Christiern

You might not want to visit the Waiters & Waitresses Club on 9th Street. Years ago, as the jukebox had patrons percolating to the sound of Aretha, I and some friends had a memorable experience there, but we were courting disaster.

Thanks for sharing this, Jim. The guy is funny, and insightful.

Now that I know it's potentially lethal, I'll consider shipping my unmodified box to a certain Pennsylvania Avenue address. Bill Evans at the White House--has a nice, rusty ring to it.

What does sepsis have to do with Bill Evans, the box, rust, "take5" or, for that matter anything in this thread? Just curious.

As I recall, the Katherine Dunham dancers are seen braving Lena's Stormy Weather.

I never did anything to clean up my Evans box--I wonder if making it silvery clean does not affect its value, especially since there almost was more buzz about the rust than the music. Have you thought of that?

My favorite scene: Tony getting slapped in the face by an old Tibetan monk.

March 16, 2006 "Drawing Arles" was purchased last year on costco.com for $39,999.99 and came with a certificate of authenticity identifying the drawing as a Picasso. It's Costco, but Is It Picasso? Art Sale in Doubt By CAROL KINO From diamonds to dog food to Dom Pérignon Champagne, Costco is known as an astute marketer of high and low. Recently, it even ventured into the rarefied world of Picasso, selling a crayon drawing at its Web site for a bargain $39,999.99. The buyer, Louis Knickerbocker, a meat distributor from Newport Beach, Calif., had never fancied himself a big-league collector. But as he was cruising to work in his sport utility vehicle one day, a radio news report about the Costco offering roused him to action. Mr. Knickerbocker, 39, quickly called his wife, Diana, on his cellphone and asked her to race to the Web site and charge the purchase to his American Express card. "They just sell the top quality — whatever you buy at Costco, whether it's a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner," he said in an interview. "I just thought, if it's a Picasso, you can't go wrong." "Worst-case scenario, we can always return it," he recalls telling his wife. Actually, the worst-case scenario may be that the drawing is not a Picasso — an assertion that has Costco scrambling to live up to its consumer-friendly image. The work, "Drawing Arles," depicting a faun, came ready-to-hang in a gold frame; the store even provided a photographic certificate of authenticity signed by Picasso's daughter Maya Widmaier-Picasso, who also authenticates his works for auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's. But as Mr. Knickerbocker discovered this week, navigating Costco's fine-art offerings can be a tricky business. Interviewed in Paris by The New York Times on Tuesday, Ms. Widmaier-Picasso, 70, said the certificate was forged. As of Tuesday, a Picasso drawing titled "Picador in a Bullfight" was being offered at Costco's Web site for a much steeper $145,999.99 — also with an authentication certificate bearing Ms. Widmaier-Picasso's name. Bristling at a grammatical error in French and the spiky handwriting, she pronounced that document a forgery as well. "It's not at all my way of expressing myself," she said in an interview, referring to the wording of the certificate. Peering at the signature, Ms. Widmaier-Picasso added, "It's really ugly, really really." The artist's daughter, 70, also cast doubt on the authenticity of the drawings. "My father knew that bulls have two testicles, in addition to something very masculine," she said impishly, referring to the bull. Contacted about Ms. Widmaier-Picasso's remarks, Liz Elsner, a vice president for merchandising for Costco's Web site division, said the company would promptly investigate. "Obviously we're very concerned with what you're telling us," she said. She emphasized that, as with all Costco merchandise, Mr. Knickerbocker was free to return the artwork. A few hours later, the bullfight drawing had been removed from Costco's Web site. Ms. Elsner emphasized that Costco had the Picassos independently verified by Jerry Bengis, an art appraiser in Coral Springs, Fla., who specializes in Dali prints. (Reached by telephone, Mr. Bengis said he provided documentation stating only that the certificates were consistent with others issued by Ms. Widmaier-Picasso.) Ms. Elsner said the two Picassos were provided by reputable dealers with whom Costco has done business since it entered the fine-art market. The vendor is Jim Tutwiler of Boca Raton, Fla., who bought them from Rick Yamet, a fine-art vendor in Peekskill, N.Y. Told of Ms. Widmaier-Picasso's contention, Mr. Tutwiler said, "Are you serious?" and quickly provided Mr. Yamet's telephone number. Mr. Yamet said he obtained the drawings from a partner in Rome. "I'm beside myself," he said. "Of course I have to take them back, and I have to go back to the source I got them