Library and Museum announced Friday that it planned to digitize its entire drawings collection, one of the most important in the world, containing works from the 14th through the 21st centuries by masters like Michelangelo, Leonardo, Dürer, Rembrandt and Cézanne.

The project, expected to be completed by October 2014, will eventually yield more than 10,000 images that will be available free of charge on the Morgan’s Web site, in two formats: one for general viewers and another with enhanced resolution for scholarly study. The digital archive will even contain as many as 2,000 versos - the reverse sides of drawings, with sketches, inscriptions and historical information that is rarely seen in public displays.

William M. Griswold, the museum’s director, said that despite the drawings collection’s renown, “only a small part of our holdings have been available in digital form.” The project “is critical to our institutional goal of promoting drawings scholarship and reaching out to an ever larger audience,” he said. The museum hopes to expand digitization in the coming years to include its prints collection and artists’ sketchbooks.



Life and Death in New Orleans: Sheri Fink Talks About ‘Five Days at Memorial’

One of the most compelling stories to emerge from the devastation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina involved the death of several patients at the city’s Memorial Medical Center, which had lost power during the storm. Authorities investigated whether some of those patients, who were found to have elevated levels of morphine, had been euthanized by desperate and exhausted doctors. Sheri Fink won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the events at Memorial in a 2009 joint assignment for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine. In “Five Days at Memorial,” Ms. Fink greatly expands the story, reconstructing the crisis at the hospital and the complicated legal and ethical questions that followed in its wake. In his review for The Times, Jason Berry called the book “social reporting of the first rank.” In a recent e-mail interview, s. Fink discussed the chaos at Memorial, how she pieced her story together, whether we’re better prepared for the next disaster and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

When did you know you wanted to write this story on this scale?

A.

When we were finishing the magazine article, I kept finding out new facts and trying to fit them into the story because they seemed essential, and one of my editors, Ilena Silverman at The New York Times Magazine, started saying, “Save it for the book. Save it for the book.” She said there was already enough material for two volumes.

Q.

You write that Memorial doctors “had established an exception to the protocol of prioritizing the sickest patients,” and patients “in fairly good health who could sit up or walk” were evacuated first. In reading, I never understood the logic of this. Why did they do that?

A.

There was an element of trying to match needs with resources, in that they decided early on to get sicker patients out by medevac helicopters and send out healthier ones, who could sit up, on high water trucks or boats. At some point helicopters came less often than boats. But from the moment it looked like the hospital would need to be evacuated, patients with Do Not Rescuscitate orders, assumed to be chronically ill or closer to the ends of their lives, were assigned to go last â€" as one doctor described it, he saw them as having “the least to lose” compared with other patients. These decision-makers were thinking in a utilitarian mode about maximizing the number of relatively healthy lives they could save, although there is little if any research to suggest these types of triage decisions improve overall survival.

Q.

It’s true that “thousands of people in the city needed help,” but why weren’t air resources devoted first to patients in hospitals rather than, say, healthy people stranded in water?

A.

That would be assuming that there was an organized system of prioritizing rescues, but there really wasn’t. So many people needed help and communications were so problematic that Coast Guard air crews, for example, sometimes simply rescued them as they saw them. Healthy people stranded on rooftops in hot weather with no access to water and food are arguably in an equally precarious situation as patients at a well-stocked but powerless hospital. In fact, in the earliest hours of the disaster, medical air ambulance companies did attempt to prioritize rescuing the very sickest patients from hospitals. Incredibly, Coast Guard pilots were waved away from Memorial the night after the floodwaters rose. Some people in charge at the hospital thought it was too dangerous to carry patients up to the helipad in the dark, or judged some patients too sick to be saved given the circumstances, or were worried about where the patients would be taken.

Q.

You weren’t at Memorial during and after Katrina, but you recreate those days in an almost minute-by-minute way. What mixture of original reporting and researching other sources allowed you to do that?

A.

I spoke with hundreds of people, including those who were at the hospital, law enforcement officials, families of the dead, and experts. I collected materials created during the disaster and subsequent investigation â€" photographs, videotapes, e-mails, notes, diaries and interview transcripts. Some fantastic news stories, reports and books by others were also helpful, as were products like weather reports, architectural floor plans, and electrical diagrams of the hospital, and of course I visited the sites where the events took place.

Q.

Did people involved resist reliving this in order to help you piece things together?

A.

Some people were eager to talk about their experiences â€" including family members of those who died as well as patients who survived and some staff members. However certain doctors and nurses were initially unwilling to talk about their ordeal. Ironically there probably never would have been a book if that weren’t the case. My original idea was to interview Anna Pou, the doctor who had then recently been arrested on accusations of second-degree murder, and write an article about her â€" but she wasn’t willing to speak openly about the events, understandably, on the advice of her lawyer.

Sheri FinkJen Dessinger Sheri Fink
Q.

Which part of the book was hardest to write, either for technical or emotional reasons?

A.

Chapter seven, I think, which is the first detailed recounting of the medical workers’ decision to inject what investigators later believed were about twenty patients with morphine and Versed, a fast-acting sedative, and the deaths of those patients. I had so much information from so many sources, and it required deciding whose points of view to depict at what points in the book. It was also very complex in terms of who was involved and what each of their intentions might have been.

Q.

Was there one source or discovery that surprised you and provided a crucial piece of help?

A.

At a time when some of the medical and nursing professionals were observing a code of silence about what had happened at Memorial or suggesting that the alleged acts never happened, several were brave and honest enough to say that they had ordered or injected the drugs found in some of the patients who died. Two doctors told me that they had intentionally hastened the deaths of their patients and explained why they did that. It was shocking, even as evidence had pointed that way. Their explanations allow the reader to understand how that could have occurred. We can’t learn from what happened until we know what happened.

Q.

Once the levees failed, with so many patients left in the city, how much of the emergency at Memorial do you think was preventable?

A.

