Our Town downtown
November 27, 2006
Playing at: IFC Center
Run Time: 74 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Harry Moses
(documentary)
You could say there’s a fine line between sticking to your guns and not knowing when to quit once you’re ahead. That’s a point this documentary, a movie that’s just long enough, drives home, though its heroine, Teri Horton, would almost certainly disagree.
Horton, 73 at the time of filming, is the unlikely buyer of a painting that just may be a bona fide Jackson Pollock. Of course, when she talks the seller down to five from eight, dollars that is, at a thrift shop, she is as unfamiliar with the artist’s name as she is with his work. The film’s title is a direct quote.
A former truck driver, Horton was born in the Ozarks and went through considerable hardship including a divorce, a long separation from two of her children and the loss of one.
When she purchases the fateful canvas, it is to console a friend who lives in a mobile home. But the painting doesn’t fit inside her friend’s trailer, so she tries to get rid of it at a garage sale instead. (“It was ugly. There was nothing to it. Just all these colors on the canvas.”) An art teacher browsing the merchandise alerts her to the possibility of who it could be by and what that would mean (millions). And with that piece of information Horton begins a 15-year odyssey.
Two immediate questions – why a Jackson Pollock would end up in a thrift shop, and if is really a Pollock, why it would take so long to cash in on – are secondary to the movie’s real question: is Teri Horton’s painting, in fact, a Jackson Pollock?
The reason this real-life monkey wrench of a plot twist is thrown in just as it seems Teri has hit pay dirt, is that the painting has no “provenance.” That is, it doesn’t have a documented history of all the buyers and sellers who owned the work before her, all the way back to the person accepted as the artist. There are no certificates, no receipts, not even a signature by the man himself. And that is a major hurdle for Teri because provenance is something the art world places a premium on.
This system, as several self-proclaimed experts explain on camera, is the unchallenged industry standard among art collectors and dealers for determining the authenticity of a work.
Though these aficionados have provenance, or the absence of it, behind them to deny Teri’s claim about the painting – and they have a point – their method of judgment comes across as subjective in its own way. “It doesn’t sing like a Pollock, it doesn’t fail like a Pollock,” one of them of Pollock’s says, while examining it.
And another, when challenged by Teri and co. that not having a certificate of provenance shouldn’t rule out the authenticity of a painting, since you could easily fabricate one – admits that it’s happened before.
With her resolve as a grandmother who unwinds with stiff drinks at the local VFW hall, and has come up against adversity before, Horton, with only an eighth grade education, takes on the art world. To do this, she enlists the help of a forensic scientist who specializes in precisely these types of cases – and a rogue art dealer, who once sold paintings to the stars, but ended up doing time for fraud, and is eager to wend his way back into this elite world.
The scientist, a Canadian named Peter Paul Biro, finds a finger print on the back of the canvas, which he later matches to a paint can in Pollock’s East Hampton studio. And Eventually the dealer, Tod Volpe, forms an investment partnership to sell the painting. Horton is as endearing as she is headstrong. Her plainspoken, often crude, assessments are often correct, though her flaw, depending on how you look at it, may be that she can’t part with principle to embrace reality and use it to her benefit.
An unexpected, interesting part of the movie is that on a very small, close-up scale, the classic war between religion and science is played out. Aspersions are cast on the actual expertise of art historians, dealers and collectors and the like, the way doubts are cast on expert witnesses by the opposing side in a trial.
In simplest terms, what it comes down to is fingerprints versus the absence of paperwork, and a scenario – the arrival of a Pollock in a thrift shop – that the art world is neither ready nor willing to accept.
Teri Horton’s painting may be a Pollock, or it may be a skillful copy. But either way, it doesn’t conform to the rules governing art sales, and it’s a buyer’s market. In this game, the players are governed by a set of rules that they themselves, created.
-- Matt Elzweig
Monday, November 27, 2006
Q & A with Haskell Nussbaum, former NYC Parking Ticket Judge
Our Town downtown
November 27, 2006
As an Administrative Law Judge for the city finance department, it was Haskell Nussbaum’s job to decide which of the dreaded parking fines brought before him were valid, and which ones should be tossed out.
Next month Gavel Press will publish “Beat That Parking Ticket: A complete guide for New York City” which is drawn from his insider knowledge of the process.
Describe your experience as a traffic court/parking ticket judge—in a word.
Illuminating.
Because…
Because so many things that I thought as a driver turned out to be incorrect.
What are the most common mistakes people make when they fight their tickets in court?
Probably the top mistake is the idea that just having a "good excuse" is good enough. The excuse has to be valid in the eyes of the law, too.
What is the most commonly issued type of ticket?
Not sure, but I would guess a general "no parking.”
And what, if there is one, is a surefire way to beat a ticket?
If it applies to you, the most surefire way is to be parked there due to a medical emergency and to have the documents to back you up. But there are plenty of legally good excuses, which I explain in my book.
How likely are people to fight a ticket if they know they’re guilty, but also know they have a good chance of getting off on a technicality? Do you think they should do this if they can?
Plenty of people just pay up despite having a technicality that would let them off. I think that getting off on a technicality is legit - that's why they are there, to make sure the police do their jobs without taking unfair shortcuts - the kind that could lead to real abuse.
What would you say to some who says you’re writing a book that teaches people, at least in a way, how to subvert the system you used to represent?
I'm not really "subverting the system" - I'm teaching people what the law really is, how the system actually works and how not to waste their time on excuses that never had a chance of flying. By reading my book people should have a better chance of winning - and also a better likelihood of avoiding the next parking ticket altogether.
Where does the money collected from parking tickets go? Can people at least feel good about that, after they’ve paid a ticket?
As far as I know, it contributes to the general budget of the City. It's quite the money-maker, actually. And, of course, the City always needs cash.
How did this project come about? What motivated you to write the book?
When I was working as a judge, people always seemed very interested and would ask me lots of questions. A book seemed a good way of answering them and being entertaining at the same time.
Do meter maids have a quota of some kind to fill?
I've been told they have, but never officially.
By following parking rules, what is the easiest violation to avoid, that many drivers receive tickets for?
The easiest to avoid would be those "no standing" zones in midtown. People park there because the signs are confusing (commercial vehicles are allowed to use the meters, but not passenger vehicles). People should know that if the spot looks too good to be true it probably is.
What proportion of contested tickets comes over the Internet or through the mail compared with in-person arguments?
A lot more comes in by mail/Internet than live. What the ratio is I don't know.
For those who have never attended, are parking ticket courts for the most part orderly?
Pretty much ... Knowing when you need to show up at a live hearing and when you don't is one of the things I discuss throughout the book.
Does the likeability of the complainant or any other outside factors play a role in a case's outcome?
It shouldn't. Of course, judges are human too, so if you come in cussing and swearing it can't possibly help you.
Are there any existing parking rules that you personally disagree with, or think are bogus?
What I disagree with is the Parking Bureau's policy of just about never mitigating a fine on a "no standing" ticket, regardless of how great your excuse - it makes the "guilty with an excuse" box into a misnomer.
What is the average New Yorker's attitude to parking regulations (aside from not wanting to part with their money)?
I think people are always a bit shocked at how quickly they get tickets - even when they've parked illegally for only a few moments.
What are the most shameless attempts people have made to get out of paying a ticket that you have seen?
Well, there was one lady who claimed her car broke down and she got a ticket while she went off looking for a pay-phone to call a tow truck - only she claimed this for at least seven tickets during the previous 30 days. How believable is that?
How could the system be improved?
Widen the streets! Seriously, that's a tough one - there are an awful lot of cars in New York and everyone has a hard time finding spots. Maybe we need more garages.
-- Matt Elzweig
November 27, 2006
As an Administrative Law Judge for the city finance department, it was Haskell Nussbaum’s job to decide which of the dreaded parking fines brought before him were valid, and which ones should be tossed out.
Next month Gavel Press will publish “Beat That Parking Ticket: A complete guide for New York City” which is drawn from his insider knowledge of the process.
Describe your experience as a traffic court/parking ticket judge—in a word.
Illuminating.
Because…
Because so many things that I thought as a driver turned out to be incorrect.
What are the most common mistakes people make when they fight their tickets in court?
Probably the top mistake is the idea that just having a "good excuse" is good enough. The excuse has to be valid in the eyes of the law, too.
What is the most commonly issued type of ticket?
Not sure, but I would guess a general "no parking.”
And what, if there is one, is a surefire way to beat a ticket?
If it applies to you, the most surefire way is to be parked there due to a medical emergency and to have the documents to back you up. But there are plenty of legally good excuses, which I explain in my book.
How likely are people to fight a ticket if they know they’re guilty, but also know they have a good chance of getting off on a technicality? Do you think they should do this if they can?
Plenty of people just pay up despite having a technicality that would let them off. I think that getting off on a technicality is legit - that's why they are there, to make sure the police do their jobs without taking unfair shortcuts - the kind that could lead to real abuse.
What would you say to some who says you’re writing a book that teaches people, at least in a way, how to subvert the system you used to represent?
I'm not really "subverting the system" - I'm teaching people what the law really is, how the system actually works and how not to waste their time on excuses that never had a chance of flying. By reading my book people should have a better chance of winning - and also a better likelihood of avoiding the next parking ticket altogether.
Where does the money collected from parking tickets go? Can people at least feel good about that, after they’ve paid a ticket?
As far as I know, it contributes to the general budget of the City. It's quite the money-maker, actually. And, of course, the City always needs cash.
How did this project come about? What motivated you to write the book?
When I was working as a judge, people always seemed very interested and would ask me lots of questions. A book seemed a good way of answering them and being entertaining at the same time.
Do meter maids have a quota of some kind to fill?
I've been told they have, but never officially.
By following parking rules, what is the easiest violation to avoid, that many drivers receive tickets for?
The easiest to avoid would be those "no standing" zones in midtown. People park there because the signs are confusing (commercial vehicles are allowed to use the meters, but not passenger vehicles). People should know that if the spot looks too good to be true it probably is.
What proportion of contested tickets comes over the Internet or through the mail compared with in-person arguments?
A lot more comes in by mail/Internet than live. What the ratio is I don't know.
For those who have never attended, are parking ticket courts for the most part orderly?
Pretty much ... Knowing when you need to show up at a live hearing and when you don't is one of the things I discuss throughout the book.
Does the likeability of the complainant or any other outside factors play a role in a case's outcome?
It shouldn't. Of course, judges are human too, so if you come in cussing and swearing it can't possibly help you.
Are there any existing parking rules that you personally disagree with, or think are bogus?
What I disagree with is the Parking Bureau's policy of just about never mitigating a fine on a "no standing" ticket, regardless of how great your excuse - it makes the "guilty with an excuse" box into a misnomer.
What is the average New Yorker's attitude to parking regulations (aside from not wanting to part with their money)?
I think people are always a bit shocked at how quickly they get tickets - even when they've parked illegally for only a few moments.
What are the most shameless attempts people have made to get out of paying a ticket that you have seen?
Well, there was one lady who claimed her car broke down and she got a ticket while she went off looking for a pay-phone to call a tow truck - only she claimed this for at least seven tickets during the previous 30 days. How believable is that?
How could the system be improved?
Widen the streets! Seriously, that's a tough one - there are an awful lot of cars in New York and everyone has a hard time finding spots. Maybe we need more garages.
-- Matt Elzweig
Monday, November 20, 2006
Movie Review: Stranger Than Fiction
Our Town downtown
November 20, 2006
Stranger Than Fiction
Playing at: AMC Loews Village 7
Run Time: 113 min.
Rating: PG-13
Director: Marc Forster
Maybe there really are just a handful of stories in the world, four or five themes that have been around since the beginning of time, that only the professionals can repackage.
To literature professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) there are only two, tragedy and comedy. And when a living, breathing text in the form of IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) steps into his office, the two men must work as quickly as possible to find out which of the two Crick’s story falls under.
He’s been sent there by his psychiatrist (Linda Hunt), who is confronted with a man claiming to hear a mysterious narrator who details his every move. And the stakes jump up sharply when the voice foreshadows a crucial scene in the story of his life: he is going to die, soon.
As it happens, Harold is not crazy, but rather the main character in a novel being written by a reclusive author (Emma Thompson) known for killing off her heroes.
An obsessive math whiz, Harold counts just about everything in his life, from the number of times he brushes each tooth to the number of strides he takes, at the precise time he goes to the bus stop each morning. And everything is kept in sync with the aid of his wristwatch.
But his obsession with order cannot withstand the natural, or perhaps supernatural order. So, predictably, questions about fate and free will are always lingering, at least in the background, but the movie stays original and doesn’t get overly sentimental or overbearing. The tired way to go about this would be to dwell on the chain reactions that turn real-life incidents into events. The elevator’s stuck. The man takes the stairs instead and bumps into the love of his life. End of story.
But director Marc Forster (“Monster’s Ball,” “Finding Neverland”) and Zach Helm, who wrote the script, concentrate instead on the interdependent relationship between author (Thompson), character (Ferrell) and reader (Thompson, Ferrell and Hoffman).
While not entirely believable, the friction, and then the romantic relationship that develops between Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character, a baker who wears her radical politics on her sleeve, and Harold, who is auditing her, is fun to watch.
But the whole thing’s a fantasy, a surreal drama with some sci-fi and a good amount of comic relief thrown in, that doesn’t fit squarely into either genre as defined by Professor Hilbert. So believability is not very important.
As Harold Crick, Will Ferrell is taking the same turn lesser comedian Adam Sandler took in “Punch Drunk Love,” a movie with a similarly melancholic, absurdist tone. Entering this realm, from nonsense and satire, to an ironic, funny kind of surrealism, seems to be a trend among physical comedians like Ferrell, Sandler and Jim Carrey. And often, it works as it does here, at least as a heightened form of entertainment.
At the movie’s climax, the conflicting interests of life and art, and the shadows cast by the thin line that separates fact from fiction are palpable. Karen Eiffel (Thompson) is asked to make a choice that will be hard to reconcile, but overall, it’s not so grave.
-- Matt Elzweig
November 20, 2006
Stranger Than Fiction
Playing at: AMC Loews Village 7
Run Time: 113 min.
Rating: PG-13
Director: Marc Forster
Maybe there really are just a handful of stories in the world, four or five themes that have been around since the beginning of time, that only the professionals can repackage.
To literature professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) there are only two, tragedy and comedy. And when a living, breathing text in the form of IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) steps into his office, the two men must work as quickly as possible to find out which of the two Crick’s story falls under.
He’s been sent there by his psychiatrist (Linda Hunt), who is confronted with a man claiming to hear a mysterious narrator who details his every move. And the stakes jump up sharply when the voice foreshadows a crucial scene in the story of his life: he is going to die, soon.
As it happens, Harold is not crazy, but rather the main character in a novel being written by a reclusive author (Emma Thompson) known for killing off her heroes.
An obsessive math whiz, Harold counts just about everything in his life, from the number of times he brushes each tooth to the number of strides he takes, at the precise time he goes to the bus stop each morning. And everything is kept in sync with the aid of his wristwatch.
But his obsession with order cannot withstand the natural, or perhaps supernatural order. So, predictably, questions about fate and free will are always lingering, at least in the background, but the movie stays original and doesn’t get overly sentimental or overbearing. The tired way to go about this would be to dwell on the chain reactions that turn real-life incidents into events. The elevator’s stuck. The man takes the stairs instead and bumps into the love of his life. End of story.
But director Marc Forster (“Monster’s Ball,” “Finding Neverland”) and Zach Helm, who wrote the script, concentrate instead on the interdependent relationship between author (Thompson), character (Ferrell) and reader (Thompson, Ferrell and Hoffman).
While not entirely believable, the friction, and then the romantic relationship that develops between Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character, a baker who wears her radical politics on her sleeve, and Harold, who is auditing her, is fun to watch.
But the whole thing’s a fantasy, a surreal drama with some sci-fi and a good amount of comic relief thrown in, that doesn’t fit squarely into either genre as defined by Professor Hilbert. So believability is not very important.
As Harold Crick, Will Ferrell is taking the same turn lesser comedian Adam Sandler took in “Punch Drunk Love,” a movie with a similarly melancholic, absurdist tone. Entering this realm, from nonsense and satire, to an ironic, funny kind of surrealism, seems to be a trend among physical comedians like Ferrell, Sandler and Jim Carrey. And often, it works as it does here, at least as a heightened form of entertainment.
At the movie’s climax, the conflicting interests of life and art, and the shadows cast by the thin line that separates fact from fiction are palpable. Karen Eiffel (Thompson) is asked to make a choice that will be hard to reconcile, but overall, it’s not so grave.
-- Matt Elzweig
Q & A with Megan Joan Cariola, Manager, Stonehouse California Olive Oil
Our Town downtown
November 20, 2006
When you think of olive oil, California may not be the first region that comes to mind. But missionaries planted trees when they arrived there. And though all the trees can be traced back to Europe and North Africa, they have since taken on flavors of their own. Megan Joan Cariola, who owned a wine bar and a bakery downtown, runs Stonehouse California Olive Oil’s new Manhattan locations. Their olives are grown on an organic farm near Chico.