from and get my money back." When buying Picassos accompanied by his daughter's certificate, he said, he routinely has Ms. Widmaier-Picasso examine the certificate, he said. He said he had faxed the certificates for both Picassos to her, but this time she had not responded. "I was getting no response for months and months. It became like an exercise in futility," Mr. Yamet said. So an associate of his in Rome showed the drawings and certificates unofficially to an expert at Christie's in Paris, who gave them a verbal nod, he said. "This is terrible for my reputation," he said, sounding distraught. "Costco's not responsible, of course." Costco, which entered the fine-art market in 2003, sells artworks both through its Web site and at scattered road shows around the country, many of them conducted by Mr. Tutwiler. The shows are handled by two separate corporate divisions, and the vendors and artworks are always changing. Although most of the headlines have been generated by last year's Picasso sale, Costco's current fine-art offerings seem to boil down to lithographs. In print circles, that can mean anything from an offset reproduction of a painting — in other words, a poster — to the sort of genuine "original print" that an established dealer might handle; that is, a work of art conceived as a lithograph from the start and produced in a limited edition. At press time, there was nothing of that nature on Costco's site. Of course, neophyte collectors — the type that Costco is likely to attract — may often lack experience in determining what gives an artwork market value. While Costco provides a phone number at its Web site for the vendor of each work of art so that prospective buyers can question the consigners directly, it is hard for an inexperienced collector to seek out those specific earmarks — a good provenance, inclusion in a catalogue raisonné, for example. For the art world cognoscenti, the authentication affair may seem a tempest in a teapot, given the abundance of scrawled Picasso doodles, real and fake, to be found in galleries on every continent. And art scholars have long debated whether Ms. Widmaier-Picasso should be in the business of authentication. Still, in reviewing the certificates in her apartment on the Quai Voltaire, she was emphatic about their falsity. She described the wording on the bullfight certificate, for instance, as strangely unfamiliar. "I would have said, 'In my opinion, I can certify that this drawing in pencil on paper measuring 12 by 24 centimeters representing a scene from a bullfight — I would put in more details concerning what's on the actual drawing — is a work in the hand of my father.' "On the same line, I would have written, for example, ' "Paris, le 14 mars,' and I spell out the month. My lines always run from the far left to the far right, and there is no break between paragraphs." On the back of the certificate, Ms. Widmaier-Picasso applies a sticker marked with one or more of her fingerprints. "I could also use my entire hand if I wanted to," she said. She then applies an embossed seal over the sticker and staples the sticker to the photograph. She said she always keeps a record of which finger she used for each authentication. Of Mr. Knickerbocker's certificate, she said: "I never, ever, ever write a date this way, with slashes, I don't even know how to! And I always spell the month out in letters, never in numbers." Ms. Widmaier-Picasso also chuckled at the misspellings — "soussigné," the masculine form of "undersigned," instead of the feminine "soussignée," and "cette dessin," rather than the correct "ce dessin." ("Dessin," the French word for drawing, is masculine.) But for Costco and its customer, who is much attached to his $40,000 doodle, it is no laughing matter. Mr. Knickerbocker expressed skepticism about Ms. Widmaier-Picasso's reaction to the drawings and the certificates. "Seeing as she signed a lot of those things, who knows how many years ago, I'm not surprised if she's going to say that it's fake unless she has it in front of her," he said. (Ms. Widmaier-Picasso viewed printouts of high-resolution digital photographs of the drawings and certificates.) Mr. Knickerbocker, who once bought his wife a two-carat diamond ring at Costco, said he remains a loyal customer and that for now he has no plans to return the drawing. "I think a lot of times with this, especially with art — high-end, number one — I'm sure that the art galleries hate that Costco's selling art," he reflected. "I would still feel just as comfortable buying from Costco — even more so than buying from one of the other dealers — because I know that Costco stands behind what they sell." Daphné Anglés contributed reporting from Paris for this article.

Rostasi, is your new avatar Florida footage from the 2000 election or Ohio footage from 2004?

Chuck, do you think I should check my closet?

Looks like a short-lived gimmick.