A coordinated and well-rehearsed rescue effort on the part of government agencies, private transportation companies, and hospital owners might have brought patients to safety more quickly. The hospital could have invested more in protecting its backup power system from flooding and providing for running water in the event of a municipal outage, both of which its current owners are now putting into place. It might have helped to have a flexible and transparent plan to guide the distribution of potentially life-saving resources, like evacuation helicopter slots, informed in advance by the wider community’s values, not just those of exhausted, front-line professionals making these decisions on the fly. And finally disaster management training, improved communications and leadership structures within the hospital, and the enforcement of staff sleep schedules might have enabled healthcare workers and administrators to make different decisions during the crisis.

Q.

In an epilogue, you report on conditions during Hurricane Sandy, when it seems like hospitals were still unprepared for what to do in the face of a complete loss of electrical power. Why haven’t hospitals addressed these issues? Are there any formal efforts under way industrywide to do so?

A.

Hospitals haven’t addressed these issues because they’re expensive to address and because nobody has made them do it. For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has still not issued a proposed rule on emergency preparedness, which was proposed years ago “in response to concern about the ability of healthcare providers across the United States to plan for and respond to emergencies.” The long-belated rule, inspired in part by the failures of preparedness after Hurricane Katrina, would make it a requirement for health care facilities, including hospitals, to meet certain preparedness standards in order to participate in Medicare and Medicaid. The “systemic gaps” in healthcare preparedness cited by the agency remained unfilled to this day, more than eight years after Katrina.

Q.

The epigraphs to each of the book’s sections are all from the novel “Blindness” by Jose Saramago. Can you tell me why?

A.

I read Saramago’s novel when I was writing “Five Days at Memorial,” and I appreciated the metaphor of blindness for what often happens in a disaster, which is that we lose the ability to see the larger context of the events, something disaster nerds call “situational awareness.” And yet it is so important to remember that the level of resources can change, that there is a tomorrow after a disaster and the choices we make at the most critical moments have the potential to affect us and those around us for a lifetime. In “Blindness,” Saramago also imagines both the inhumanity and humanity individuals might exhibit in the crucible of a disaster â€" the horrible things people do when they are fearful, when resources appear to be scarce, and also the heroism that emerges.

Q.

Some of what you wrote near the end of the book led me to believe that you felt Anna Pou should not have gone completely unpunished for her actions during the emergency. Is that accurate?

A.

That is a question for the justice system and those affected by her actions to answer, not me. Certainly some people in the book expressed the opinion that she should have spent time in jail or lost her medical license, and others in the book supported Dr. Pou and saw her as a hero or at least someone who tried hard to help others at a very difficult time and who was punished by the very fact of being arrested and sued by patients’ families (a grand jury refused to indict her on criminal charges, and all of the civil cases against her, which included other parties, have since been settled).

What I think you’re picking up on toward the end of the book is that Dr. Pou became a campaigner for changing the standards of medical care during disasters and for laws that would immunize doctors and nurses against civil lawsuits for their work during disasters. She has lectured to large groups of doctors on “disaster ethics” and triage, showing her mug shot on screen and calling for protections against criminalizing medical judgment, but leaving out why she was arrested, or any mention that patients at Memorial died after healthcare workers injected them with powerful drugs, or what her involvement was with that. How can we be asked to learn lessons, make policy choices, and craft new laws based on what she has referred to as the personal tragedy of her arrest without the full and true story of what happened?



Book Review Podcast: Professor in Chief

Andreas Gefe

In The New York Times Book Review, Kevin Baker reviews A. Scott Berg’s new biography of Woodrow Wilson. Mr. Baker writes:

No American president was more improbable than Thomas Woodrow Wilson. None better embodied how we like to think of ourselves in the greater world.

A Princeton University president and political economy professor given to making high-minded speeches and advocating a parliamentary system, Wilson held no public office until he was 54 years old. Recruited to run for governor of New Jersey in 1910 by a Democratic machine boss who thought he would be easily controlled, the prof schooled the pro in practical politics, passing a reform agenda that curbed the power of parties and corporations alike. “After dealing with college politicians,” he gibed, “I find that the men with whom I am dealing with now seem like amateurs.”

On this week’s podcast, Mr. Berg discusses “Wilson”; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Carla Kaplan talks about “Miss Anne in Harlem”; Sasha Abramsky on “The American Way of Poverty”; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.



Book Review Podcast: Professor in Chief

Andreas Gefe

In The New York Times Book Review, Kevin Baker reviews A. Scott Berg’s new biography of Woodrow Wilson. Mr. Baker writes:

No American president was more improbable than Thomas Woodrow Wilson. None better embodied how we like to think of ourselves in the greater world.

A Princeton University president and political economy professor given to making high-minded speeches and advocating a parliamentary system, Wilson held no public office until he was 54 years old. Recruited to run for governor of New Jersey in 1910 by a Democratic machine boss who thought he would be easily controlled, the prof schooled the pro in practical politics, passing a reform agenda that curbed the power of parties and corporations alike. “After dealing with college politicians,” he gibed, “I find that the men with whom I am dealing with now seem like amateurs.”

On this week’s podcast, Mr. Berg discusses “Wilson”; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Carla Kaplan talks about “Miss Anne in Harlem”; Sasha Abramsky on “The American Way of Poverty”; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.



Why ‘Million Second Quiz’ Didn’t Work: A Multiple-Choice Answer

Andrew Kravis, a 25-year-old law school graduate from Michigan, won $2.6 million as the clock finally ran down on NBC’s 10-night game show “The Million Second Quiz” on Thursday. That’s a nice number for him â€" NBC claimed it was the largest payout in game-show history.

But the numbers weren’t so hot for the network. After opening on Sept. 9 with 6.5 million viewers â€" not bad for a summer fill-in, not good for a heavily promoted “event” billed as a landmark in the convergence of broadcast, online and social media â€" the show lost viewers nightly, dropping to 3 million by the end of the week. It rebounded slightly this week, reaching 5.4 million for the two-hour finale. But it definitely wasn’t the resounding conversation-starter NBC was looking for heading into the fall season, unless you mean the conversation about why the show didn’t work.

