“Come on,” Mr. Bloomberg shot back. “We’re not banning everything!”
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On the third floor of 980 Madison is Venus Over Manhattan, an art space opened last year by Adam Lindemann, a contributor to this paper and the disco party’s host. The crowd had gathered to celebrate a show by the artist Peter Coffin. Young women carried trays of tequila shots. Around 8 p.m., the festivities moved down the hall to a room dimly lit with red lights. From the street, you could hear DJ Harvey playing records. Professional roller skaters skated around on glowing LED wheels. A cluster of young men and women nonchalantly smoked near the entrance.

When the fire trucks came, part of the crowd decamped across Madison Avenue to Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle, where a pianist played selections from the Great American Songbook and the martinis cost $21.
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Among all public officials, the mayor is the one who shapes our day-to-day lives the most: not just our subways, schools and streets, but our ethos and identity as a city. This mayoral election, New York City’s first with no incumbent in more than a decade, has attracted a slew of hopefuls eager to remake the city in their own images. And what images they are. Assembled at the starting line are a quartet of formidable Democrats, alongside a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, a man with his own catchphrase and action figure, and a vibrator-wielding, marijuana smoking, alligator-hugging YouTube ranter.
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Illustration by Alex Fine.

Prophecy, dear reader, is not an exact science—unless, of course, you’re Nate Silver. And you’re not in fact Nate Silver, are you?

(Called it.)

Instead, it is a mystical art, a terrible burden, a mysterious gift that tends to skip a generation, dooms those who possess it to a lifetime of harrowing visions, and makes it really easy to inadvertently reveal Walking Dead spoilers to everyone on your Twitter feed.

In days of yore, soothsayers employed a number of dubious means to foretell the future, from “scrying,” or gazing into a crystal ball, to “hieromancy,” the casting of entrails, and “uromancy,” the study of urine. (You will eat asparagus ...)

As for our own methodology, let’s just say it’s a bit more ad hoc. The Observer staff—aided by a few ringers—simply squinted real hard and observed. Occasionally, when the hoped-for revelations failed to materialize, we knocked back a few Jäger bombs and tried again. Eventually, it all became clear.

Herewith, then, a glimpse of the future. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

• John Kerry resigns as secretary of state to play himself on a six-episode arc of Parks and Recreation.

• Having lost all users to Google Maps, Apple’s Maps shows every street leading directly to a liquor store and then into a nearby ravine.

• Lena Dunham receives a $7.4 million advance for a funny observational memoir about getting paid $3.7 million for her first one.

• Breaking Bad ends on a tragically ironic note when it’s discovered that Walter White’s cancer treatment would have been completely covered under Obamacare.

• Ellis Island is converted into an NYU dining hall.

• Rupert Murdoch discovers that his Twitter feed is public.

• Preet Bharara indicts his mother for insider trading, swears he saw her kissing Santa Claus.

• Wayne LaPierre accidentally falls on a knife. With his dying breath, he calls for a nationwide ban on cutlery.

• After 12 years at Phillips de Pury, Simon de Pury begins a lucrative new career as ringmaster with Cirque du Soleil.

• The wrath of Buzz Bissinger is finally harnessed to power a small town in Idaho. Amazon builds its newest server farm in an adjacent cornfield.

• Judd Apatow becomes a tad more confident about speaking at length about his movies, as well as the world of comedy in general.

• Jerry Saltz helps Roberta Smith paint the den. She playfully dabs the tip of his nose with a Martha Stewart/Glidden Plum Wine. They totally make out.

• After Red Bull signs on to sponsor the next fiscal cliff, Paul Ryan wows a global TV audience by plunging into the abyss wearing a sporty red and blue singlet.

• A bunch of financiers who haven’t used public transportation in decades set fund-raising records on behalf of former MTA boss Joe Lhota.

• James Franco earns a doctorate in neurosurgery and begins to randomly operate on hot passersby.

• Mayor Bloomberg signs an emergency order limiting frozen yogurt toppings. Preet Bharara opens an investigation into Howard Wolfson’s timely sale of Reese’s Pieces stock.

• In a last-ditch effort to improve his visibility, Thomas Pynchon joins The X Factor as head judge.

• Tim Cook leaves Apple and moves to an ashram, only to find all anyone wants to hear about is what Steve was really like.

 • Chris Brown hogs the remote on a Sunday night, causing Rihanna to finally dump his sorry ass for good.

• The hacker group Anonymous attacks exercise app FitBit; everyone in Union Square unwittingly gains five pounds.

• A filthy Mitt Romney, wearing nothing but bunting from a June 2012 campaign stop, is spotted sleeping on the hood of the president’s limo.

• The last guy on Wall Street to feel slightly guilty about ordering $8,000 champagne officially gets over it.

• Guy Fieri opens Tipps, the world’s first highlights-themed bistro.

• Groundr, a new social media app for gay baseball players, is released in beta. Half the AL East seems sluggish the next day.

• Preet Bharara indicts Jay-Z for fraud after more than 60 percent of the singer’s 99 problems turn out to be more like minor annoyances.

• In the Mad Men season premiere, set in 1986, an aging Don Draper grimly stares at a mango wine cooler and realizes he no longer has the words.

• Instagram’s terms of service are amended to include the disclaimer, “Use of the Mayfair filter proves you are a douche.”

• After Americans gleefully embrace several new apocalypse hoaxes, health officials begin to wonder if perhaps the entire country might just be a bit depressed.

• To prove that his big short against Herbalife was nothing personal, Bill Ackman polishes off four medium dulce de leche-flavored Healthy Meal nutritional shakes in one sitting.

• Peter Jackson signs on to direct the new Star Wars movie, casts Andy Serkis as Harrison Ford’s neck wattle.

• All the babies conceived to dubstep music in 2012 are born, and they’re a little too into their binkies.

• On re-examination, the God Particle is found to be a dust bunny caught in the lint trap of the Large Hadron Collider.

• Q4, 2013: Kevin Ryan insists Gilt Groupe’s IPO is right on schedule for 2032.

• Jessica Chastain’s star continues to rise, thanks to an insatiable public demand for movies about sad, pale moms.

• The one lasting legacy of the 2012 Romney campaign: Mitt and Meat Loaf stay in touch, hang out a lot.

• Lena Dunham’s left breast is nominated for a Golden Globe, narrowly losing to Michael Fassbender’s penis.

• 2013 is dubbed The Year of the Gay Jewish Statistician.

• After Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson begins penning a column on XOJane, Michael Stipe invites her to duet on “Georgia on My Mind” at the Super Bowl halftime show.

• Randall’s Island sinks into the East River, due not to rising sea levels but a bumper crop of Richard Serra sculptures at Frieze New York.

• A shake-up occurs at The New York Times when Nicholas Kristof is reassigned to write weekly web recaps of The Middle.

• Gov. Chris Christie angers his fellow Republicans by responding to a President Obama coughing fit with, “Ya okay over there, big guy?”

• Just as you feared: Instagram makes millions off your sepia-toned photo of a dog crossing his paws.

• BuzzFeed’s “13 Objects That Look Like Coco’s Butt” nabs a Pulitzer.

• The NYPD’s controversial “stop and frisk” program is modified to a more agreeable “stop and frisk and give a free 45-minute hot stone massage.”

• Reddit Magazine launches to a glowing write-up from David Carr.

• Lena Dunham’s right breast starts a Twitter account, and it’s full of racial slurs.

• An embittered Barnes & Noble officially changes its slogan to “Spare Us Your Pity.”

• A new bespoke cocktail lounge begins serving a shaving of Black Jack chewing gum in an otherwise empty martini glass.

• When Apple’s iPad Mini Mini flops in the marketplace, the company rebounds with the blockbuster iPad Mini Maxi.

• Katy Perry attempts to drown John Mayer in a bathtub full of cupcake frosting.

• God is welcomed back into the classroom, and it’s a lot like Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School.

• A man douses himself in Mountain Dew and attempts to self-immolate in protest of the soda ban.

• The sequel to This Is 40, titled This Is 41, opens to middling reviews.

• Rush Limbaugh lashes out at sunrises, baby smiles and hot cocoa on cold winter days.

