No One Is More Unmoved Than The Amusement Park Veteran

Don’t oversell it or anything:

A New Jersey amusement park king is rushing to reopen the shuttered [Nellie Bly] Shore Parkway kiddie park by Memorial Day weekend — with brand-new rides, a new name and wi-fi technology.

Martin Garin and his co-owner son Marc plan to restore five of Nellie Bly’s ancient rides and introduce seven new ones — most of them with kid-friendly names like Venture Elephant.

“I don’t know if its going to be much different, but it’s going to be quality — it’s going to have rides and food and entertainment,” said Garin, who ran New Jersey’s Meadowlands Fair until 2002.

Minor thrillers such as bumper cars, the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the Scrambler will be reintroduced, and a handful of less-scary attractions, such as a carousel, also will hopefully draw the kids, the Garins said.

“It’s like every kiddie ride,” Marc Garin said of the Venture Elephant and others like it. “It just goes ’round and ’round.”

Let’s Get Terry Gilliam To Direct

The hunt for Molly* the cat, who has been trapped in a Greenwich Village wall for like two weeks, has reached a Vivi-esque levels. Today, the Daily News reports on the latest:

For 13 days, Molly the cat has been trapped behind the wall of a Greenwich Village food shop, and would-be rescuers yesterday enlisted the help of kittens, humane traps, and even a feline therapist to lure the animal out.

As those efforts failed, the surreal spectacle surrounding 634 Hudson St. only grew as animal welfare workers, elite NYPD cops, and curious onlookers all pleaded for the 11-month-old black cat to emerge.

“We love you. Come out, Molly, we’re not going to hurt you,” cat therapist Carole Wilbourn cooed into a hole in the wall from which Molly’s meows have been heard. “It’s okay, we have the Molly fan club out here.”

Wilbourn used recordings of whale and sea gull sounds to try to coax Molly out — until she was asked to stop by an Animal Care & Control worker who feared the noise was only “stressing” the cat further.

“I can hear she’s distressed and she’s trying to get out,” said Wilbourn, who said she has treated 10,000 cats in her 30-year career. “I just want to help her.”

Molly catches mice at Myers of Keswick, a British food store, and apparently squeezed into a small hole in the 19th century building’s wall on March 31, said her owner, Peter Myers.

. . .

Rescue work has been slowed by the four-story walkup’s designation as a historic landmark, but city officials yesterday gave permission to remove more bricks to find the elusive cat. Mewing kittens and traps baited with food also were deployed as enticements.

Meanwhile, the Times focuses on the media frenzy surrounding the story:

Outside the 157-year-old, four-story building, reporters, photographers and television and radio crews recorded the scene and hung on every word from rescuers, who emerged now and then from steel trap doors in the sidewalk to report no progress. With little news, some reporters solicited the views of dog walkers and others who paused to watch the activity, which was making news across the country and even abroad.

Mr. Myers told of receiving calls from across America and letters from dozens of schoolchildren, all voicing hope for Molly. Reports on Molly appeared on Web sites of The Chicago Tribune and The Times of London, which noted that the deli sold clotted cream and meat pies and hit the home audience angle: “A cat who protects the delicacies much sought after by British expatriates is trapped behind a wall.” Some reporters, waxing eloquent, spoke of “the peripatetic pussycat” and “the timorous tabby.”

(By the way, what has Terry Gilliam been up to lately?)

*Incidentally, I’m hearing from reliable sources that the cat is actually named Millie . . .

How The Other Half Lives

The strange alternate universe the Manhattan Cat inhabits — permanently holed up in cramped apartments, never interacting with the natural world — reaches a new level:

Animal-rescue workers and cops in the West Village are fighting to save an unlucky little black cat that’s been trapped in a wall for 12 days.
The indefatigable animal, Molly, was heard meowing as late as yesterday morning.

But when the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit showed up hours later — complete with sensor-detecting equipment and snake-head cameras to find the kitty, there was no sign of any of her nine lives.

“I can’t tell you how many of these we’ve done, and this is a hard one,” said one cop.