Did your cooking habit grow out of working in the restaurant industry?
No. I’m Italian, so we grew up cooking, all the time. I find cooking to be just very therapeutic and relaxing and, I’ve lived in New York City for 25 years, so it’s one of the easiest ways for me to unwind, after the end of a day. So I have just grown up on my grandma’s recipes and I have traveled to Europe. And I just love food in general.
How did you pick Front Street for your second New York location?
Historic Front Street [is] being renovated ... It’s lovely and we love the water... And, it has an old world and a new world feel all at the same time. It has beautiful cobblestone streets and endless history, of course. And yet …one of the interesting things that we liked about this block, specifically, that’s being developed [is] … they’re green buildings. They’re trying in every way possible to … not use so much, anything … and also to respect the history. You know, they’re not just demolishing places and building new places. They’re actually maintaining a lot of the integrity, all the history down there and the preservation.
Olive oil has no trans fats. What do you think of the mayor’s proposal?
That’s a tough one. I love Mayor Bloomberg, but… I am not worried myself, that I’m gonna go into a restaurant and be all clogged up with the way they cook ... But, having said that, it’s a personal choice … It’s like saying not to breathe the air in New York because it’s bad. So … I wanna like the position, but I’m not quite sure … I go back and forth on that. … [The smoking ban] seemed really bad in the beginning, but I don’t hear a lot of complaints … from bars and restaurants.
What do your customers tend to buy olive oil for?
Most of the time, customers will come in and ask for a flavorful olive oil for a salad or a vinaigrette. But we get many customers including chefs who want to come in and want to know, you know, which olives are in, our House Blend or our Estate Blend, because they do a lot of cooking … They’re also good for your skin or your hair. It’s not a processed food. It’s not a processed product. We also get questions from people – 10th Street … happens to be an organic and raw block. There’s a couple restaurants and stores that … cater to people who only eat raw food. And it is also for the most part a raw food. During the pressing, the temperature goes to maybe 82 to 85 degrees, which is considered within the spectrum of what is raw.
What is ‘extra virgin’?
Extra virgin is the first pressing …The second pressing, the third pressing has a lesser amount of antioxidants and vitamins, and also flavor and clarity to them ... But extra virgin is the only category,y if you will, of oil that we sell … And we just sell the current year’s harvest.
Do American oils have any special characteristics?
Yeah. Generally speaking, our trees first of all are mostly Spanish and varietal. So our oils are from trees that are Spanish … and some Italian, similar to the wine in California that … came from the vines from Europe. We tend to find that California oils … I find that there’s a bigger spectrum of flavors of oil, from peppery and what some people call ‘a bite’ … to a really soft, buttery end. And I believe it’s because we can press the oils for a longer stretch of time. So the longer an olive stays on a tree, it might lend itself to a softer flavor, a buttery flavor. And when you blend oils—you blend an oil that has been pressed in October … with an oil that’s been pressed in January … it’s like a science experiment.
How specific can you be when you develop a flavor?
You can be pretty specific, first of all when you have a citrus oil et cetera, because you’re choosing the fruits that you’re going to press, and blend with the oil … I mean, it’s endless, you have to stop at some point and actually bottle it and sell it and label it. But if … you just wanted to experiment, it is endless … If you had endless money to do that, you could be pressing … the rest of your life, and come up with some very interesting flavors.
Can you get decent olive oil in a supermarket?
Yes … Decent olive oil from around the world, but, also from California. California’s a big grower now … People are always like ‘California olive oil ... what are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘Listen, ten years ago people made fun of wine in California. And, they’re pretty much up there with some of the top-of-the-line wines around the world.’ And you know the soil, the climate, is very similar … The olive groves there, in California … they’re definitely up there in terms of flavor.
—Matt Elzweig
November 20, 2006
When you think of olive oil, California may not be the first region that comes to mind. But missionaries planted trees when they arrived there. And though all the trees can be traced back to Europe and North Africa, they have since taken on flavors of their own. Megan Joan Cariola, who owned a wine bar and a bakery downtown, runs Stonehouse California Olive Oil’s new Manhattan locations. Their olives are grown on an organic farm near Chico.
Did your cooking habit grow out of working in the restaurant industry?
No. I’m Italian, so we grew up cooking, all the time. I find cooking to be just very therapeutic and relaxing and, I’ve lived in New York City for 25 years, so it’s one of the easiest ways for me to unwind, after the end of a day. So I have just grown up on my grandma’s recipes and I have traveled to Europe. And I just love food in general.
How did you pick Front Street for your second New York location?
Historic Front Street [is] being renovated ... It’s lovely and we love the water... And, it has an old world and a new world feel all at the same time. It has beautiful cobblestone streets and endless history, of course. And yet …one of the interesting things that we liked about this block, specifically, that’s being developed [is] … they’re green buildings. They’re trying in every way possible to … not use so much, anything … and also to respect the history. You know, they’re not just demolishing places and building new places. They’re actually maintaining a lot of the integrity, all the history down there and the preservation.
Olive oil has no trans fats. What do you think of the mayor’s proposal?
That’s a tough one. I love Mayor Bloomberg, but… I am not worried myself, that I’m gonna go into a restaurant and be all clogged up with the way they cook ... But, having said that, it’s a personal choice … It’s like saying not to breathe the air in New York because it’s bad. So … I wanna like the position, but I’m not quite sure … I go back and forth on that. … [The smoking ban] seemed really bad in the beginning, but I don’t hear a lot of complaints … from bars and restaurants.
What do your customers tend to buy olive oil for?
Most of the time, customers will come in and ask for a flavorful olive oil for a salad or a vinaigrette. But we get many customers including chefs who want to come in and want to know, you know, which olives are in, our House Blend or our Estate Blend, because they do a lot of cooking … They’re also good for your skin or your hair. It’s not a processed food. It’s not a processed product. We also get questions from people – 10th Street … happens to be an organic and raw block. There’s a couple restaurants and stores that … cater to people who only eat raw food. And it is also for the most part a raw food. During the pressing, the temperature goes to maybe 82 to 85 degrees, which is considered within the spectrum of what is raw.
What is ‘extra virgin’?
Extra virgin is the first pressing …The second pressing, the third pressing has a lesser amount of antioxidants and vitamins, and also flavor and clarity to them ... But extra virgin is the only category,y if you will, of oil that we sell … And we just sell the current year’s harvest.
Do American oils have any special characteristics?
Yeah. Generally speaking, our trees first of all are mostly Spanish and varietal. So our oils are from trees that are Spanish … and some Italian, similar to the wine in California that … came from the vines from Europe. We tend to find that California oils … I find that there’s a bigger spectrum of flavors of oil, from peppery and what some people call ‘a bite’ … to a really soft, buttery end. And I believe it’s because we can press the oils for a longer stretch of time. So the longer an olive stays on a tree, it might lend itself to a softer flavor, a buttery flavor. And when you blend oils—you blend an oil that has been pressed in October … with an oil that’s been pressed in January … it’s like a science experiment.
How specific can you be when you develop a flavor?
You can be pretty specific, first of all when you have a citrus oil et cetera, because you’re choosing the fruits that you’re going to press, and blend with the oil … I mean, it’s endless, you have to stop at some point and actually bottle it and sell it and label it. But if … you just wanted to experiment, it is endless … If you had endless money to do that, you could be pressing … the rest of your life, and come up with some very interesting flavors.
Can you get decent olive oil in a supermarket?
Yes … Decent olive oil from around the world, but, also from California. California’s a big grower now … People are always like ‘California olive oil ... what are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘Listen, ten years ago people made fun of wine in California. And, they’re pretty much up there with some of the top-of-the-line wines around the world.’ And you know the soil, the climate, is very similar … The olive groves there, in California … they’re definitely up there in terms of flavor.
—Matt Elzweig
Monday, November 13, 2006
Someone Else’s Time: Jeff Deskovic spent 16 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. The Innocence Project got him out.
November 13, 2006
Our Town downtown
Jeff Deskovic is Number 12. Twelve isn’t the prisoner identification number he had at Elmira or at two of the other places he was incarcerated before he was finally moved to Sing Sing. It is his place, chronologically, among the men the Innocence Project has moved the courts to exonerate and release from prisons nationwide this year.
After spending a decade and a half behind bars for murder, rape and weapons possession conviction, there was no longer any doubt he was not guilty, as he claimed as a 16-year-old on trial. And last month he was released, at 32.
