Good morning. It's Monday, and it's Halloween. We'll look at an Off Broadway sendup of the Netflix sci-fi hit "Stranger Things" that's observing the day with an audience costume contest. We'll also look at why jury selection for the trial of Donald Trump's family business was its own kind of trial. |
 | | Evan Zimmerman |
|
Jonathan Hogue said he was going to skip tonight's 7 p.m. performance of the Off Broadway musical he wrote. "I have a class that goes till 9," he said. |
Can't miss a playwriting class, said Hogue, who is 29 and studying for a master's degree in theater management at Columbia University. He said he would get to the theater in time for a Halloween-only performance at 11 p.m. |
The musical is "Stranger Sings!: The Parody Musical," a sendup of the creepy, campy Netflix hit "Stranger Things" that won seven BroadwayWorld Off/Off Off Broadway Awards last year, including best new musical. As if monsters and a parallel universe were not enough for Halloween, the show has been running a Halloween costume contest for the audience at Playhouse 46, at 308 West 46th Street. |
What about Hogue, assuming he makes it to the theater? Whom will he go as? "I have a lot of things I need to figure out before I can answer that one," he said last week — including deciding on a costume. |
Maybe procrastinating about a costume was a ghost remnant of childhood. Hogue said he hated Halloween when he was a youngster in Puyallup, Wash. "My neighborhood would do a lot of really haunted houses," he said. "I loved the trick-or-treating part, but I hated having to go through the haunted houses to get the candy. I'd be so thrilled I didn't have to do it for another year." |
Maybe writing a parody musical was also a ghost remnant. "For a class project in junior high, instead of doing a traditional history presentation, I would do a Monty Python-inspired sketch," he said. "Any class where I had to do a presentation — in English class, we had to do something on 'Romeo and Juliet,' and I would write a parody. In science, we had to do something on molecules, and I wrote a sketch roasting my science teacher." |
He has not written a parody in the class he won't skip, which is taught by the Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang. "I have a play I'm sort of workshopping," Hogue said, adding that it's not a comedy. |
And no, he said, Hwang has not seen "Stranger Sings!" "I'm hoping to get him in in the next several weeks," he said. |
It'll be mostly cloudy, with temperatures near the mid-60s. At night, temps will drop to the high 50s and showers are likely. |
In effect today. Suspended tomorrow (All Saints Day). |
Something new on job postings: Salary ranges |
Admit it: When you go on a job interview, you'd really like to know what you could earn, wouldn't you? Or, if you're not looking to change jobs, wouldn't you like to know what the bosses are paying that new person they just hired in your department? |
Starting tomorrow, you may be able to have some idea. A new law will require nearly every company in New York City to include salary ranges for job postings on public sites and internal bulletin boards — even postings for jobs that offer hybrid work outside an office in the city or that could be handled fully remotely from elsewhere in the country. A similar law takes effect in Westchester County next week. |
My colleague Matthew Haag says new hires might be motivated to ask for salaries at the higher end of the range. It follows that employees already on the payroll will want raises to keep pace. |
The new law may not make a difference for investment bankers who get bonuses at the end of the year. Bonuses are "a greater consideration than salary but cannot be calculated" until earnings are totaled at the end of the year, the leaders of the Chambers of Commerce and the business advocacy group Partnership for New York City said in a statement in April. |
 | | Todd Heisler/The New York Times |
|
Finding a jury for the Trump Organization trial was a trial in itself |
 | | Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
|
Twelve jurors and six alternates will take their places in a Manhattan courtroom today. Prosecutors and defense attorneys hope that in choosing those 18 people from a pool of prospective jurors, they weeded out those with strong opinions about someone who is not on trial: Donald Trump. |
As legal dramas swirl around the former president, it's a concern for lawyers involved in Trump-related cases. Jury selection will also begin in a separate civil case brought by protesters against Trump and his bodyguards, who the demonstrators say attacked them outside Trump Tower in 2015. And with federal and state investigations of Trump continuing, other trials may be scheduled. |
The danger of picking the wrong person as a juror became clear in the federal trial of Timothy Shea, who was charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from an organization that had raised money for the border wall that was a centerpiece of Trump's agenda. Judge Analisa Torres, who presided over that case, declared a mistrial in June after one of the jurors refused to deliberate, accusing the 11 others of being "liberals" and describing the proceedings as a "government witch hunt." Shea was convicted on Friday after a second trial. |
It is not easy to find someone in Manhattan who does not have an opinion about the former president, who before taking office made himself a fixture in gossip columns. Many New Yorkers who were summoned to the courtroom in the Trump Organization case last week were not reluctant to say what they thought about him. |
"Mr. Trump has no morals," one prospective juror said. "He thinks only of himself. I think he's a criminal. I think he's done irreparable damage to this country." |
Even so, the man said that he could be impartial. The issues in the trial were "trivial compared to the terrible things he has done," the man said. |
The case grew out of a long-running investigation of Trump and his business practices by the Manhattan district attorney's office. The inquiry gained new momentum in 2021, when the Supreme Court allowed prosecutors to obtain Trump's tax returns. They soon focused on a Trump executive, Allen Weisselberg, who they suspected had received off-the-books perks like an Upper West Side apartment and leased Mercedes-Benzes. |
They hoped Weisselberg would cooperate. He did not; they charged him and two of the Trump Organization's corporate entities, the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corp., with playing a role in a tax evasion scheme. |
Weisselberg pleaded guilty in return for a promised sentence of five months in jail. But he could spend as little as 100 days behind bars if he complies with the conditions of the plea deal — the most important of which is that he testify truthfully if prosecutors call him to the witness stand. And they are all but guaranteed to do that. |
Some years ago, I was crossing Jewel Avenue with a colleague on my way to Queens College when he interjected midconversation. |
"Sheila," he said, "I never knew you weren't a native New Yorker." |
I was surprised. It was true that although I was born in New York, my parents had moved far from the city when I was 1 and hadn't moved back until I was in college. |
But I had spoken with this colleague many times before, so he couldn't have picked that out from my accent. |
"You waited for the walk signal," he explained. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment