Image from Gawker Well, Marina Abramovi? ‘s final day of her performance art The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern was definitely eventful: A tipster sent Gawker this photograph and explained , “He just ran up to the outer ropes stuck his fingers down his throat and threw up. He then stumbled back and tried to throw up again, but not much came out. The guards grabbed him and kicked him out. Marina didn’t move the whole time.” Also, a lady stripped down —possible response to the naked performance piece ?
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The Artist Is Present… With Vomit
A middle-aged couple was arrested for selling crack on the mean streets of gritty SoHo. Antonio Henriques, 51, and his wife Mary, 47, lived and worked out of a basement of a building on Sullivan Street between Prince and Houston. According to the Post , the pair “attracted a parade of seedy buyers who would line up early in the morning, waiting near designer shops and million-dollar condos.” Police say they had been selling for at least three months; they were arrested at the end of April, and 192 bags of crack were found in their possession (for some comparison, police only recovered 41 bags of crack in a massive Rockaway bust earlier this year). One local resident described the scene the morning after the arrest: “There was a group of despondent crackheads roaming the street.”
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"Despondent Crackheads" Down and Out In SoHo
AP NYC native Lori Berenson was set free Thursday after almost 15 years in Peruvian prisons on a conviction of aiding leftist rebels. Her release caused widespread controversy in Peru, where she’s perceived by some as a terrorist for her participation in a foiled terrorist plot to take the Peruvian Congress hostage in the mid-’90s. As part of her parole, Berenson is required to stay in Peru for five more years, and she proceeded directly from prison to an apartment in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood in Lima, where she was greeted by neighbors shouting, “Go away, terrorist!” “I don’t know whose idea it was to put this terrorist here as a neighbor,” another neighbor told the AP . It was a chaotic scene when Berenson left prison; she had to fight her way through a throng of reporters to get to the car driven by her husband, attorney and former inmate Anibal Apari. (Before they could drive away, two reporters even jumped in the back seat with them.) Berenson’s parents had flown from New York to Lima earlier that week and taken her one-year-old son to the apartment separately. Her parents “came not just for the joy of their daughter’s release but also to help childproof the apartment,” the AP reports. Berenson is now trying to get the government to release her from parole and let her return to America with her son. (She and Apari are separating.) But it could prove a tough sell politically; many in Peru are already outraged that she’s even out of prison. Peru’s justice minister, Victor Garcia, said during a radio interview that the Cabinet could decide to commute the sentence and expel Berenson, but added that “this is a really nasty situation for Peruvians.” And retired judge who presided over Berenson’s 2001 retrial is also adamantly opposed to her release, telling Christian Science Monitor , “Terrorist organizations inflicted a great deal of suffering and loss on Peru. I believe that parole should be the exception and not the rule in these cases, with judges being much more rigorous in their analysis.”
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Peruvians Pissed About "Terrorist" Lori Berenson’s Parole
Even on Memorial Day weekend, Senator Chuck Schumer is busy. According to the Daily News , he introduced a bill yesterday “to tax companies 25 cents for every customer service call that’s outsourced overseas.” He said, ” How many times do we hear of a company shutting down a facility in New York or elsewhere in the country and sending the jobs abroad? Almost daily… 1.6 billion calls are being transferred to call centers, often without the customer’s knowledge.” Plus, the bill would require companies to tell the callers their calls are being transferred overseas—and to indicate which countries the call are being sent to.
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Schumer: Tax Businesses Using Foreign Call Centers
Photograph of a protesters in Pakistan burning the Israeli and American flags by Shakil Adil/AP A six-ship convoy carrying aid to Palestinians in Gaza was attacked by Israeli commandoes , leaving at least nine dead and earning condemnations from around the world. The Washington Post reports, “The European Union called for an inquiry into the deaths. And the United Nations Security Council planned to meet Monday afternoon for an emergency session. The United States expressed regret at the loss of the life and said it was ‘working to understand the circumstances of the tragedy.’” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it “state terrorism.” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in Canada, was scheduled to meet President Obama tomorrow, but is heading back to Israel tonight. Netanyahu also said the Israeli forces were acting in self-defense (and Israel released video of the raid ), but Free Gaza, which organized the aid, said the Israelis ” immediately opened fire on unarmed civilians .” The flotilla had left Cyprus yesterday and was expected in Gaza today. Free Gaza says at least 30 people were injured on their ships, while the Israeli military says at least 10 were injured on its side. The NY Times points out that the criticisms from around the world “offered a propaganda coup to Israel’s foes, particularly Hamas, the militant group that holds sway in Gaza, and damaged Israel’s ties to Turkey, one of its most important Muslim partners and the unofficial sponsor of the convoy.”