Deskovic, who was a Peekskill high school student at the time of his arrest, is one of three of this year’s exonerees from New York State.
The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by lawyers Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck.
Though other organizations in the network review cases with other kinds of evidence, the Cardozo School of Law’s Innocence Project only reviews cases where DNA evidence can be used to determine whether a client can be excluded as a suspect in the crime for which they were convicted.
The other two New York exonerees, Alan Newton and Scott Fappiano, both convicted in 1985 of rape and other charges (in unrelated cases), are from New York City. Like Deskovic, they worked with the Cardozo-based Innocence Project to regain their freedom.
Deskovic’s case, from acceptance to exoneration, was unusually quick. More typical were the cases of Alan Newton and Scott Fappiano, which involved tracking down lost evidence. In fact, according to results of a recent preliminary study conducted by the Innocence Project, published this year, 50 percent of New York City cases are closed due to lost or destroyed evidence.
Deskovic’s case was unique in that not only was his DNA determined not to match the DNA found on the victim, a classmate, 15, named Angela Correa, before his trial, but because of advances in technology, the man actually responsible, another Peekskill resident already in prison for a murder he committed after Deskovic was sent away, was identified. And when confronted with the new evidence, he confessed.
Deskovic says he and the victim knew each other’s names and were in some classes together but that was about it. And both have been described as students who kept to themselves for the most part, in school. “I was into sports, but I was not a jock … That was outside of school … In school, I was more to myself,” he says. So how did he end up as a suspect if he was barely associated with her? The state’s theory was that he had a crush on her and was jealous that she was having sex with someone else, which led to the rape and murder, but Maggie Taylor, the intake worker who convinced Nina Morrison, his lawyer at Innocence, to take the case, says it was much simpler and much more unlucky. “He originally made his way onto a long list of suspects because he was late to school the day after the victim disappeared.”
Their interest in him grew because he attended the victim’s wake several times, which led them to conclude that “he was unusually distraught at her death.”
Ultimately the Peekskill police extracted what would prove to be a false confession using tactics that included food-deprivation, good cop/bad cop interrogation tactics, and by playing on his adolescent interest in detective work. “That’s kind of like what drew me in,” he says. After Deskovic refused to take a polygraph test because he knew it was inadmissible in court, the officers bribed him into compliance. “Eventually what happens is that they tell me that … if I agree to take this polygraph test that I’d be given even greater access to their files” to investigate the case further. In court police would later testify that the results of his polygraph exam were “inconclusive” but in their interrogation they lied to him by telling him he had failed it, Deskovic says.
It all took place during a series of interrogations, over what Deskovic estimates was a couple of months.
As for the police’s initial concern about his being “unusually distraught” over the victim’s death, he explains that “when you’re 16 years old, I mean you think everyone’s gonna grow old and then they die … [It] kind of like shattered that myth for me, you know, so it caused me [to] get upset.”
Some of the major advances in DNA testing since the time of Deskovic’s conviction are that today, STR (Short Tandem Repeat) testing enables investigators to get a much more specific picture of a DNA sample, with a lower likelihood of a random match occurring, and that mitochondrial testing can test hair samples even if they don’t have roots. Who knows if Jeff Deskovic would have eventually gotten out by virtue of the fact that the old DNA technology had excluded him as a suspect when compared to the DNA found on the victim, but most important to getting him out of prison was the NY State DNA databank, a state version of the FBI’s CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), which was not fully operational until 1998. With it, it suddenly became possible to test Deskovic’s DNA against a huge database of offenders. This is how Steven Cunningham, who actually raped and killed Angela Correa, was found.
The September hearing resulted in Deskovic’s release from prison, but he wasn’t officially exonerated until November 2nd at the state supreme court in White Plains. This is where I first meet him.
As I wait to enter Judge Richard A. Molea’s courtroom, I see Deskovic pacing the halls, chewing gum. He converted to Islam in prison and has a long beard that contrasts with his short dark hair. He’s wearing black slip-on sneakers, white socks and blue suit that’s a little bit short around the ankles. Keys hang from his belt.
He knows that I may attend, but I have chosen to quietly observe the proceedings, take notes, and not interact with him until our scheduled meeting in Manhattan, the next day. But, when I go inside, I make the mistake of sitting almost directly behind him. All the other reporters present seem to be on the opposite side of the aisle. He turns around and politely asks me my name and which organization I’m with. Though our exchange is brief and I am able to shrink quickly back into anonymity, I can sense how intense he is. We shake hands, and his are sweaty as he waits for the vindication he’s been seeking for the past 16 years.
On this day, and during the next day, I observe something that Deskovic is not shy about acknowledging at all, that while he has educated himself, and is physically a grown man, he has not matured in the same way a free man would have between the ages of 16 and 32.
“I was a young man when I went into prison. I was just, I was 17 years old and so I mean there are times when … I don’t really fully feel like an adult,” he says to reporters outside the courthouse when the hearing is finished.
“I think Jeff is fascinating in that he was convicted at such a young age, that to be put in a prison with adult males, he had to grow up very, very fast. But on the flip side to be completely separated from social [development],” Michelle Rosengarten, the Cardozo law student assigned to him as part of the clinic Scheck and Neufeld run, says.
Deskovic is being treated for post traumatic stress disorder and says that it’s hard for him “to trust people … people are kind to me—I wait for them to turn on me … I’m … very apprehensive of people.” This probably explains his screening me in the courtroom. After all, is it fair to call a guy “cagey” when he’s been in an actual cage for years on end?
However in transition Deskovic may be psychosocially, he is unusually poised speaking to the public. “When he first was released, he spoke without notes for about two hours … and he was incredibly eloquent … It was astounding,” Rosengarten remembers. “And … passionate, you know. Very passionate.”
Though in prison he earned an associates degree—one year short of a bachelors since, he says, financial aid for prisoners was taken away—and he has several vocational certificates, Deskovic is unemployed and virtually penniless. And were it not for an Islamic center in the Hudson Valley that’s giving him a free place to stay, he might be homeless too. He plans to sue the state for compensation, but is desperate for work in the immediate future. And while he has conventional goals like marrying one day and starting a family, he has already begun to chart the course of his life as an activist for criminal justice and prison reform.
He views his ordeal with the same perspective as the Innocence Project: each individual exoneration, 185 including his own have been achieved using DNA evidence so far, is not only a shocking example of injustice, but another example of systemic problems that need to be addressed so reforms can be made.
Deskovic was not given a chance to speak at the exoneration hearing, which disappointed him. One of the things he would have said, after apologies on behalf of the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office and the Peekskill Police Department were made, and after Judge Molea commended the “committed defense attorneys” and “open-minded DA’s” who allowed the retesting of DNA to go forward, was that it should be more than “lip service.” “What I wanted to say was ‘be an advocate for changes in the system … Judges go to gatherings where changes are recommended to legislatures and you know grassroot movement type things … If everybody is really sorry, then let’s be committed to this not happening again. Not to me. The larger picture. Everybody else.”
Among the reforms that the Innocence Project is calling for is videotaped interrogations as standard procedure in police departments to ensure that suspects are not coerced or tricked into confessing for crimes they are not guilty of, and so that when suspects who are guilty confess, there are no lingering questions about the circumstances of the interrogation. Currently, over 5,000 police departments across the country tape interrogations, Barry Scheck says. But more departments have been slow to embrace taping, despite information made available by the Innocence Project to them about its benefits. “I think that there’s a lot of misconceptions among people in law enforcement that this is somehow going to hurt their cases or make it more difficult for them to get statements from people who are guilty. That is not the case.” Departments that tape interrogations have found that suspects waive their Miranda rights all the time, “and that evidence is far more persuasive to juries and judges if it is videotaped and it seemed to be more reliable, which it is. So that’s a reform really … of law enforcement. It protects the innocent and it helps find those who are guilty.”
Scheck hopes that Deskovic’s case will be an added push in this direction.
Aside from false confessions, the Innocence Project is trying to address mistaken eyewitness identifications, police and prosecutorial misconduct, incompetent criminal defense issues, junk science (statistical exaggeration or falsified results or credentials, for example), snitch testimony, and outdated forensic tests, and offer reforms to the criminal justice system so the right people end up doing time.
Michelle Rosengarten says that in New York State, one of the biggest problems is parole. “Once you get to … prison in New York particularly, parole is near impossible. A lot of … parole boards require that you accept guilt for what you’ve done” to be granted parole. But we have clients … like, ‘No. I did not do this. I’ve been saying this for 25 years. I did not do this.’ So they don’t get parole.”