In the “Million Second Quiz” spirit, here are four thoughts about the show’s problems. Feel free to choose (E) All of the above.

A) Confusing: This has been the buzzword throughout the run of the show, which met the need for a steady stream of new contestants in various ways: you could come to Manhattan and camp out at a pop-up game-show shantytown, waiting in line for a chance to be a “challenger,” or you could play the online version of the game to qualify for a spot as a “line jumper” flown in from home. This was not actually that confusing if all you wanted to do was watch the quizzes â€" as a viewer, you didn’t need to know where the players came from. But if you wanted to understand the entire mechanism or take a shot at getting on the show from home, the available information, particularly on the show’s baffling Web site, was sketchy at best.

B) Dumb: Not every show should be “Jeopardy!,” but really, the name of Kim Kardashian’s cat? The person who officiated at Patrick Stewart’s wedding? Trivia at that level of banality is no fun to watch. To be fair, the championship match included questions about Thomas Jefferson and the Civil War â€" along with the cost of Super Bowl tickets and what the comic-strip character Cathy did in her last strip.

C) Nothing New: One of the features NBC aggressively promoted as a new digital-age wrinkle was an app that allowed viewers to play along with the game during the live broadcast, comparing their scores to those of the actual players. But we’ve been doing that for as long as there have television game shows â€" if you want to get us on our phones and tablets during your broadcast, you need to offer more than that. Which leads to …

D) NOT REALLY “CONVERGENT”: The one authentic way for the public to engage with “Million Second Quiz” was resolutely old school: coming to Times Square and standing on the sidewalk. Beyond that, despite all the numbers NBC can throw at us â€" 1.5 million home players engaging in 28 million games â€" there was no sense of being a part of anything besides a big bump in traffic for NBC’s Web site. Beating a succession of random foes on your laptop or phone may have been satisfying, but it gave you an infinitesimal chance (if any chance at all) of appearing on the show. More than 400,000 players reached the qualifying score to be a line jumper. All you were really playing for was a spot on an online leaderboard, and the people there â€" like Bruce P. of Houston, the overall leader with 1,081,960 points â€" must have done nothing but play “Million Second Quiz” for two weeks.

It doesn’t seem as if it would be that hard at this point to design a truly convergent game show: one in which anyone and everyone who wants to could play against each other live, a million-player quiz rather than a million-second quiz. You would have to rethink the format â€" maybe Ryan Seacrest stands in front of a huge bank of monitors, and maybe players have to go to designated studios around the country rather than play from their living rooms. But we should be able to do it. We have the technology, right?



Emmys Watch: Michelle MacLaren, on Directing ‘Breaking Bad’

The director Michelle MacLaren may not be a household name, but her work has in fact been seen in a many a home: her credits include episodes from popular television dramas like “Game of Thrones,” “The Walking Dead” and “NCIS.”

And then there’s AMC’s “Breaking Bad”: in 11 episodes over five seasons, Ms. MacLaren has helped create and capture some of the most intense moments in that frequently tense series. Her credits include the standout episodes “4 Days Out” in Season 2, “One Minute” from Season 3 and last year’s midseason finale, “Gliding Over All,” which has earned her an Emmy nomination for drama series directing.

In a recent phone interview, Ms. MacLaren discussed the process of making a montage, the logistics of filming a huge pile of (fake) money and the cast of “Breaking Bad.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

Where are you right now?

A.

I am sitting in Belfast, Northern Ireland, getting ready to go out on a night shoot for “Game of Thrones.”

Q.

How much longer will you be there?

A.

Until the end of October, but I am coming home for the weekend of the Emmys.

Q.

Did you have to specifically request that off?

A.

I did. [Laughs] But they were very nice and very accommodating, which is really sweet.

Q.

You’ve directed some key episodes of “Breaking Bad.” Do you get your pick the episodes you want to direct?

A.

I don’t. Not at all. Because I’m an executive producer of the show, I’m involved in setting the schedule, but there’s a lot of different things that go into it, so we don’t know which episode is going to have what for the writers or the directors. Really it’s all about where the story falls. My feeling is, from when I started on “Breaking Bad,” there’s no reason to pick and choose because every episode is great. Whatever episode you get, you’re lucky to do it.

Q.

In “Gliding Over All” there was not one but two complicated montages, can you talk about the process of shooting each one?

A.

A montage is incredibly challenging. When I can, I’d like to know what the music is going to be ahead of time because that will affect the beat, the pace of the montage. In the case of the meth-making montage with “Crystal Blue Persuasion” [by Tommy James & the Shondells] of course we knew the song ahead of time and worked out every single one of those beats and then talked about them with the writer, Moira Walley-Beckett, and Moira wrote them in the script. I spent hours and hours breaking this down, and I think I had over 100 shots in that montage at first pass. I think we got it down to 79 or something crazy like that.

The prison montage was also challenging for us because we had one day to shoot in this prison and we had one prison location. We needed to make it look like three different prisons. Our wonderful production designer Mark Freeborn helped in taking different sections of this jail that we made look like prisons and then wardrobe had three different prison uniforms. Designing the montage and what the various murders were going to be, we looked at the various ways we could kill people and we did a lot of research. A few members of the crew came up and gave me some research from people that they knew. It was kinda sad but you can get a lot of that kind of research on the Internet. We wanted to make it as authentic as possible.

Q.

What were the logistics of setting up the scene with the huge pallets of money in the storage locker? It’s just such an unreal amount of cash.

A.

That is actually a very expensive scene. It’s fake money. You’re not allowed to shoot real money. There’s a prop house in Los Angeles that makes it. If you look closely, it says “motion picture money” on it. It’s quite accurate and it’s illegal to copy their money even though it is fake. Our prop department rented all of their money. Our construction department built a block underneath that, and we put the fake money all around the block and put more stacks of on top. It was really complicated and incredibly expensive. Every single dollar had to be accounted for. For weeks, you would walk to our production office and you would see these rooms of prop guys counting the money because there was so much of it.