OP-ED COLUMNIST March 9, 2006 Children in Torment By BOB HERBERT Two little boys — toddlers in Yonkers — died horrible deaths last July when they were left alone in a bathroom with scalding water running in the tub. The water overflowed and flooded the room. The children, in agony, were unable to escape as the water burned and blistered their feet and ankles and kept on rising. One of the boys struggled to save himself by standing on his toes, but to no avail. Authorities said that when the boys were found, they were lying face up in the water on the bathroom floor, their bodies all but completely scorched. They had burned to death. The boys — one was nearly three years old and the other 20 months — had been left in the bathroom (which had a damaged door that was difficult to open) by David Maldonado, the live-in boyfriend of the boys' mother. Police said he was the father of one of the children. The two adults had taken heroin. While the children suffered and died, the grown-ups, according to the authorities, were lying in bed, lost in a deep drug-fueled sleep. Both have pleaded guilty in connection with the deaths, and have been imprisoned. I've been reading (and sometimes writing) stories like this for many years. Every few months or so, some horrifying child abuse case elbows its way onto the front pages, and there is a general outcry: How could this have happened? Where were the caseworkers? Lock up the monsters who did this! Let's investigate and reform the child welfare system. And then the story subsides and we behave as if this murderous abuse of helpless children trapped in the torture chambers of their own homes has somehow subsided with it. But child abuse is a hideous, widespread and chronic problem across the country. And despite the sensational cases that periodically grab the headlines, it doesn't get nearly enough attention. What some adults do to the children in their care can seem like behavior left over from the Inquisition. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nearly 1,500 children died from abuse or neglect in 2003, the latest year for which reasonably reliable statistics are available. That's four children every day, and that estimate is probably low. Record-keeping in some states is notoriously haphazard. Authorities in Michigan reported the heartbreaking case of a 7-year-old, Ricky Holland, who begged his school nurse not to send him home to his adoptive parents. "Let me stay in school," he pleaded. He was later beaten to death with a hammer, prosecutors said, and his bloody body was dragged away in a garbage bag. His parents were charged with his death. The deaths, as horrible as they are, don't begin to convey the enormity of the problem. In 2003, authorities were alerted to nearly three million cases of youngsters who were alleged to have been abused or neglected, and confirmed a million of them. The number of cases that never come to light is, of course, anybody's guess. What's remarkable to me is that we've been hearing about this enormously tragic problem for so long, decades, and yet the reaction to each sickening case that makes it into the media spotlight is shock. How many times are we going to be shocked before serious steps are taken to alleviate the terrible suffering and prevent the horrible deaths of as many of these children as we can? We know some things about child abuse and neglect. We know that there is a profound connection between child abuse and substance abuse, for example. We know that abuse and neglect are more likely to occur in households where money is in short supply, especially if the caregivers are unemployed. A crisis in the home heightens the chances that a child will be abused. And adults who were abused as children are more likely than others to be abusers themselves. Child-abuse prevention programs are wholly inadequate, and child protective services, while varying in quality from state to state, are in many instances overwhelmed and largely unaccountable. The child protection system has broken down — or was never up and running at all — in state after state after state. "There are no consequences to violating policy," said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of the advocacy group Children's Rights. "There are no consequences to violating the law." The kids who are most frequently the victims of abuse are from the lower economic classes. They are not from families that make a habit of voting. There is no real incentive for government officials to make the protection of these kids a priority. They couldn't be more alone. They are no one's natural constituency.

I hope author Peter Richmond has a more realistic and focused grasp on Peggy Lee's life and place in the scheme of things than reviewer Schwartz seems to have. What a shallow review!

"Barthes told police the 51-year-old singer was verbally abusive during a car ride home." Singer? I thought he only made bland, painfully uneventful instrumental sounds.

I would make that any bandstand or recording studio--ever again!

There's also Jack Melady. He did an album of his own and he appeared on one or two Prestige albums--one with Lucky Thompson: Mostly, he recorded Irish music (with the Clancy Brothers). We met in Iceland when I was an AFRS dj and he played trombone in the USAF band. I haven't seen him in a long time, so I don't know if he is still playing.

You beat me to it, Marcello. And, yes, it's good to see this footage again. Thanks Dmitry

That could have been Monk in drag, Chuck.

I don't know where to begin re photos. As for jazz posters, I have some really fine one from Poland. Seriously, Polish artists have been amazing in this field, and that goes back to the days of Communist rule. These are more recent, however:

JOHNNY E! And here's hoping that your next one comes during a time of impeachment

I've been having fun with this for a couple of months. Here's my last address in Copenhagen:

They just found it in Sweden

I think it was abolished a few years back, Chuck.

Around 1961, Eddie Fisher gave Melba an offer she couldn't refuse, so she went off to Grossingers and wrote several well-recompenced arrangements for him. It was a nightmare, she told me when she got back. Fisher told her that he wanted her to make him swing--no way that could be done, she said to me, laughing at the mere thought. Melba was a fine person and very talented, but I think Eddie Fisher gave her too tough a challenge. I never heard those arrangements, but I bet they were good--even if he wasn't.

Are you sure it isn't from the Weehauken, NJ, library john?