She also thinks the limited resources public defenders are given puts indigent defendants at a major advantage. The Innocence Project advocates reforms include providing pay to public defenders that is commensurate to what prosecutors get in their region to attract more competent attorneys, lower caseloads, fixed standards of adequate defense by jurisdiction, and federal funding that is relative to what prosecutors in their jurisdiction receive.
In 2004, the highest court in state declared the death penalty unconstitutional in New York because it concluded that its jury deadlock provision was in violation of due process. More recently Governor Pataki proposed reinstating the death penalty for cop killers, but so far it is still off-the-books.
It’s fortunate for Deskovic, whose appeals ran out six years ago, because he was convicted of felony murder. “That’s a violent crime, and the underlying crime under felony murder was the rape, which often serves as the aggravating circumstance in capital murder cases,” he says. “I would’ve been eligible for the death penalty and I almost certainly would’ve gotten [it]. Especially with the amount of publicity, the amount of fear, and … it was a heinous crime that was committed. So when you add all these things up … I have a public defender … I’m poor … I would’ve been executed.” Keeping the death penalty out of New York State is part of the message he wants to get out, now that he’s free. He’s already got a public relations manager, a friend of a friend from Peekskill, who he trusts to help him with this. (“I’ll tell you this much, I’m gonna make sure nobody screws him over.”) Speaking engagements are planned.
He’s also committed to working on introducing reforms to the treatment of prisoners. Drawing on his unfortunately long incarceration, he says that contrary to popular belief there aren’t many inmates who claim they’re innocent. But the ones who do and write the Innocence Project frustrate him, “because they clog the system up.” Maggie Taylor, who reads letters from inmates hoping for representation, says the New York Innocence Project receives 250 letters a month and there’s a backlog.
Deskovic is working on getting his driver’s license. And he also wants to start reading books outside a prison library and jogging, and have fun, whatever, but he hasn’t yet. He did manage to get to Great Adventure though.
-- Matt Elzweig
Our Town downtown
Jeff Deskovic is Number 12. Twelve isn’t the prisoner identification number he had at Elmira or at two of the other places he was incarcerated before he was finally moved to Sing Sing. It is his place, chronologically, among the men the Innocence Project has moved the courts to exonerate and release from prisons nationwide this year.
After spending a decade and a half behind bars for murder, rape and weapons possession conviction, there was no longer any doubt he was not guilty, as he claimed as a 16-year-old on trial. And last month he was released, at 32.
Deskovic, who was a Peekskill high school student at the time of his arrest, is one of three of this year’s exonerees from New York State.
The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by lawyers Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck.
Though other organizations in the network review cases with other kinds of evidence, the Cardozo School of Law’s Innocence Project only reviews cases where DNA evidence can be used to determine whether a client can be excluded as a suspect in the crime for which they were convicted.
The other two New York exonerees, Alan Newton and Scott Fappiano, both convicted in 1985 of rape and other charges (in unrelated cases), are from New York City. Like Deskovic, they worked with the Cardozo-based Innocence Project to regain their freedom.
Deskovic’s case, from acceptance to exoneration, was unusually quick. More typical were the cases of Alan Newton and Scott Fappiano, which involved tracking down lost evidence. In fact, according to results of a recent preliminary study conducted by the Innocence Project, published this year, 50 percent of New York City cases are closed due to lost or destroyed evidence.
Deskovic’s case was unique in that not only was his DNA determined not to match the DNA found on the victim, a classmate, 15, named Angela Correa, before his trial, but because of advances in technology, the man actually responsible, another Peekskill resident already in prison for a murder he committed after Deskovic was sent away, was identified. And when confronted with the new evidence, he confessed.
Deskovic says he and the victim knew each other’s names and were in some classes together but that was about it. And both have been described as students who kept to themselves for the most part, in school. “I was into sports, but I was not a jock … That was outside of school … In school, I was more to myself,” he says. So how did he end up as a suspect if he was barely associated with her? The state’s theory was that he had a crush on her and was jealous that she was having sex with someone else, which led to the rape and murder, but Maggie Taylor, the intake worker who convinced Nina Morrison, his lawyer at Innocence, to take the case, says it was much simpler and much more unlucky. “He originally made his way onto a long list of suspects because he was late to school the day after the victim disappeared.”
Their interest in him grew because he attended the victim’s wake several times, which led them to conclude that “he was unusually distraught at her death.”
Ultimately the Peekskill police extracted what would prove to be a false confession using tactics that included food-deprivation, good cop/bad cop interrogation tactics, and by playing on his adolescent interest in detective work. “That’s kind of like what drew me in,” he says. After Deskovic refused to take a polygraph test because he knew it was inadmissible in court, the officers bribed him into compliance. “Eventually what happens is that they tell me that … if I agree to take this polygraph test that I’d be given even greater access to their files” to investigate the case further. In court police would later testify that the results of his polygraph exam were “inconclusive” but in their interrogation they lied to him by telling him he had failed it, Deskovic says.
It all took place during a series of interrogations, over what Deskovic estimates was a couple of months.
As for the police’s initial concern about his being “unusually distraught” over the victim’s death, he explains that “when you’re 16 years old, I mean you think everyone’s gonna grow old and then they die … [It] kind of like shattered that myth for me, you know, so it caused me [to] get upset.”
Some of the major advances in DNA testing since the time of Deskovic’s conviction are that today, STR (Short Tandem Repeat) testing enables investigators to get a much more specific picture of a DNA sample, with a lower likelihood of a random match occurring, and that mitochondrial testing can test hair samples even if they don’t have roots. Who knows if Jeff Deskovic would have eventually gotten out by virtue of the fact that the old DNA technology had excluded him as a suspect when compared to the DNA found on the victim, but most important to getting him out of prison was the NY State DNA databank, a state version of the FBI’s CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), which was not fully operational until 1998. With it, it suddenly became possible to test Deskovic’s DNA against a huge database of offenders. This is how Steven Cunningham, who actually raped and killed Angela Correa, was found.
The September hearing resulted in Deskovic’s release from prison, but he wasn’t officially exonerated until November 2nd at the state supreme court in White Plains. This is where I first meet him.
As I wait to enter Judge Richard A. Molea’s courtroom, I see Deskovic pacing the halls, chewing gum. He converted to Islam in prison and has a long beard that contrasts with his short dark hair. He’s wearing black slip-on sneakers, white socks and blue suit that’s a little bit short around the ankles. Keys hang from his belt.
He knows that I may attend, but I have chosen to quietly observe the proceedings, take notes, and not interact with him until our scheduled meeting in Manhattan, the next day. But, when I go inside, I make the mistake of sitting almost directly behind him. All the other reporters present seem to be on the opposite side of the aisle. He turns around and politely asks me my name and which organization I’m with. Though our exchange is brief and I am able to shrink quickly back into anonymity, I can sense how intense he is. We shake hands, and his are sweaty as he waits for the vindication he’s been seeking for the past 16 years.
On this day, and during the next day, I observe something that Deskovic is not shy about acknowledging at all, that while he has educated himself, and is physically a grown man, he has not matured in the same way a free man would have between the ages of 16 and 32.
“I was a young man when I went into prison. I was just, I was 17 years old and so I mean there are times when … I don’t really fully feel like an adult,” he says to reporters outside the courthouse when the hearing is finished.
“I think Jeff is fascinating in that he was convicted at such a young age, that to be put in a prison with adult males, he had to grow up very, very fast. But on the flip side to be completely separated from social [development],” Michelle Rosengarten, the Cardozo law student assigned to him as part of the clinic Scheck and Neufeld run, says.
Deskovic is being treated for post traumatic stress disorder and says that it’s hard for him “to trust people … people are kind to me—I wait for them to turn on me … I’m … very apprehensive of people.” This probably explains his screening me in the courtroom. After all, is it fair to call a guy “cagey” when he’s been in an actual cage for years on end?
However in transition Deskovic may be psychosocially, he is unusually poised speaking to the public. “When he first was released, he spoke without notes for about two hours … and he was incredibly eloquent … It was astounding,” Rosengarten remembers. “And … passionate, you know. Very passionate.”
Though in prison he earned an associates degree—one year short of a bachelors since, he says, financial aid for prisoners was taken away—and he has several vocational certificates, Deskovic is unemployed and virtually penniless. And were it not for an Islamic center in the Hudson Valley that’s giving him a free place to stay, he might be homeless too. He plans to sue the state for compensation, but is desperate for work in the immediate future. And while he has conventional goals like marrying one day and starting a family, he has already begun to chart the course of his life as an activist for criminal justice and prison reform.
