Goodbye to Ozzy

I'm glad Ozzy got voted off of Survivor Fans vs. Favoes last night. His first time around he was a really cool guy--he excelled at the challenges but never got an attitude about it. This time, he was arrogant and haughty. See ya later, Ozzy. You're not all that, BTW.

The tribe members made a really smart move last night. Ozzy would have won otherwise. To be honest, I didn;t think they had it in them. Good move, guys!

Blog Decisions

So this weekend I make a decision about my blog and other Web site material. I think this one is going away, to be replaced by another one, the theme of which I have to decide this weekend. One possibility is historic New York. Votes welcome!

The Real "Goodbar" Murder

One of the places my brother and I ate on his recent visit was the All State Cafe, which figured in one of New York's most fascinating murders, and the real-life inspiration for Judith Rossner's novel "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." The All State was once W.M. Tweads, the favorite hangout of a woman named Roseanne Quinn.

Quinn moved from college to Manhattan in 1966, knowing no one. After a day of teaching deaf children in the Bronx, Quinn would unwind in neighborhood bars, reading a book and sipping a glass of wine. She became a regular at Twead’s, a local bar across the street from her West 72nd St. studio apartment.

New Year’s Day in 1973 started out inauspiciously for Quinn. She had spent New Year’s Eve alone and was restless. Sometime after dinner, she went across the street to Twead’s, where she befriended a Wall Street stockbroker and his friend. Several hours later, she was dead. Nobody knew what happened until three days later, when one of Quinn’s colleagues became concerned at her uncharacteristic absence from work. The colleague convinced Quinn’s superintendent to open the woman’s apartment. They found Quinn sprawled on the floor—she had been raped, stabbed 18 times in the neck and stomach, and left with a red table candle inserted in her vagina.

In its brutality, Quinn’s killing shocked even seen-it-all New Yorkers. It didn’t help that Quinn lived in one of Manhattan’s safer neighborhoods, the middle-class Upper West Side. The murder’s ripple effect kept single women inside their apartments for weeks.

Quinn’s killer was 23-year-old John Wayne Wilson, a handsome drifter and sometime Times Square hustler. Wilson grew up unfocused and unmotivated in Indiana, married at age 18, fathered two daughters, and divorced in 1971.

When he was 20, Wilson moved to Florida, where he supported himself burglarizing summer cottages. He was arrested five times for illegal entry and larceny, disorderly conduct, and loitering. He was serving a year’s prison term when he escaped and made his way to New York, working the streets of Times Square. Wilson met Danny Murray, a gay stockbroker with whom Wilson ended up living for more than a year.

Described as an easy-going, uncomplicated man with little education, Wilson was, like Quinn, a social misfit. And despite his police record, Wilson was universally portrayed as simple and harmless.

On the night of the murders, Wilson and Murray went to Twead’s for an after-dinner drink. They met Quinn. When Murray went home at 11 o’clock, Wilson stayed behind. About 2 a.m., Wilson and Quinn went back to Quinn’s apartment, where a drunken Wilson couldn’t perform sexually. Quinn insulted him and Wilson flew into a rage, killing her. He returned to Murray’s apartment and confessed to what he’d done. The next day, with money from Murray, Wilson fled to Miami, then to his brother’s house in Indiana.

Within a few days of the murder, police had run out of leads. Clutching at straws, they published a sketch of the stockbroker based on a bartender’s description. Seeing his own face in the paper the next day, Murray became scared and called a lawyer. He later gave himself—and Wilson--up. Police tracked Wilson to Indiana and arrested him on January 11th. Four months later, as his case made its way through the criminal justice system, Wilson committed suicide using a noose he made from jailhouse bed sheets.

The Long Weekend

Whew! This weekend seemed like having a week off! That's what running around busy will do for you. It started off with dinner with my brother and family Friday night at Cafe Luxembourg on the Upper West Side, a restaurant I've heard a lot about for its food and quiet celeb clientele, and the food was good but the restaurant suffered from too-close tables and a noise level just below a roar. So much for Cafe Luxe.

On Saturday, off to see "Bodies: The Exhibition," which was less than I had imagined. It was well done for what it was, but basically the theme was, "the body's an amazing interconnected system of muscles and nerves and fibers," and then shows you all that in different body parts.

Then Sunday to Atlantic City and Monday catching up on a mountain of paperwork and Christmas leftover chores. I got about half done of what I wanted.

Bodies

Today my brother and his family arrive in the Big Apple for a couple of days of museums, restaurants, and exhibits. The highlight, for me anyway, is when we go to see "Bodies: The Exhibition," the renowned journey through the human form, using human forms--cadavers--to showcase just about everything (including child-bearing) about them; some exhibits show all the nerves in the body, some all the musculature, some bisect a body vertically and give you a side view, and so on. "Bodies" has been traveling the country and it's supposed to be an amazing show. I'm curious to see how my 11-year-old niece reacts: "Eew!" or "That's amazing!"

The only troubling thing about the exhibit is the rumor that some of the cadavers were Chinese political prisoners, and their deaths--and subsequent inclusion in the exhibit--were involuntary. No one seems to be able to confirm the stories (a colleague and I did a search), so I dropped a query to The Ethicist, the New York Times Magazine's arbiter of all things morally right to see if going to the exhibit was ethically reprehensible. So far, I haven't seen my question in the column.

Vacation Hangover

Back at work this morning with a vacation hangover--too much time off to pick up with the same energy as when you left, too little time off for it to be a true re-energizing vacation.

Four more days to the weekend....

The Mad Christmas Dash

Off I flew (on a bargain $40 JetBlue flight--to mark the inauguration of service to my hometown, Boston) to Beantown for a family Christmas. We started the holiday with a Christmas Eve performance of Holiday at Pops, a stocking full of holiday songs, sing-along Christmas carols, and a visit from St. Nick (left with Pops conductor Keith Lockhart). My favorites were a "Carol of the Bells," performed the only way it should be with a full (and volunteer, yet!) choir, and Santa Baby, a sassy 50s song that I admire for the playful way the chanteuse teases Santa with her list of extravagant gifts: "Santa Baby, a '54 convertible, too, light blue....") .

I invited the whole clan and then to dinner afterward, and we ate at a nice little place on Beacon Hill, Boston's Greenwich Village (albeit with hills). A nice way to spend Christmas Eve.

Then off to my hotel for a night's sleep, where every year they set out a late-night snack in your room (giant cookies and juice this year) and when you wake up in the morning, there's a stocking on the doorknob with sweets in it.

Then a mad rush to two of my brothers' and my folks, with kids and wrapping paper flying, to a flight home last night, exhausted after a day playing with 4 kids all day and setting up a drafting table (my gift to my nephew), a kids' video camera, and a DDR mat (my gift to my niece). I suck at DDR, by the way, but my niece, who's in dance classes, fared little better. We both need a lot of practice.

Today? Take down the Christmas tree and get caught up with paperwork, then off to the store to buy myself a Christmas gift (new DVD player).