Q.

Can you talk little bit about what it is like to work with this group of actors?

A.

They are wonderful collaborators, extremely talented and very well prepared. They’re smart. They’re funny. Sometimes I forget to say cut because I am so lost in the performance



Emmys Watch: Michelle MacLaren, on Directing ‘Breaking Bad’

The director Michelle MacLaren may not be a household name, but her work has in fact been seen in a many a home: her credits include episodes from popular television dramas like “Game of Thrones,” “The Walking Dead” and “NCIS.”

And then there’s AMC’s “Breaking Bad”: in 11 episodes over five seasons, Ms. MacLaren has helped create and capture some of the most intense moments in that frequently tense series. Her credits include the standout episodes “4 Days Out” in Season 2, “One Minute” from Season 3 and last year’s midseason finale, “Gliding Over All,” which has earned her an Emmy nomination for drama series directing.

In a recent phone interview, Ms. MacLaren discussed the process of making a montage, the logistics of filming a huge pile of (fake) money and the cast of “Breaking Bad.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

Where are you right now?

A.

I am sitting in Belfast, Northern Ireland, getting ready to go out on a night shoot for “Game of Thrones.”

Q.

How much longer will you be there?

A.

Until the end of October, but I am coming home for the weekend of the Emmys.

Q.

Did you have to specifically request that off?

A.

I did. [Laughs] But they were very nice and very accommodating, which is really sweet.

Q.

You’ve directed some key episodes of “Breaking Bad.” Do you get your pick the episodes you want to direct?

A.

I don’t. Not at all. Because I’m an executive producer of the show, I’m involved in setting the schedule, but there’s a lot of different things that go into it, so we don’t know which episode is going to have what for the writers or the directors. Really it’s all about where the story falls. My feeling is, from when I started on “Breaking Bad,” there’s no reason to pick and choose because every episode is great. Whatever episode you get, you’re lucky to do it.

Q.

In “Gliding Over All” there was not one but two complicated montages, can you talk about the process of shooting each one?

A.

A montage is incredibly challenging. When I can, I’d like to know what the music is going to be ahead of time because that will affect the beat, the pace of the montage. In the case of the meth-making montage with “Crystal Blue Persuasion” [by Tommy James & the Shondells] of course we knew the song ahead of time and worked out every single one of those beats and then talked about them with the writer, Moira Walley-Beckett, and Moira wrote them in the script. I spent hours and hours breaking this down, and I think I had over 100 shots in that montage at first pass. I think we got it down to 79 or something crazy like that.

The prison montage was also challenging for us because we had one day to shoot in this prison and we had one prison location. We needed to make it look like three different prisons. Our wonderful production designer Mark Freeborn helped in taking different sections of this jail that we made look like prisons and then wardrobe had three different prison uniforms. Designing the montage and what the various murders were going to be, we looked at the various ways we could kill people and we did a lot of research. A few members of the crew came up and gave me some research from people that they knew. It was kinda sad but you can get a lot of that kind of research on the Internet. We wanted to make it as authentic as possible.

Q.

What were the logistics of setting up the scene with the huge pallets of money in the storage locker? It’s just such an unreal amount of cash.

A.

That is actually a very expensive scene. It’s fake money. You’re not allowed to shoot real money. There’s a prop house in Los Angeles that makes it. If you look closely, it says “motion picture money” on it. It’s quite accurate and it’s illegal to copy their money even though it is fake. Our prop department rented all of their money. Our construction department built a block underneath that, and we put the fake money all around the block and put more stacks of on top. It was really complicated and incredibly expensive. Every single dollar had to be accounted for. For weeks, you would walk to our production office and you would see these rooms of prop guys counting the money because there was so much of it.

Q.

Can you talk little bit about what it is like to work with this group of actors?

A.

They are wonderful collaborators, extremely talented and very well prepared. They’re smart. They’re funny. Sometimes I forget to say cut because I am so lost in the performance



Big Ticket | A Charming Corner for $12.3 Million

A duplex at 125 East 72nd Street was on the market for just three weeks.Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times A duplex at 125 East 72nd Street was on the market for just three weeks.

A graciously proportioned prewar duplex at 125 East 72nd Street, a corner combination situated to capture open city views to the north and east, ignited an uptown bidding war and sold for $12,315,000, the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

The 4,600-square-foot unit, No. 10/11B, was listed for $12 million, and it was on the market just three weeks before the bids exceeded the asking price.

The monthly maintenance charges are a relatively modest $7,601, because the 15-story brick building, built in 1917 and converted to co-ops in 1965, derives income from assorted retail outlets at its base.

The two levels of the 14-room apartment, located between Park and Lexington Avenues, are connected by a sweeping staircase with a hand-forged balustrade. The apartment has five bedrooms, four bathrooms and a powder room, with the reception and entertaining rooms arranged on the lower level. The double-size corner living room has a working fireplace; there is a paneled library, a formal dining room, a renovated chef’s kitchen and herringbone wood floors. The lower floor also contains a separate guest suite. There are Venetian plaster walls throughout much of the residence.

Upstairs, the home has four bedrooms, two of which share a bath, and an additional den/media room. The sequestered master wing has a bedroom with a fireplace and built-in desk, ample closets, a dressing room and an elegant master bath.

The sellers, Alexandre Chemla, the founder and president of Altour, and his wife, Lori, a philanthropist and arts patron, were represented by Joshua Wesoky of Sotheby’s International Realty. The duplex quickly found suitors, Mr. Wesoky said, because “it has beautiful light and views and a special floor plan that makes it feel like a home and is ideal for a family. Also, it has been completely renovated and beautifully maintained over the years and was in immaculate condition.”

