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\"I researched his drawings from the 1930's and 40's and [Paula Laurence] was everywhere. [Al Hirschfeld] had chosen to draw her in various character roles; her outgoing personality and unusual facial structure was perfect as caricatures. We all finally met and sat together at a party, and although Al and Paula didn't communicate very much, Paula and I became fast friends. How I learned to adore her larger-than-life personality and great warmth! When The Line King, this documentary about Al, was being created by Susan Dryfoos, I advised her to interview Paula about Al's life in the 1930's. She was very astute: 'He was a very private person and kept his stories for himself.' About Al and sports: 'He never sweated or participated in sports. The only thing he ever lifted was a coffee cup.'

Though I don't necessarily agree with its conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed Ron Rosenbaum's article \"Day I Was Stopped From C.I.A. Approach Now Appears Karmic\" in the Jan. 30 edition of The Observer. Mr. Rosenbaum's story reminded me of my own brush with C.I.A. perimeter security a few years back. Thanks to Rebecca Dana for that story [\"The Last Schlub on TV,\" Jan. 16]. The metaphor of Roger Clark as Oscar Madison and Pat Kiernan as Felix Unger was inspired. I know Ms. Dana probably only wrote the story for an excuse to talk to Pat Kiernan, but she picked the right guy. I loved how their morning news item on subway iPod thefts degenerated into Roger Clark pulling a duct-taped portable CD player from his jacket pocket.

The researchers at University College London conducted experiments in which test subjects were told to play a cooperative game in pairs. But a handful of actors were secretly brought in, and some were told to cheat and behave selfishly. The test subjects then witnessed everyone being subjected to mild electrical shocks. When one of the \"nice\" players was being shocked, both men and women had an empathic response. But when one of the \"selfish\" players was receiving the jolt, men's brains showed high activity in the satisfaction region and none in the empathy center, while women's brains were still lit up in the empathy area and showed no activity indicating satisfaction. She didn't just work here: [Wendy Wasserstein] was a New Yorker through and through, born in Brooklyn to a textile manufacturer and an amateur dancer. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College, then studied writing at City College and developed her dramatic talents at the Yale University School of Drama. And the plays came spooling off her pen: Her first was Any Woman Can't, produced Off Broadway in 1973, followed by her first big success, Uncommon Women and Others, in 1977. With The Heidi Chronicles in 1989, she perfectly captured the contradictions of women who were schooled in the feminism of the 1960's and 1970's but found themselves driving the kids around in a Volvo in the 1980's. The play won the Tony Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her next play, The Sisters Rosensweig, had the largest advance sale for a non-musical in Broadway history. And she continued to be prolific, with solid plays such as An American Daughter, Old Money and Third, which recently completed its New York run. Along the way, she found time to write a best-selling children's book and to start the Open Doors program, which takes underprivileged public-school students to the theater. She also gave birth to a daughter, Lucy Jane, who will surely grow up hearing the most miraculous tales of her mother's love and talent.

Prior Articles: George and Hilly published 11/14/05 George and Hilly published 11/07/05 George and Hilly published 10/24/05 George and Hilly published 10/17/05 George and Hilly published 10/ 10/05 George and Hilly published 10/03/05 George 'n' Hilly, Back in Couples, Turn on the Doc published 09/26/05 But Should We Get Married? Part III published 08/29/05 But Should We Get Married? published 08/15/05 Should I Get Married? My Hilly Joining Me In Couples Session published 08/08/05

The New Group often presents Mr. Leigh's plays in New York, and their artistic director, Mr. Elliott, always directs: now the dark comedy Abigail's Party, with Jennifer Jason Leigh; a few years ago Smelling a Rat; maybe eight years ago Goose-Pimples; and a decade ago, at the inception of the New Group, Mr. Leigh's Ecstasy. Mr. Elliott laughed. \"You would have laughed at T.S. Eliot,\" Mr. Leigh said. \"Do you know who G.H. Elliott is?\" Mr. Leigh riffed. \"He was known as G.H. Elliott, the Chocolate-Coloured Coon. He was a blackface performer.\"

Yet he could not. Somehow, Americans bought Mr. [George W. Bush]'s version of [John Kerry] more than they did Mr. Kerry's version of himself. And for all the post-election grumbling about the Republican Party's brilliant, bloodthirsty strategists, the fact was, John Kerry defeated John Kerry. There was something, it had to be said, a bit phony about Mr. Kerry's entire campaign. A sense that he was somehow not leveling with voters. The popular image of Mr. Kerry was that he was \"the smart one,\" as opposed to Mr. Bush's rather dopey demeanor. But just how smart was Mr. Kerry? He was always cagey about releasing his college transcripts from Yale University, and now it's clear why: It turns out the smart one wasn't quite as smart as the dumb one. Mr. Kerry's cumulative average at Yale was 76; Mr. Bush's was 77. It seems neither man lit up the New Haven sky with brilliance. Instead, they were masters of mediocrity. During his college years, Mr. Kerry, class of '66, earned five D's, including two in history and one in political science. Mr. Bush, class of '68, only received one D, in astronomy. Mr. Kerry's highest grade was an 89, in political science. Mr. Bush's highest grade was an 88, which he earned in three courses: anthropology, history and philosophy. That Mr. Kerry stumbled through Yale with a C average doesn't mean he would not have made a better President than Mr. Bush. But it does expose the distance between the campaign image Mr. Kerry tried to project, that of the cerebral realist running against the dissolute party boy, and who he really was. And the voters detected that false note, in several aspects of Mr. Kerry's persona, and concluded there was something a bit arrogant about the man from Massachusetts. And because Mr. Kerry just wasn't comfortable being himself, he allowed Mr. Bush's team to define him.

\"The fact that they tolerated this invasion of their territory is kind of amazing to me,\" marveled George Bliss, who operated a pedicab hub adjacent to the Angels' clubhouse before the dorm took its place. He recalled the days when tour buses would troll his block, looking for grit: Angels would rise to the occasion, hoisting bricks overhead and menacing the glassed-in out-of-towners. One prankster, he added, liked to crack a bullwhip on the hoods of passing cars. The students and the Angels both have a vested interest in the law, and in a perfect world one can imagine a symbiosis taking root: The gruff but affable Angels would recognize that they've gained a valuable resource right next-door, in the form of free legal services. And the law students would acquire experience, and a dash of thrilling glamour, while defending the Angels in court. Baroness Mariuccia is the widow of Baron Guido Zerilli-Marimo, chairman of Ledoga-Lepetit, a Milan-based pharmaceutical empire. She was an employee at the company, a girl in her 20's, when she married the much older Sicilian chairman. When the company merged with Dow Chemicals in the 1960's, the baron retired, became a lecturer, an ambassador of the Order of Malta to Ethiopia and Portugal, and a member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of the Institut de France.

There was one problem: George W. Bush and members of Congress have been slow to adopt many of the commission's most urgent recommendations, and the country remains in grave danger of future attacks. So this week, the members of the commission announced they would be calling more hearings, having re-formed themselves into a private group: the 9/11 Public Discourse Project. The new group, which doesn't have subpoena power, is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and other philanthropic organizations. The hearings will look at the Bush administration's counterterrorism efforts and will culminate in a new report which will likely point to the vast gaps that still exist in the country's ability to defend itself. The group has asked the Bush administration for access to recent information about how the C.I.A., F.B.I. and State Department are responding to terrorist threats. It's safe to say that the White House and leaders of Congress are not thrilled. After all, Mr. Bush and Mr. [Donald Rumsfeld] vigorously opposed the previous hearings and fought with the commission over evidence and witnesses. Without any power to force witnesses to testify or subpoena documents, will the new hearings be effective? Fortunately, the 10 members of the commission are no slouches, and it would be foolish for the White House to stonewall them. In addition to Mr. [Thomas Kean], they include well-known power brokers like John Lehman, a former Secretary of the Navy; former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey; Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs; Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic former deputy attorney general; and former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste.

On a warm June evening, the novelist Rick Moody sat on the floor of the placid backroom of the Ludlow Street bar Pianos, peeking out from beneath the brim of a porkpie hat at a shag-haired musician named Hannah Marcus. She was crooning about \"dragon fruit\" and stealing lap blankets from United Airlines. They were both there for a sold-out party celebrating the second annual music issue of The Believer, the self-consciously earnest literary magazine published by McSweeney Publishing. When Christian indie-folk star Daniel Smith took the stage, the hushed mood became a bit reverent. Mr. Smith, who performs as Br. Danielson, usually dresses as a tree when he sings, but tonight he was wearing a pink polo shirt and pale-blue argyle sweater vest. He tapped the microphone and responded to a few quiet questions from Mr. Moody, his biggest fan. At the peak of the evening, while Wolf Parade windmilled their guitars below, McSweeney's managing editor Eli Horowitz stayed upstairs with Mr. [Andrew Leland] and arranged a pile of Michel Houellebecq books into a makeshift pillow, upon which he took a snooze.

It is essential that Mr. [Michael Bloomberg] focus on paying down the debt and cutting costs as he and the City Council work out the details of his budget. It was just last year that the state's Financial Control Board concluded that the city's finances were \"structurally unbalanced.\" The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has cautioned that the city's long-term financial health is far too dependent on Wall Street as a source of revenue through income and corporate taxes. And unlike in years past, we can't count on any help from Albany or Washington. George Pataki's atrocious management of the state's finances may result in annual budget gaps of $11 billion in three years, according to some estimates. And George W. Bush has shown himself to be small-minded when it comes to understanding how a healthy New York City economy is vital to the country's well-being. The current Mayoral campaign is an ideal opportunity for the various candidates to present their plans for the city's finances. Unfortunately, the Mayor's new budget again contains a politically motivated $400 property-tax rebate for homeowners, which will cost the city $250 million annually. But Mr. Bloomberg has a solid record of fiscal prudence: He's reduced the municipal work force by 18,000 employees, cut $3 billion from city agencies and increased taxes when necessary. He'll need to continue to be tough and unsentimental as he confronts the coming storm. New York is a town of exceptional people, and certainly one of them was Michael Tarnopol, who died in Manhattan last week. A quintessential New Yorker who rose to the top of his profession, Mr. Tarnopol lived a wide-ranging and generous life. All who knew him were touched by his decency and loyalty. His warmth, exuberance and sense of humor will be sorely missed, as evidenced by the outpouring of love and friendship since his death.