• Unemployment drops when millions of working YouTube house cats are included in the jobs numbers.

 • Sunday Styles takes note of that whole yoga thing.

• Jalopnik posts a sex tape that appears to show Google’s self-driving car giving a lube job to Herbie the Love Bug.

• Chevy Chase, still a major-league asshole.

• Newly unearthed Mayan calendar predicts the outcome of Homeland, incorrectly.

• Justin Bieber is spotted in a corner booth at the American Girl Place cafe with Josefina.

• Poor Mark Sanchez wanders the streets of New York, a handsome, young multimillionaire who could pretty much retire tomorrow.

• “Fiscal Cliffing” enters the lexicon of sexual slang; you think you know what it means, but it’s actually not that.

• Quentin Tarantino makes a darkly violent revenge fantasy film about 9/11 survivors killing al-Qaeda operatives. Viewers are outraged by the plot, but won over by the elaborate musical numbers.

• The doodlebugs take over. (Sadly, you won’t know what this means until it happens.)

• Lehrer rehabilitation, stage 1; Spitzer rehabilitation, stage 3.

• Mayor Bloomberg replaces all movie theater seats with Bowflex Tread Climbers.

• Lena Dunham’s left breast pens a lengthy essay in The Atlantic about the state of womankind. Katie Roiphe delivers a scathing rebuttal in Slate.

• The emergence of the Bronies as a credible third party stalls after Politico uncovers internal emails indicating that friendship is not, in fact, magic.

• Tim Geithner leaves his post at Treasury to become the latest bailout veteran to ink a book deal ragging on his performance during the financial crisis.

• Blacks and Jews finally gain admittance to Middle Earth.

• The Guggenheim announces the addition of three new whorls to its iconic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed flagship.

• Maureen Dowd officially unveils pop culture references from 1993 with her column headline: “Whoomp! (There Bobby Jindal Is).”

• The artisanal trend begins to wane as Brooklynites conclude, “Making shit isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Buying shit that Chinese people made.”

• Soho is evacuated after a faulty valve at the Hollister store releases a plume of fragrance into the surrounding streets.

• David Karp leaves Tumblr to become Japan’s most popular menswear model.

• Comedians with less than 100,000 followers leave Twitter to launch their own platform, Bitter.

• Taylor Swift remains coy about the real-life subject of her new single, “You Are a Fucking Dirtbag and I Hate You, Warren Beatty.”

• No one ever mentions the Mayans ever again.

• Tina Brown helms the reboot of Cat Fancy with controversial “Garfield at 50” cover.

• Lindsay Lohan and Nic Cage start dating, move to Vermont, open up a little coffee shop and never bother acting again.

• The first papal selfie fail.

• Huffington Post just says “fuck it,” redirects to BuzzFeed.

• Marty Markowitz eats a cheesecake.

• Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Damien Hirst begin making art as a single Tokyo-based corporate entity called Takhirko.

• Mitt Romney is found wandering around a construction site in La Jolla, screaming, “But he says you didn’t build that!”

• Clint Eastwood’s chair is acquired by the Smithsonian, where it teams up with Archie Bunker’s chair to give Dick Van Dyke’s ottoman a beat-down with Ben Franklin’s walking stick.

• Governor Andrew Cuomo is injured after Sandra Lee’s pyrotechnic Fourth of July tablescape goes horribly awry.

• 3D-printed sexts!

• Lindsay Lohan runs herself over with a car, successfully sues herself, fails to pay herself awarded damages.

• Vice President Biden convinces Boehner, Reid, Pelosi and McConnell to resolve the next fiscal crisis over a friendly game of beer pong.

• A Times Square Elmo finally has the decency to do something about the oyster sauce on his fur.

• Gary Shteyngart publishes a lavish monograph of his blurbs. Joyce Carol Oates pronounces it “unputdownable.”

• Dennis Crowley ditches Foursquare to become the world’s first self-quantified ski instructor.

• Staten Island becomes the new Queens. Queens becomes the new Brooklyn. Brooklyn is the new Manhattan. Manhattan is the new JerseyCity. Jersey City is the new Staten Island.