The buyers are Munib Islam, a partner at Daniel Loeb’s hedge fund, Third Point, and his wife, Kamila. Cathy Franklin of Brown Harris Stevens represented the buyers and was also the listing agent for a three-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath simplex there, No. 10D, recently bought by Dylan Lauren, the daughter of the designer Ralph Lauren and owner of a candy store chain that bears her name, and her husband, Paul Arrouet. That unit sold for its asking price, $8.85 million.

Ten blocks south, a fully renovated Georgian-style limestone town house that spent three years on the market and saw its asking price dip to $13.5 million from $15 million during several shuffles of listing brokers, finally found a buyer. And, bam! The relieved seller, the television chef/brand Emeril Lagasse, can finally pursue his plan to downsize. But Mr. Lagasse, who four years ago paid $11.5 million for the 19-foot-wide, 6,900-square-foot residence at 158 East 61st Street, had to settle for that same sale amount on this go-round.

Although Serena Boardman of Sotheby’s was the most recent broker to list the home for sale, she declined, through a brokerage spokesman, to confirm her participation in the transaction. Mr. Lagasse used a limited liability company, Essagal Land, to thinly disguise his identity in public records; the buyer is a limited liability company, 158 Lex, with an address in Monroe Township, N.J.

The six-story town house, notable for a lipstick-red front door reminiscent of the beautician Elizabeth Arden’s Fifth Avenue flagship, has five bedrooms, six-and-a-half baths and four fireplaces. On the parlor floor, the ceilings soar to 14 feet, and beyond the entrance gallery there is a grand library, formal dining room, Smallbone of Devizes kitchen with a 150-bottle wine cave, a Carrara marble center island and marble floors with radiant heat.

The 17-by-25-foot living room has herringbone floors, an antique English fireplace and glass doors to a south terrace that overlooks the European-style back garden. The home, which has an elevator, has 1,000 square feet of outdoor space on various levels, with a solarium, media room, service kitchen and terrace on the top floor. The entire third floor is devoted to the lavish master suite; Mr. Lagasse apparently lived the same way he cooks, large.

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



An Old-Fashioned Elevator Man

Dear Diary:

No elevators were available at Downtown Brooklyn’s 32 Court Street high-rise office building, and by the time I arrived a number of people were already assembled in the lobby. Perhaps some cars were out of service for maintenance. Whatever the case, a group of us were escorted into the service elevator. No buttons to press; instead, a real live elevator operator.

“Watch your step getting in. Floors, please.”

We obliged.

During our short ride, the few of us who were old enough reminisced how all elevators once had a person take you up and down.

“Remember A & S?” asked one woman. Yes, and the spiffy uniform worn by the operator. And how they announced the floors, describing what was on each one - ladies’ shoes, fine china, men’s jewelry.

Our elevator operator deftly handled the controls, a set of joysticks, with the fingers of his left hand, aligning the cab dead-on level at each landing. With his gloved right, he pulled open the folding gate, followed by the door, allowing us to exit.

“Fourth floor. Watch your step getting off.”

He reversed the process to close the door, then the gate, before continuing our journey. Back to the joystick, his eyes fixed on the floor indicator lights.

Conversations and memories continued.

“Seventh floor. Watch your step getting off.”

My ride was coming to an end.

“Ninth floor. Watch your step getting off. And have a nice day.”

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.

Video Reviews of ‘Rush,’ ‘Prisoners’ and ‘Enough Said’

In this week’s video, Times critics offer their thoughts on the racing drama “Rush,” the child abduction drama “Prisoners” and the romantic comedy “Enough Said.” See all of this week’s reviews here.



Emmy Watch: Jimmy Kimmel on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’

Jimmy Kimmel, center, on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with, from left, Robin Williams, Matt Damon and Andy Garcia.Randy Holmes/ABC Jimmy Kimmel, center, on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with, from left, Robin Williams, Matt Damon and Andy Garcia.

This interview may contain spoilers for people still catching up on YouTube hoaxes and/or “Breaking Bad.”

The past year had been a good one for Jimmy Kimmel even before he hoodwinked the Internet a few weeks ago with a much discussed â€" and reported on, probably to the  chagrin of some TV news directors â€" prank twerking video.

Last September he took on the high-profile gig as host of the 2012 Emmy Awards. In December he saluted David Letterman, his longtime idol, at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Then in January,  his ABC talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” finally moved to the prime 11:35 p.m. slot after spending its first 10 years at 12:05 a.m. The move to a more respectable late-night neighborhood, which placed him opposite Mr. Letterman, among several others, didn’t dampen the show’s anarchic spirit. One episode featured Mr. Kimmel gagged and duct-taped as Matt Damon, whose faux-contentious relationship with the host is a long-running joke, “took over” for a night. In July “Jimmy Kimmel Live” received four Emmy nominations, including one for best variety series.

None of which was top of mind at the outset of a recent conversation, which found Mr. Kimmel still “traumatized” over the previous night’s episode of “Breaking Bad.”

“The death of Hank is haunting me,” he said.

Mr. Kimmel sufficiently regrouped to discuss moving to an earlier time slot, killing off Tracy Morgan at last year’s Emmys and resembling a bargain soda, in certain contexts. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q.

You broke my heart with the flaming twerking hoax.

A.

I’m sorry. You were upset that she wasn’t burned?

Q.

What is there left to believe in, if not a girl lighting herself on fire on YouTube?

A.

Some bonehead wrote a thing saying people should be angry because I’ve stolen people’s innocence, or some nonsense.

Q.

The show began before the viral video era took offâ€"

A.

Actually the first viral video I remember getting was one from “The Man Show” where we had this little boy sell beer like it was a lemonade stand. People were emailing that to me, not realizing I made it.

Q.

So did you know from the beginning of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that you wanted to do these sort of guerrilla-style videos?

A.

All of this is accidental â€" none of it is part of a master plan. Although the first show I did, I showed a video of Andy Milonakis singing the stupid song about the Super Bowl and strumming his guitar. So I guess viral videos have been part of the show from the first night.

Q.

Do you get any validation from the Emmy nomination in your first year at 11:35?