No one’s seen the 11-month-old tabby, who lives at the British grocery store Myers of Keswick, since March 31.

Owner Peter Myers said he thought someone stole the pretty kitty, whose wandering ways have made her popular in the tony ‘hood.

But a few days later, he heard a familiar meowing coming from the store’s northern walls.

Rudy! Rudy!

The Times profiles an opera singer whose story will at least become a fantastic made-for-TV movie, showing what would happen if Hoosiers were set on the Upper West Side:

Until 18 months ago, Erika Sunnegardh, a soprano, had never sung an opera role on stage.

For nearly 20 years she toiled as a waitress, caterer and tour guide in New York. Sure, there was singing: a few recitals and plenty of funerals as a church cantor in the Bronx. Often the choice boiled down to rent or voice lessons.

But in a story that will give a jolt of hope to every would-be performer with a serving tray, Ms. Sunnegardh, 40, has been assigned to appear today at the Metropolitan Opera in the title role of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” as a last-minute substitute for an ailing Karita Mattila. What’s more, the performance is one of the house’s Saturday radio broadcasts, heard by 10 million people around the world.

Compare it to the Yankees starting a pitcher who had done nothing more than toss batting practice, or the president appointing a beat cop as defense secretary. In the annals of opera, it ranks with Plácido Domingo stepping in for Franco Corelli in 1968 to make his Met debut.

Astonishingly, the Met embraced Ms. Sunnegardh solely on the basis of two brief auditions in May 2004, well before her first appearance on any opera stage.

In order not to disrupt the fairy tale, she had to turn in a great performance. The Times reports that if it wasn’t exactly perfect, it was nonetheless great:

A number of people in the audience, perhaps aware of her story — years of working as a waitress, singing at church, and a barren career (until now) — walked out with red-rimmed eyes.

When she came out for her first curtain call, she put her hands together in front of her face and said, “Thank you very much.”

She turned to look at the chorus behind her, which included several former conservatory classmates and neighbors in her building in Riverdale, and raised her hands in acknowledgment. They, in turn, cheered her, she said later in her dressing room.

. . .

The pressure on Ms. Sunnegardh was enormous. Not only was she singing a difficult role before a packed Met, but the performance was being broadcast worldwide to 10 million people.

She had difficulties in Act I: a brief memory lapse and what she called “little mishaps” that made her feel “human.” But she warmed up. “The second act felt like it was really on,” she said.

. . .

In her dressing room, after she had showered and changed into a black dress, she received a stream of visitors. One was Peter Gelb, the Met’s incoming general manager. “So we’ll talk?” Ms. Sunnegardh asked. “We will talk,” he answered.

And When You’re Pitching This Script, Make It Clear That Brooklyn Itself Is A Character

In the literary free-for-all that the “mafia cop” trial has become, Brooklyn itself becomes a character:

It could be argued that one of the most intriguing characters in the trial of Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa is not a person, but a place. As absorbing as the witnesses, the lawyers and the two defendants is the borough of Brooklyn, which has arisen in the trial as something like an empire of the ill-fated and often illicitly employed.

Countless times, Brooklyn — or specifically southern Brooklyn — has been painted as a universe of two-bit deals and three-time losers, of gangster bars and catering halls and auto-body shops. It has come to seem in testimony like a world where people are forever swapping envelopes of cash and owing money to their loan sharks and their mothers — a world of which a witness could say, without a whiff of irony, “I was having some bad times and I committed bank robbery,” or “a few times back in the 80’s people paid me to make their cars disappear.”

. . .

Countless times, Brooklyn — or specifically southern Brooklyn — has been painted as a universe of two-bit deals and three-time losers, of gangster bars and catering halls and auto-body shops. It has come to seem in testimony like a world where people are forever swapping envelopes of cash and owing money to their loan sharks and their mothers — a world of which a witness could say, without a whiff of irony, “I was having some bad times and I committed bank robbery,” or “a few times back in the 80’s people paid me to make their cars disappear.”

Backstory: Alan Feuer’s other article about the literary flavor in a murder trial; Feuer is obviously making notes for a wonderful script and/or novel.