He views his ordeal with the same perspective as the Innocence Project: each individual exoneration, 185 including his own have been achieved using DNA evidence so far, is not only a shocking example of injustice, but another example of systemic problems that need to be addressed so reforms can be made.
Deskovic was not given a chance to speak at the exoneration hearing, which disappointed him. One of the things he would have said, after apologies on behalf of the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office and the Peekskill Police Department were made, and after Judge Molea commended the “committed defense attorneys” and “open-minded DA’s” who allowed the retesting of DNA to go forward, was that it should be more than “lip service.” “What I wanted to say was ‘be an advocate for changes in the system … Judges go to gatherings where changes are recommended to legislatures and you know grassroot movement type things … If everybody is really sorry, then let’s be committed to this not happening again. Not to me. The larger picture. Everybody else.”
Among the reforms that the Innocence Project is calling for is videotaped interrogations as standard procedure in police departments to ensure that suspects are not coerced or tricked into confessing for crimes they are not guilty of, and so that when suspects who are guilty confess, there are no lingering questions about the circumstances of the interrogation. Currently, over 5,000 police departments across the country tape interrogations, Barry Scheck says. But more departments have been slow to embrace taping, despite information made available by the Innocence Project to them about its benefits. “I think that there’s a lot of misconceptions among people in law enforcement that this is somehow going to hurt their cases or make it more difficult for them to get statements from people who are guilty. That is not the case.” Departments that tape interrogations have found that suspects waive their Miranda rights all the time, “and that evidence is far more persuasive to juries and judges if it is videotaped and it seemed to be more reliable, which it is. So that’s a reform really … of law enforcement. It protects the innocent and it helps find those who are guilty.”
Scheck hopes that Deskovic’s case will be an added push in this direction.
Aside from false confessions, the Innocence Project is trying to address mistaken eyewitness identifications, police and prosecutorial misconduct, incompetent criminal defense issues, junk science (statistical exaggeration or falsified results or credentials, for example), snitch testimony, and outdated forensic tests, and offer reforms to the criminal justice system so the right people end up doing time.
Michelle Rosengarten says that in New York State, one of the biggest problems is parole. “Once you get to … prison in New York particularly, parole is near impossible. A lot of … parole boards require that you accept guilt for what you’ve done” to be granted parole. But we have clients … like, ‘No. I did not do this. I’ve been saying this for 25 years. I did not do this.’ So they don’t get parole.”
She also thinks the limited resources public defenders are given puts indigent defendants at a major advantage. The Innocence Project advocates reforms include providing pay to public defenders that is commensurate to what prosecutors get in their region to attract more competent attorneys, lower caseloads, fixed standards of adequate defense by jurisdiction, and federal funding that is relative to what prosecutors in their jurisdiction receive.
In 2004, the highest court in state declared the death penalty unconstitutional in New York because it concluded that its jury deadlock provision was in violation of due process. More recently Governor Pataki proposed reinstating the death penalty for cop killers, but so far it is still off-the-books.
It’s fortunate for Deskovic, whose appeals ran out six years ago, because he was convicted of felony murder. “That’s a violent crime, and the underlying crime under felony murder was the rape, which often serves as the aggravating circumstance in capital murder cases,” he says. “I would’ve been eligible for the death penalty and I almost certainly would’ve gotten [it]. Especially with the amount of publicity, the amount of fear, and … it was a heinous crime that was committed. So when you add all these things up … I have a public defender … I’m poor … I would’ve been executed.” Keeping the death penalty out of New York State is part of the message he wants to get out, now that he’s free. He’s already got a public relations manager, a friend of a friend from Peekskill, who he trusts to help him with this. (“I’ll tell you this much, I’m gonna make sure nobody screws him over.”) Speaking engagements are planned.
He’s also committed to working on introducing reforms to the treatment of prisoners. Drawing on his unfortunately long incarceration, he says that contrary to popular belief there aren’t many inmates who claim they’re innocent. But the ones who do and write the Innocence Project frustrate him, “because they clog the system up.” Maggie Taylor, who reads letters from inmates hoping for representation, says the New York Innocence Project receives 250 letters a month and there’s a backlog.
Deskovic is working on getting his driver’s license. And he also wants to start reading books outside a prison library and jogging, and have fun, whatever, but he hasn’t yet. He did manage to get to Great Adventure though.
-- Matt Elzweig
Election 2006 and The Puffet Show: Come on, man … Gimme something I can use.
Our Town downtown
November 13, 2006
Having lived through the Presidential quasi-elections of 2000 and 2004, I know not to bother paying attention to exit polls. Exit polls, I figure, are like those spooky Nielsen Ratings. Does anyone actually know a Nielsen Family? Okay, maybe, those, exist. But how reliable could a system be, if it consists of sending out low level pollsters to wait around like third round draft pick safeties, (please excuse the sports analogy), for voters to walk out of voting centers.
A higher-up here has been known to write editorials that come down hard on the one thing that ties Americans of all races, creeds, sexual and political orientations together: sitting on our asses and watching 30 minute who’dathunkits complete with short interspersed recordings that cue, remind, or often just tell us, where to laugh.
But I admit I’ve been a hypocrite, to an extent – being a book snob, when I not-so-long ago consumed such highbrow fare as “True Life: I’m a Staten Island Girl,” and have watched my fair share of “American Chopper” and “Law & Order SVU” episodes.
But on election night, at, let’s say seven, in a combination of boredom and the exhaustion that comes from an entire day spent reading Tolstoy (honest…), and being something of a political junkie, I turned on the tube to see if any of the returns were in.
The usual suspects on CNN, MSNBC and that other station that rhymes with McCarthy (almost) greeted me from behind the glass. They were flapping their jaws about this race and that race, and its portents – with their poofy coifs and their shiny skin, in front of infographics on huge screens behind them, or in some cases floating in the ether in front of them.
It wasn’t long before the uselessness of exit polls was demonstrated again. Almost immediately, one scoreboard showed a whopping margin between (now-unemployed) Senator George Allen and his challenger, Jim Webb, in Virginia – with Allen in the lead. I began to tell myself I’d learn more watching something like “Ultimate Fighter” if it was on, or “Globe Trekker,” if I was feeling studious. I could find out who the election winners were, in the morning.
But I gave in to impulse and tuned in to the various Names You Know. And there they were, big media’s The Puffets, filling up two-minute air pockets with, on the average, fifteen to thirty seconds of information, most of it speculative.
Yes, many of them have unusually symmetrical features, although the biggest timehogs tend to have killer wardrobes and super-competent makeup artists to thank for this effect. What they don’t have, for the most part, is anything to say. An image that comes to mind is of people who have mastered the black art of treading water with their mouths.
There are products out there, and pundits are products, that are actually useful. Someone really sharp designed those cardboard coffee holder things and deserves all the riches it’s yielded. But whoever invented The Puffets deserves no such credit.
I didn’t entirely abandon my square-shaped master in the end. But I did switch over to something decidedly unhip: C-SPAN. And there she was: an unassuming woman –very attractive, not bootylicious – a real moderator, sitting at a desk with nothing behind her but a nondescript newsroom and I believed her. It was obviously not her first time in front of a camera – but this wasn’t AC 360°, or The No-Spin Zone or Scarborough Country.
She was front and center, but not the star. People called in from different parts of the country, more or less to tell her who they were voting for. And after they spoke, she would ask them calmly, something along the lines of “and what are the big issues for you?” I think she really wanted to know.
-- Matt Elzweig
November 13, 2006
Having lived through the Presidential quasi-elections of 2000 and 2004, I know not to bother paying attention to exit polls. Exit polls, I figure, are like those spooky Nielsen Ratings. Does anyone actually know a Nielsen Family? Okay, maybe, those, exist. But how reliable could a system be, if it consists of sending out low level pollsters to wait around like third round draft pick safeties, (please excuse the sports analogy), for voters to walk out of voting centers.
A higher-up here has been known to write editorials that come down hard on the one thing that ties Americans of all races, creeds, sexual and political orientations together: sitting on our asses and watching 30 minute who’dathunkits complete with short interspersed recordings that cue, remind, or often just tell us, where to laugh.
But I admit I’ve been a hypocrite, to an extent – being a book snob, when I not-so-long ago consumed such highbrow fare as “True Life: I’m a Staten Island Girl,” and have watched my fair share of “American Chopper” and “Law & Order SVU” episodes.
But on election night, at, let’s say seven, in a combination of boredom and the exhaustion that comes from an entire day spent reading Tolstoy (honest…), and being something of a political junkie, I turned on the tube to see if any of the returns were in.