A.

Oh absolutely. It’s especially exciting for the staff, because we kind of toiled in anonymity for a long time and people would say, “Oh yeah, I saw that funny video you did.” But the show as a whole is still the most important thing. The most satisfaction I get is when I do a show that is solid from beginning to end. Getting the consistency to a point where you don’t feel like dry heaving after the show every night is a major milestone.

Q.

When did you get to that point?

A.

There still are some nights where I don’t feel that I’m anywhere near that, but I think probably around three and a half years ago. It’s funny: I felt I was ready for 11:30 probably from a month after we went on the air. [Laughs.] I look back and realize that I’m delusional and possibly insane.

Q.

Has moving to the earlier slot changed the way you approach the show?

A.

We really just live day to day and bit to bit. If I have a good monologue and a good show, I feel somewhat O.K. when I go home. And if I don’t, I’m ready to go back and do it over again and wash that mediocrity out of my mind.

Q.

You produced some memorable bits when you hosted the Emmys last year. This year you’re presenting â€" do you have anything special planned? Do they even give you that kind of latitude?

A.

I have a suspicion that they write something mediocre for you so that you come up with something on your own. I’ll figure it out this week sometime.

Q.

How do you think you did as Emmy host?

A.

I think I did very well. I’m pretty critical, but I did what set out to do. I did some weird things; I did not drag the show out. I put myself in the “In Memoriam” montage, which I know wasn’t for everyone, but was something that delighted me to no end. I had the guys from “Breaking Bad” in the opening to “The Andy Griffith Show,” which was fun to shoot. I threw my parents out. I caught Jon Stewart racing out of the theater, live. We killed Tracy Morgan. I feel like it was mission accomplished.

Q.

Your adoration of David Letterman is well documented. Where does paying tribute to him at the Kennedy Center rank on your list of career highlights?

A.

It’s probably No. 1. A lot of times you get asked to do something and you say, “It was my pleasure.” I think this was the only instance in which it truly was. Growing up I was so obsessed with the show â€" every textbook cover had “Late Night With David Letterman” on it. For those friends and family members, especially, who know how deep those roots go, it was very, very exciting. I never would have imagined meeting Dave, never mind having an uncomfortable ride down in an elevator with him at the State Department.

Q.

How was that ride?

A.

[Laughs.] It was uncomfortable but thrilling. It was uncomfortable because I knew he was uncomfortable but I was bursting at the seams.

Q.

Is Letterman the standard you aspire to?

A.

I don’t compare myself to him because that depresses me. I also don’t think you can separate it. There would be no Shasta if weren’t for Coca-Cola â€" I think of myself as the Shasta in this situation.



Emmy Watch: Jimmy Kimmel on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’

Jimmy Kimmel, center, on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with, from left, Robin Williams, Matt Damon and Andy Garcia.Randy Holmes/ABC Jimmy Kimmel, center, on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with, from left, Robin Williams, Matt Damon and Andy Garcia.

This interview may contain spoilers for people still catching up on YouTube hoaxes and/or “Breaking Bad.”

The past year had been a good one for Jimmy Kimmel even before he hoodwinked the Internet a few weeks ago with a much discussed â€" and reported on, probably to the  chagrin of some TV news directors â€" prank twerking video.

Last September he took on the high-profile gig as host of the 2012 Emmy Awards. In December he saluted David Letterman, his longtime idol, at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Then in January,  his ABC talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” finally moved to the prime 11:35 p.m. slot after spending its first 10 years at 12:05 a.m. The move to a more respectable late-night neighborhood, which placed him opposite Mr. Letterman, among several others, didn’t dampen the show’s anarchic spirit. One episode featured Mr. Kimmel gagged and duct-taped as Matt Damon, whose faux-contentious relationship with the host is a long-running joke, “took over” for a night. In July “Jimmy Kimmel Live” received four Emmy nominations, including one for best variety series.

None of which was top of mind at the outset of a recent conversation, which found Mr. Kimmel still “traumatized” over the previous night’s episode of “Breaking Bad.”

“The death of Hank is haunting me,” he said.

Mr. Kimmel sufficiently regrouped to discuss moving to an earlier time slot, killing off Tracy Morgan at last year’s Emmys and resembling a bargain soda, in certain contexts. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q.

You broke my heart with the flaming twerking hoax.

A.

I’m sorry. You were upset that she wasn’t burned?

Q.

What is there left to believe in, if not a girl lighting herself on fire on YouTube?

A.

Some bonehead wrote a thing saying people should be angry because I’ve stolen people’s innocence, or some nonsense.

Q.

The show began before the viral video era took offâ€"

A.

Actually the first viral video I remember getting was one from “The Man Show” where we had this little boy sell beer like it was a lemonade stand. People were emailing that to me, not realizing I made it.

Q.

So did you know from the beginning of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that you wanted to do these sort of guerrilla-style videos?

A.

All of this is accidental â€" none of it is part of a master plan. Although the first show I did, I showed a video of Andy Milonakis singing the stupid song about the Super Bowl and strumming his guitar. So I guess viral videos have been part of the show from the first night.

Q.

Do you get any validation from the Emmy nomination in your first year at 11:35?

A.

Oh absolutely. It’s especially exciting for the staff, because we kind of toiled in anonymity for a long time and people would say, “Oh yeah, I saw that funny video you did.” But the show as a whole is still the most important thing. The most satisfaction I get is when I do a show that is solid from beginning to end. Getting the consistency to a point where you don’t feel like dry heaving after the show every night is a major milestone.

Q.

When did you get to that point?

A.

There still are some nights where I don’t feel that I’m anywhere near that, but I think probably around three and a half years ago. It’s funny: I felt I was ready for 11:30 probably from a month after we went on the air. [Laughs.] I look back and realize that I’m delusional and possibly insane.

Q.

Has moving to the earlier slot changed the way you approach the show?

A.