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Israeli Commandos Raid Gaza Aid Ship, At Least 9 Dead
A homeless man who’s made hundreds of thousands of dollars through various civil rights lawsuits is back in “business,” having filed yet another suit against Amtrak because he claims police forcibly removed him from the train station. After several years out of the litigation game, living off of at least $400,000 in payouts from settlements, 61-year-old Richard Kreimer is officially back, baby. (And yes, his name is actually Kreimer .) The Post recently caught up with him in Penn Station, where he spends most of his time smelling bad and daring cops to eject him so he can file another lawsuit. Hey, it’s a living. Kreimer readily admits that litigation is his “profession,” and told the Times five years ago, “All Americans have dollar signs in their eyes. I’m an honest person and I sue to get monetary claims. But also for social justice.” (It’s a great read .) Kreimer’s career was launched two decades ago when he won $230,000 in a settlement after being kicked out of a Morristown, NJ, library for his body odor. Since then, whenever he gets low on funds, he stops bathing and starts loitering, targeting small municipalities who would rather settle than pay for years of litigation. Kreimer also targets the bigger fish, hiring attorneys to go after CVS, a rich New Jersey doctor, and, up next, NJ Transit. “I used to try to treat him with respect,” said one municipal official who, due to fear of legal retaliation from Kreimer, would speak only anonymously. “But the only way to deal with people like him is to ignore them. He’s the kind of person who will turn nice suburban liberals into conservatives real quickly.” For his interview with the Post last week, Kreimer arrived in Penn Station wearing “oversized black shades, pressed plaid shirt, cellphone and an ATM card. He took a shower, combed his hair and wore clean clothes, all the things he refuses to do in other public places.” He tells the tabloid he’s no millionaire, and denies “the homeless underground rumor that I carry my money around with me in a duffel bag… The lawyers have my money.” Kreimer is unabashed about his line of work, and says his only regret is not suing a McDonald’s that refused to serve him in 1985, calling it “the biggest legal regret of my career.” In a separate but not unrelated legal action, last month a United States District Court judge held the city in contempt of court for failing to comply with orders to stop enforcing the loitering laws.
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"Millionaire Bum" Suing Over Homeless Harassment (Again)
Just after 12:30 p.m., there were reports of a tree branch falling in Central Park, injuring three people, near 74th Street and the East Drive (which is also near the Boathouse ). Philip Bump tells us that the victims appeared to be a family picnicking and that he “only saw one woman underneath, quickly had dozens of people around her. She didn’t seem to be moving – in ambulance now.” He also posted on his blog : We heard a muffled tearing sound, maybe two seconds long. Dozens of people started running over to where the tree branch fell. It was probably two feet in diameter where it broke off, a huge leafy mess at the end where the family was picnicking. When I got there, a dozen guys were pulling the branch away, several people were attending to a woman lying on her back underneath. Near the road, a child was wailing, a few adults trying to calm him or her. Heard at least three people calling it in to 911, who got there within three minutes or so. About five minutes after that, the area was cordoned off and an ambulance left at 72nd Street for Lenox Hill Hospital. Last July, a man was critically hurt with brain and spinal injuries after a Central Park tree branch hit him near West Drive and 63rd Street; the branch was reportedly rotten . And this past February, a man was killed by a falling tree branch at East 69th and Fifth Avenue in Central Park; this branch was reportedly healthy .
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Tree Branch Falls In Central Park, Three Injured
The legendary Amityville home that inspired the terrifying book and movie is for sale (they’re asking a little over a million bucks ), and PETA wants the keys! The animal rights group says they’ve written to the current owner asking if they could rent the residence to set up an exhibit called the “Amityville Slaughterhouse of Horrors,” which would teach carnivores about the evils of factory farms and slaughterhouses. They would also set up an on-site café where visitors could learn about vegetarian options. The organization’s VP, Tracy Reiman, wrote in her letter to the owners: “In our horror house, the sound of slaughterhouse blades whirring while animals scream for their lives would play over loudspeakers. Visitors would be able to see animatronic hens struggling for space inside tiny battery cages and lifelike fish gasping for air as they slowly suffocate on the deck of a fishing boat.” On top of all that, the Daily News notes that visitors will also be able to get locked in a small pig crate, and buy souvenirs like a knife-wielding Ronald McDonald. Hopefully if this all goes down they’ll create their own movie trailer to promote it.
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PETA Wants Legendary Amityville Home
Today is Memorial Day, the federal holiday where U.S. men and women who have died in military service are remembered. Federal and state offices are closed, as well as post offices, schools, financial markets, and banks. Alternate side of the street parking rules are suspended and mass transit is running on weekend schedules (though there’s additional weekend service on some lines, like the LIRR ). Mayor Bloomberg will be speaking at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Riverside Park (at 89th Street) at 10 a.m. There are also a number of parades in the five boroughs (do a search for “Memorial Day Parade” here ). The Daily News reports that one parade held in Greenpoint over the weekend only “drew a sparse crowd”—92-year-old World War II veteran and Grand Marshal Pasquale Sparano reflected, “Years ago, Memorial Day, my god, there were flags all over. It was wonderful!” The Post reprints William Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech from “Henry V” in its editorial sections while the NY Times’ editorial notes , “Every gravestone in every cemetery is a milestone for those who are gone and all of us who mourn their passing. Time may ease the sense of loss somewhat, but the knowledge that so much time has passed is another loss in itself.”
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It’s Memorial Day
Yankees 7, Indians 3: A day after losing despite holding two leads of six runs, the Yankees found some late-inning magic to avoid another defeat. Mark Teixeira, who is hitting again, hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh to put the Yankees ahead. Derek Jeter started the rally with a two-out single, but he also helped give Cleveland two runs with a two-out throwing error in the top of the inning. A.J. Burnett pitched eight innings, striking out eight and walking none, though he did hit a batter. Mariano Rivera pitched the ninth and made an acrobatic play for the final out. The Yankees closer jumped over a broken bat immediately before knocking the ball down and throwing to first. Mets 10, Brewers 4: No sweep in Milwaukee. R.A. Dickey bagged his second win as the Mets’ offense came alive against Brewers relief pitching. The Mets got to Jeff Suppan (remember him from the 2006 NLCS?) and his bullpen for 10 runs and 16 hits, both season highs. Luis Castillo had a timely two-run single, Angel Pagan went deep and six Mets starters had two-hit games. The Mets head for San Diego this week.