The usual suspects on CNN, MSNBC and that other station that rhymes with McCarthy (almost) greeted me from behind the glass. They were flapping their jaws about this race and that race, and its portents – with their poofy coifs and their shiny skin, in front of infographics on huge screens behind them, or in some cases floating in the ether in front of them.
It wasn’t long before the uselessness of exit polls was demonstrated again. Almost immediately, one scoreboard showed a whopping margin between (now-unemployed) Senator George Allen and his challenger, Jim Webb, in Virginia – with Allen in the lead. I began to tell myself I’d learn more watching something like “Ultimate Fighter” if it was on, or “Globe Trekker,” if I was feeling studious. I could find out who the election winners were, in the morning.
But I gave in to impulse and tuned in to the various Names You Know. And there they were, big media’s The Puffets, filling up two-minute air pockets with, on the average, fifteen to thirty seconds of information, most of it speculative.
Yes, many of them have unusually symmetrical features, although the biggest timehogs tend to have killer wardrobes and super-competent makeup artists to thank for this effect. What they don’t have, for the most part, is anything to say. An image that comes to mind is of people who have mastered the black art of treading water with their mouths.
There are products out there, and pundits are products, that are actually useful. Someone really sharp designed those cardboard coffee holder things and deserves all the riches it’s yielded. But whoever invented The Puffets deserves no such credit.
I didn’t entirely abandon my square-shaped master in the end. But I did switch over to something decidedly unhip: C-SPAN. And there she was: an unassuming woman –very attractive, not bootylicious – a real moderator, sitting at a desk with nothing behind her but a nondescript newsroom and I believed her. It was obviously not her first time in front of a camera – but this wasn’t AC 360°, or The No-Spin Zone or Scarborough Country.
She was front and center, but not the star. People called in from different parts of the country, more or less to tell her who they were voting for. And after they spoke, she would ask them calmly, something along the lines of “and what are the big issues for you?” I think she really wanted to know.
-- Matt Elzweig
Monday, November 06, 2006
Movie Review: "Babel"
Our Town downtown
November 6, 2006
Playing at: Regal Union Square Stadium 14
Run Time: 142 min.
Rating: R
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
It’s hard not to feel, even by the middle of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest maze of intersecting tales, a little bit underfed. And that may be the point, or at least part of it. On the other hand, there may be no point at all, regardless of Iñárritu’s intent. And how this sits with audiences is a matter of personal taste.
The action takes place in seemingly unrelated locales: Mexico, Japan, Morocco and briefly, California. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett play an American couple traveling through the North African desert with a tour group. The tension regarding which one of them might be responsible for the death of one of their children becomes all but irrelevant when a bullet is fired into their bus and Susan (Cate Blanchett) is critically injured, hours away from what, to them, is civilization. This event is the center of gravity, the axis on which all the other stories, on all the other continents, are spun.
As its title implies, the film uses the many different languages, spoken, gesticulated and insinuated that its characters speak, to create or identify the obstacles and barriers between them.
It would seem there are two ways to watch this movie. You could expect literature and be disappointed. Or you could expect something else and be either satisfied or pleasantly surprised, even. “Babel” floats somewhere in between literature and entertainment.
It’s likely that Iñárritu, being an Auteur, views the latest installment in his “trilogy” (“Amores Perros”; “21 Grams” being “Babel’s” predecessors) as some big existential/geopolitical statement. If this is true, but the audience is wise enough to ignore that likely sentiment and take the movie strictly on its own merits, they will enjoy it plenty.
The earlier movies in the trilogy (I should note that I didn’t see “Amores Perros”) share “Babel’s” intertwined story structure but little else with it or each other, at least on a literal level.
The way these stories start out, physically and culturally so far apart, and then coalesce, takes the technical mastery of a virtuoso to design. But it’s as if when Iñárritu is devising a concept for a movie, rather than thinking carefully about which individual stories and characters would strike that certain chord of emotion, or illustrate that something in the world that is really eating at him at a given moment in time – he just steps up to the narrative slot machine, or super computer or character-generating wheel of fortune, throws caution to the wind, and sees what the gods of dialogue, setting, plot, conflict and all the other elements have in store for him.
If the people in this fairly bleak movie have anything in common it’s a deep fear of abandonment and rejection, and the consolation in the connections they are actually able to make with one another.
The big indicator that the tangle of strangely intriguing stories in “Babel” – the undocumented housekeeper who, in an emergency, takes the American kids in her charge on a border run; the wide-eyed, deaf high school girl in Tokyo, desperate for attention from the opposite sex, who thinks the police suspect her father of killing her mother; and the central story of the American couple in Morocco, and the stories within those stories – is not going to grab hold of most people for much longer than the two and a half hours they spend watching it, is the ease with which this movie can be compared with other, older works, many of which employ the same interconnecting story technique: “City of God”; “Talk to Her”; “Syriana”; “Traffic”; “The Sheltering Sky” and that over-referenced movie from 1994 that has the initials P & F and set the current trend in motion, are just some of them.
Like authors Haruki Murakami and Paul Auster, Iñárritu is obviously fascinated by the incredible coincidences that take place everyday in peoples’ lives, the relationship between individual actions and the chains of events they cause, and the more metaphysical question of whether chance is a real thing – whether these odd happenings are coincidences or something more. And if that’s all there is to it, well that’s just fine.
-- Matt Elzweig
November 6, 2006
Playing at: Regal Union Square Stadium 14
Run Time: 142 min.
Rating: R
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
It’s hard not to feel, even by the middle of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest maze of intersecting tales, a little bit underfed. And that may be the point, or at least part of it. On the other hand, there may be no point at all, regardless of Iñárritu’s intent. And how this sits with audiences is a matter of personal taste.
The action takes place in seemingly unrelated locales: Mexico, Japan, Morocco and briefly, California. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett play an American couple traveling through the North African desert with a tour group. The tension regarding which one of them might be responsible for the death of one of their children becomes all but irrelevant when a bullet is fired into their bus and Susan (Cate Blanchett) is critically injured, hours away from what, to them, is civilization. This event is the center of gravity, the axis on which all the other stories, on all the other continents, are spun.
As its title implies, the film uses the many different languages, spoken, gesticulated and insinuated that its characters speak, to create or identify the obstacles and barriers between them.
It would seem there are two ways to watch this movie. You could expect literature and be disappointed. Or you could expect something else and be either satisfied or pleasantly surprised, even. “Babel” floats somewhere in between literature and entertainment.
It’s likely that Iñárritu, being an Auteur, views the latest installment in his “trilogy” (“Amores Perros”; “21 Grams” being “Babel’s” predecessors) as some big existential/geopolitical statement. If this is true, but the audience is wise enough to ignore that likely sentiment and take the movie strictly on its own merits, they will enjoy it plenty.
The earlier movies in the trilogy (I should note that I didn’t see “Amores Perros”) share “Babel’s” intertwined story structure but little else with it or each other, at least on a literal level.
The way these stories start out, physically and culturally so far apart, and then coalesce, takes the technical mastery of a virtuoso to design. But it’s as if when Iñárritu is devising a concept for a movie, rather than thinking carefully about which individual stories and characters would strike that certain chord of emotion, or illustrate that something in the world that is really eating at him at a given moment in time – he just steps up to the narrative slot machine, or super computer or character-generating wheel of fortune, throws caution to the wind, and sees what the gods of dialogue, setting, plot, conflict and all the other elements have in store for him.
If the people in this fairly bleak movie have anything in common it’s a deep fear of abandonment and rejection, and the consolation in the connections they are actually able to make with one another.
The big indicator that the tangle of strangely intriguing stories in “Babel” – the undocumented housekeeper who, in an emergency, takes the American kids in her charge on a border run; the wide-eyed, deaf high school girl in Tokyo, desperate for attention from the opposite sex, who thinks the police suspect her father of killing her mother; and the central story of the American couple in Morocco, and the stories within those stories – is not going to grab hold of most people for much longer than the two and a half hours they spend watching it, is the ease with which this movie can be compared with other, older works, many of which employ the same interconnecting story technique: “City of God”; “Talk to Her”; “Syriana”; “Traffic”; “The Sheltering Sky” and that over-referenced movie from 1994 that has the initials P & F and set the current trend in motion, are just some of them.
Like authors Haruki Murakami and Paul Auster, Iñárritu is obviously fascinated by the incredible coincidences that take place everyday in peoples’ lives, the relationship between individual actions and the chains of events they cause, and the more metaphysical question of whether chance is a real thing – whether these odd happenings are coincidences or something more. And if that’s all there is to it, well that’s just fine.
-- Matt Elzweig
Q & A with Martin Murphy, Inventor
Our Town downtown
November 6, 2006
Growing up on a farm in the south of Ireland, Martin Murphy’s resourcefulness and mechanical ability were clear early on. At eight, he made bicycles with spare parts and sold them to kids in his neighborhood. At 16 he ran away and supported himself as a self-taught carpenter and plumber. He wandered for the next nine years, stopping in Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, the US and his home country. He got to New York in 1995.
What was your first project?
The first one I can remember was a condom packaging. It could only open the way it goes on. So I was calling it “The Easy Pop.”
I’m not sure I can picture it.
Let’s say that was the condom packaging? [Demonstrates] Well you push it through with your thumb, but then it, goes on the way it comes out, so you can’t fuck that up. You know, a blind man could do it. I mean everybody’s put a condom on backwards some time, right?
Do you make prototypes?
The first one that I remember was a toothbrush that puts toothpaste on itself. And it took me about an hour and a half to make a prototype. I just cut the toothbrushes off, drilled a hole up through it, and a hole down through the hairs, and then duct taped it to the toothpaste tube.
Did you ever worry about roommates or housemates swiping your ideas?
Before I used to worry … Cause you get one idea and you think ‘oh my God,’ you know. I get ideas every day, so I don’t, worry about it anymore … Now it’s been known that there’s a universal consciousness. So while I might have an idea here in New York City … somebody in Australia has the same idea almost at the same time … [It] happened to Darwin and different people at different times.
Did you test out ideas on the people you were living with, or just trust your instincts?
No, well it’s not really like that. I come up with things by looking at things’ alternatives. So if I have a Chinese meal, I’m looking at the chopsticks in a different way than most people look at chopsticks … Actually that’s something I have an idea for – “Chopsticks for Dummies.” There’s trainer chopsticks out there, but I have another idea for chopsticks that’s kind of foolproof.
Is there a community of inventors here, or do they shy away from one another?
Well, I haven’t met that many other inventors to be honest. So, I’m trying to branch out and create a little mastermind, like you know, a think tank? So I’m trying to meet other people in the field. And I’ve met some. For instance, I’m working with an electronic engineer who’s retired. But he’s working with me on a meditation training device I’m patenting. And he has 12 patents with Bell Labs. So, he’s an inventor.
Is this the yoga mat idea I heard about?
No, that’s something else. But I do a lot of yoga, so anything I do, anything I get involved with, I get ideas, for.
Can people “get into” inventing, or is it an inborn talent?
Well, I’m, at the moment, actively trying to figure out the process for myself, but perhaps I want to teach it later. But for now ideas sometimes just pop into my head. So like the meditation device just popped into my head while I was trying to meditate … Almost everybody you meet [says] ‘oh I have an idea.’
Do they lack follow-through or creativity?
I guess they don’t have follow-through. And the follow-through is very difficult. It’s something I’m … that’s why I’m only working on a few things right now, because … I have ideas all the time, so I have a big book of ideas.
A book?
One of the first things an inventor should do is write their idea down, and document it. Put it in a book where you can’t really tear the pages out. Date it and have somebody sign it for you. That’s your first documentation of your idea.
Were you always confident about your inventions? Did anyone ever discourage you?
Not everybody sees your vision. That’s why you’re the inventor, you know what I mean? … When Edison invented the lightbulb … people [said] ‘yeah, what good is that gonna be?’ because nobody grasped the concept of every home having electricity … You’re always gonna get naysayers and devil’s advocates and whatnot. And it’s good. Sometimes it makes you step it up a notch.
Speaking of Edison, does anyone loom large for you?
Leonardo Da Vinci is one of my, mentors. That might sound a little, retarded, ‘mentor,’ but you know, if you read enough books about somebody and dwell on what they dwelled on, you can’t help but pick up a little something here and there.
Does New York present you with any unique obstacles as an inventor?
Lots of opportunity. And opportunities can be obstacles … It’s kind of like, if your goal is straight ahead, as opportunities come up you start veering left and right rather than going straight ahead … So you have to be diligent in what your focus is.
What would you tell someone who wants to create and market something?
If you have a good idea … then you gotta take it to fruition. Nobody’s gonna make it happen for you.
And what’s the first step?
The first step is to write it down. The second step is to define it. And it’s not about the product per se … It’s how you’re doing the product, how you market the product.
-- Matt Elzweig
November 6, 2006
Growing up on a farm in the south of Ireland, Martin Murphy’s resourcefulness and mechanical ability were clear early on. At eight, he made bicycles with spare parts and sold them to kids in his neighborhood. At 16 he ran away and supported himself as a self-taught carpenter and plumber. He wandered for the next nine years, stopping in Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, the US and his home country. He got to New York in 1995.
What was your first project?
The first one I can remember was a condom packaging. It could only open the way it goes on. So I was calling it “The Easy Pop.”
I’m not sure I can picture it.
Let’s say that was the condom packaging? [Demonstrates] Well you push it through with your thumb, but then it, goes on the way it comes out, so you can’t fuck that up. You know, a blind man could do it. I mean everybody’s put a condom on backwards some time, right?
Do you make prototypes?
The first one that I remember was a toothbrush that puts toothpaste on itself. And it took me about an hour and a half to make a prototype. I just cut the toothbrushes off, drilled a hole up through it, and a hole down through the hairs, and then duct taped it to the toothpaste tube.
Did you ever worry about roommates or housemates swiping your ideas?
Before I used to worry … Cause you get one idea and you think ‘oh my God,’ you know. I get ideas every day, so I don’t, worry about it anymore … Now it’s been known that there’s a universal consciousness. So while I might have an idea here in New York City … somebody in Australia has the same idea almost at the same time … [It] happened to Darwin and different people at different times.
Did you test out ideas on the people you were living with, or just trust your instincts?
No, well it’s not really like that. I come up with things by looking at things’ alternatives. So if I have a Chinese meal, I’m looking at the chopsticks in a different way than most people look at chopsticks … Actually that’s something I have an idea for – “Chopsticks for Dummies.” There’s trainer chopsticks out there, but I have another idea for chopsticks that’s kind of foolproof.
Is there a community of inventors here, or do they shy away from one another?
Well, I haven’t met that many other inventors to be honest. So, I’m trying to branch out and create a little mastermind, like you know, a think tank? So I’m trying to meet other people in the field. And I’ve met some. For instance, I’m working with an electronic engineer who’s retired. But he’s working with me on a meditation training device I’m patenting. And he has 12 patents with Bell Labs. So, he’s an inventor.
Is this the yoga mat idea I heard about?
No, that’s something else. But I do a lot of yoga, so anything I do, anything I get involved with, I get ideas, for.
Can people “get into” inventing, or is it an inborn talent?
Well, I’m, at the moment, actively trying to figure out the process for myself, but perhaps I want to teach it later. But for now ideas sometimes just pop into my head. So like the meditation device just popped into my head while I was trying to meditate … Almost everybody you meet [says] ‘oh I have an idea.’
Do they lack follow-through or creativity?
I guess they don’t have follow-through. And the follow-through is very difficult. It’s something I’m … that’s why I’m only working on a few things right now, because … I have ideas all the time, so I have a big book of ideas.
A book?
One of the first things an inventor should do is write their idea down, and document it. Put it in a book where you can’t really tear the pages out. Date it and have somebody sign it for you. That’s your first documentation of your idea.
Were you always confident about your inventions? Did anyone ever discourage you?
Not everybody sees your vision. That’s why you’re the inventor, you know what I mean? … When Edison invented the lightbulb … people [said] ‘yeah, what good is that gonna be?’ because nobody grasped the concept of every home having electricity … You’re always gonna get naysayers and devil’s advocates and whatnot. And it’s good. Sometimes it makes you step it up a notch.
Speaking of Edison, does anyone loom large for you?
Leonardo Da Vinci is one of my, mentors. That might sound a little, retarded, ‘mentor,’ but you know, if you read enough books about somebody and dwell on what they dwelled on, you can’t help but pick up a little something here and there.
Does New York present you with any unique obstacles as an inventor?
Lots of opportunity. And opportunities can be obstacles … It’s kind of like, if your goal is straight ahead, as opportunities come up you start veering left and right rather than going straight ahead … So you have to be diligent in what your focus is.
What would you tell someone who wants to create and market something?
If you have a good idea … then you gotta take it to fruition. Nobody’s gonna make it happen for you.
And what’s the first step?
The first step is to write it down. The second step is to define it. And it’s not about the product per se … It’s how you’re doing the product, how you market the product.
-- Matt Elzweig
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