We really just live day to day and bit to bit. If I have a good monologue and a good show, I feel somewhat O.K. when I go home. And if I don’t, I’m ready to go back and do it over again and wash that mediocrity out of my mind.

Q.

You produced some memorable bits when you hosted the Emmys last year. This year you’re presenting â€" do you have anything special planned? Do they even give you that kind of latitude?

A.

I have a suspicion that they write something mediocre for you so that you come up with something on your own. I’ll figure it out this week sometime.

Q.

How do you think you did as Emmy host?

A.

I think I did very well. I’m pretty critical, but I did what set out to do. I did some weird things; I did not drag the show out. I put myself in the “In Memoriam” montage, which I know wasn’t for everyone, but was something that delighted me to no end. I had the guys from “Breaking Bad” in the opening to “The Andy Griffith Show,” which was fun to shoot. I threw my parents out. I caught Jon Stewart racing out of the theater, live. We killed Tracy Morgan. I feel like it was mission accomplished.

Q.

Your adoration of David Letterman is well documented. Where does paying tribute to him at the Kennedy Center rank on your list of career highlights?

A.

It’s probably No. 1. A lot of times you get asked to do something and you say, “It was my pleasure.” I think this was the only instance in which it truly was. Growing up I was so obsessed with the show â€" every textbook cover had “Late Night With David Letterman” on it. For those friends and family members, especially, who know how deep those roots go, it was very, very exciting. I never would have imagined meeting Dave, never mind having an uncomfortable ride down in an elevator with him at the State Department.

Q.

How was that ride?

A.

[Laughs.] It was uncomfortable but thrilling. It was uncomfortable because I knew he was uncomfortable but I was bursting at the seams.

Q.

Is Letterman the standard you aspire to?

A.

I don’t compare myself to him because that depresses me. I also don’t think you can separate it. There would be no Shasta if weren’t for Coca-Cola â€" I think of myself as the Shasta in this situation.



New York Today: Harvest Time

Nature's bounty at a greenmarket near Columbia University.Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times Nature’s bounty at a greenmarket near Columbia University.

As summer makes way for fall (4:44 p.m. on Sunday, if you’re keeping score), the best place to watch the seasons change, or at least the yummiest, may be your local greenmarket.

The autumn produce has arrived, nearly but not quite crowding out the fruits (and vegetables) of summer.

“We really have everything in the market right now,” said Jeanne Hodesh, a spokeswoman for the city’s greenmarkets, which have grown from one small cluster of stands in Union Square in 1976 to 54 across the five boroughs.

“We still have summer sweet corn and peaches and nectarines, but we’re also seeing fall crops like brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli.”

Tons of apples, too.

Such is the bounty that you can buy summer squash at one stand and winter squash at the next.

The only things that are out of season, Ms. Hodesh said, are peas and rhubarb.

Like Dodgers fans used to say, wait till next year.

Here’s what else you need to know for Friday and the weekend:

WEATHER

One last day of sunshine, with a high of 79.

Then gradually clouding over on Saturday, with serious rainfall likely overnight â€" half an inch or more.

Showers lingering into Sunday, then clearing once more. Kind of symmetrical.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC

- Mass Transit: O.K. so far. Click for latest M.T.A. status.

- Roads: No major delays. Click for traffic map or radio report on the 1s.

Alternate-side parking is suspended today for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

COMING UP TODAY

- The mayor speaks at a Time magazine summit on higher education.

- A state legislative committee convenes at Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn to hear how the video game industry affects the economy and employment.

- Another chance to square dance in Bryant Park. The Sept. 9 dance drew 760 people, so prepare to meet your neighbor. 5:30 p.m. [Free]

- The Horticultural Society of New York’s annual show of international contemporary botanical art opens in Midtown. Reception at 6 p.m. [Free]

- The New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 features booksellers, antiquarians, artists, and independent publishers from more than 20 countries. Noon to 7 p.m. [Free]

- The 13th Coney Island Film Festival opens with “More Than the Rainbow,” a documentary about a New York street photographer, Matt Weber. 7:30 p.m.

- A “Harmony and Humanity” concert in memory of Ramarley Graham, an unarmed 18-year-old fatally shot by the police, at Greater Faith Temple Church in the Bronx. 8 p.m. [Free]

- Tickets for John Mayer’s Dec. 17 show at Barclays Center go on sale at 9 a.m. [Ticketmaster]

- “Men at Lunch,” a film that tells the story behind the iconic 1932 photo of construction workers sitting on a girder 69 stories above Manhattan, opens at Quad Cinema. [$11]

IN THE NEWS

- Another poll shows Bill de Blasio with a very commanding lead over Joseph J. Lhota. [The New York Times]

- Mr. de Blasio will only attend fund-raisers that guarantee to bring in at least $75,000 for his campaign. [The Daily News]

- The city’s unemployment rate rose slightly in August. [Crain's New York]

- A Hudson Valley winery â€" aptly named Clinton Vineyards â€" has started bottling a ‘Victory White’ wine to encourage Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016. [Time Magazine]

- Bunny rabbits are roaming the streets of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. [Ditmas Park Corner]

- A Long Island man had 850 snakes living in his garage. His two license plates? ‘SNAKEVAN’ and ‘SSSSNAKE’ [Newsday]

- It may finally be time to stick a fork in the Yankees after their 6-2 loss to Toronto. Mets fall to Giants, 2-1.

THE WEEKEND

Saturday

- Chess-in-the-schools hosts over 1000 chess players in a six-round tournament at the Central Park Bethesda Fountain. [Registration begins at 9 a.m.]

- Choose from 35,000 oysters at the Stone Street Oyster Festival downtown. Noon to 6 p.m.

- Activists dressed in blue rally to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, starting at noon in Battery Park.

- The Haunted Pumpkin Garden opens at the New York Botanical Garden.

Sunday

- The Brooklyn Book Festival begins at 10 a.m. Check the full schedule.

- Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, takes over Times Square. Over 100,000 are expected to attend. 11 a.m. onward. [Free]

- A celebration of music, storytelling and dance takes place at the Bronx Native American Festival, at Pelham Bay Park. Noon to 4 p.m. [Free]

- Fly a kite on the rooftop of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. will be shut down so you can do just that. 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. [Free]

Weekend Street Closings

Click for the complete list.

AND FINALLY…

As the summer of 1960 faded, a pompadoured 16-year-old from Queens had a hit song of such profound inanity that East German soldiers used it to torture a prisoner in Billy Wilder’s 1961 comedy “One, Two, Three.”

The boy was Brian Hyland. The song: “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini.”

Soon Mr. Hyland had moved on to ballads.

This week in 1961, his treacly ode to teen devotion “Let Me Belong to You” was at No. 32.

“Make me your slave,” Mr. Hyland coos. “Tie me down, darling. Make me behave.”

The song’s efficacy in extracting military secrets remains untested.

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till about noon.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, e-mail us at nytoday@nytimes.com or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Find us on weekdays at nytimes.com/nytoday.



New York Today: Harvest Time

Nature's bounty at a greenmarket near Columbia University.Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times Nature’s bounty at a greenmarket near Columbia University.

As summer makes way for fall (4:44 p.m. on Sunday, if you’re keeping score), the best place to watch the seasons change, or at least the yummiest, may be your local greenmarket.

The autumn produce has arrived, nearly but not quite crowding out the fruits (and vegetables) of summer.

“We really have everything in the market right now,” said Jeanne Hodesh, a spokeswoman for the city’s greenmarkets, which have grown from one small cluster of stands in Union Square in 1976 to 54 across the five boroughs.

“We still have summer sweet corn and peaches and nectarines, but we’re also seeing fall crops like brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli.”

Tons of apples, too.

Such is the bounty that you can buy summer squash at one stand and winter squash at the next.

The only things that are out of season, Ms. Hodesh said, are peas and rhubarb.

Like Dodgers fans used to say, wait till next year.

Here’s what else you need to know for Friday and the weekend:

WEATHER

One last day of sunshine, with a high of 79.

Then gradually clouding over on Saturday, with serious rainfall likely overnight â€" half an inch or more.

Showers lingering into Sunday, then clearing once more. Kind of symmetrical.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC

- Mass Transit: O.K. so far. Click for latest M.T.A. status.

- Roads: No major delays. Click for traffic map or radio report on the 1s.

Alternate-side parking is suspended today for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

COMING UP TODAY

- The mayor speaks at a Time magazine summit on higher education.

- A state legislative committee convenes at Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn to hear how the video game industry affects the economy and employment.

- Another chance to square dance in Bryant Park. The Sept. 9 dance drew 760 people, so prepare to meet your neighbor. 5:30 p.m. [Free]

- The Horticultural Society of New York’s annual show of international contemporary botanical art opens in Midtown. Reception at 6 p.m. [Free]

- The New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 features booksellers, antiquarians, artists, and independent publishers from more than 20 countries. Noon to 7 p.m. [Free]

- The 13th Coney Island Film Festival opens with “More Than the Rainbow,” a documentary about a New York street photographer, Matt Weber. 7:30 p.m.

- A “Harmony and Humanity” concert in memory of Ramarley Graham, an unarmed 18-year-old fatally shot by the police, at Greater Faith Temple Church in the Bronx. 8 p.m. [Free]

- Tickets for John Mayer’s Dec. 17 show at Barclays Center go on sale at 9 a.m. [Ticketmaster]

- “Men at Lunch,” a film that tells the story behind the iconic 1932 photo of construction workers sitting on a girder 69 stories above Manhattan, opens at Quad Cinema. [$11]

IN THE NEWS

- Another poll shows Bill de Blasio with a very commanding lead over Joseph J. Lhota. [The New York Times]

- Mr. de Blasio will only attend fund-raisers that guarantee to bring in at least $75,000 for his campaign. [The Daily News]

- The city’s unemployment rate rose slightly in August. [Crain's New York]

- A Hudson Valley winery â€" aptly named Clinton Vineyards â€" has started bottling a ‘Victory White’ wine to encourage Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016. [Time Magazine]

- Bunny rabbits are roaming the streets of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. [Ditmas Park Corner]

- A Long Island man had 850 snakes living in his garage. His two license plates? ‘SNAKEVAN’ and ‘SSSSNAKE’ [Newsday]

- It may finally be time to stick a fork in the Yankees after their 6-2 loss to Toronto. Mets fall to Giants, 2-1.

THE WEEKEND

Saturday

- Chess-in-the-schools hosts over 1000 chess players in a six-round tournament at the Central Park Bethesda Fountain. [Registration begins at 9 a.m.]

- Choose from 35,000 oysters at the Stone Street Oyster Festival downtown. Noon to 6 p.m.

- Activists dressed in blue rally to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, starting at noon in Battery Park.

- The Haunted Pumpkin Garden opens at the New York Botanical Garden.

Sunday

- The Brooklyn Book Festival begins at 10 a.m. Check the full schedule.

- Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, takes over Times Square. Over 100,000 are expected to attend. 11 a.m. onward. [Free]

- A celebration of music, storytelling and dance takes place at the Bronx Native American Festival, at Pelham Bay Park. Noon to 4 p.m. [Free]

- Fly a kite on the rooftop of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. will be shut down so you can do just that. 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. [Free]

Weekend Street Closings

Click for the complete list.

AND FINALLY…

As the summer of 1960 faded, a pompadoured 16-year-old from Queens had a hit song of such profound inanity that East German soldiers used it to torture a prisoner in Billy Wilder’s 1961 comedy “One, Two, Three.”

The boy was Brian Hyland. The song: “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini.”

Soon Mr. Hyland had moved on to ballads.

This week in 1961, his treacly ode to teen devotion “Let Me Belong to You” was at No. 32.

“Make me your slave,” Mr. Hyland coos. “Tie me down, darling. Make me behave.”

The song’s efficacy in extracting military secrets remains untested.

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till about noon.

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