• Margaret Sullivan publicly excoriates @NYTFridge for letting Ross Douthat make off with her last raspberry Fage.

• Lena Dunham’s vagina causes a near-riot with an unprintable rant at the MTV Music Awards.

• Anna Wintour becomes the most effective ambassador to France since Ben Franklin, but after she flies a kite in a thunderstorm, her hair is never the same.

• Turns out, Leonard Cohen’s “ChelseaHotel #2” wasn’t about Janis Joplin. It was about Sally Singer.

• Katie Roiphe opens a cupcake shop.

• In the season two finale of The Newsroom, Will McAvoy yells at a girl.

• The town of Hyannis Port, Mass., officially changes its name to HyiannisPort out of respect for Taylor Swift’s spelling of it in her album’s liner notes.

• The Stefon thing starts to get old.

• Due to a tightening real estate market, all Brooklyn authors move into a DitmasPark house share in the C-SPAN reality TV hit “Franzen ’N’ Friends.”

• SoulCycle is overshadowed by its more intellectual, albeit flabby cousin, MindCycle.

• Lena Dunham’s left breast is spotted making out with Dane Cook at the Chateau Marmont.

• Snooki’s baby gets his first D.U.I.

• With the end of 30 Rock, Tina Fey enters the New York mayoral race. She loses by a hair but seizes control of the Working Families party and plays kingmaker for years to come.

• On a very special Homeland, Saul is faced with a stark choice when he is called before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the same day he has tickets for the Cranberries at Wolf Trap.

• Undeterred by the failure of its Snapchat ripoff “Poke,” Facebook releases Words with Zuck, Angry Zucks and Zucksquare.

• Taylor Swift stays mum when asked about the real-life subject of her new chart-topper, “Earth to Enrique (I Wouldn’t F--- You With Gaga’s D---).”

• Christian Marclay’s The Clock is released as a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt as the minute hand.

• Justin Bieber’s hair becomes sentient, signaling the dawn of the Singularity.

• Microsoft upgrades its flailing retail stores with holograms of Steve Ballmer yelling at customers, and sales spike.

• Lloyd Blankfein says goodbye to Wall Street to replace Paul Shaffer as David Letterman’s wise-cracking sidekick.

• MORE CUTE ANIMAL VIDEOS!

• Preet Bharara indicts Lena Dunham’s right breast over a minor nip slip.

• Jamie Dimon phone sex recording surfaces: “Baby, I’ve got the deepest, widest capital market in the world.”

• Kristen Stewart is caught smiling by a paparazzo, who immediately turns to stone.

• In effort to shore up his flagging mayoral campaign, John Liu seeds a rumor that his wife Jenny was “obsessed” with Pink’s first album.

• The Chelsea art district is purchased by Messe Schweiz, owner of Art Basel, and becomes an art fair. Booth sizes are small, medium, large and the-booth-formerly-known-as-Gagosian-Gallery.

• A new H&M&M store opens in Manhattan, featuring fashions right off the runway in a colorful candy shell.

• After Kris Humphries is traded to back to the University of Minnesota, Kanye West’s country album tanks and Bruce Jenner cuts himself shaving, The Kardashian Kurse is green-lighted for 12 episodes on E!

• Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter retire; Vogue and Vanity Fair merge to become luxury powerhouse Voguerty.

• Deborah Needleman takes the editor in chief spot.

• Jessica Chastain is booked for first four covers.

• Twitter’s privacy policy is amended to include the language “may be incorporated into a CNN news ticker or Times Styles trend piece.”

• Kate Middleton gives birth to a child whose name is something super normal.

• Jon Cryer and all remaining cast and crew publicly announce they also hate “Two and a Half Men.”

• Chris Christie is charged with harassment after sending 2,398 unreturned emails to Bruce Springsteen.

• Taylor Swift finally comes out of the closet in a controversial Us Weekly cover story, “Yep, I’m a Chronic Late-Night Cereal Eater.”

• After Preet Bharara indicts every remaining employee of SAC Capital, Stevie Cohen subjects the Damien Hirst shark to a furious harangue.

• Honey Boo Boo’s new restaurant, Times Square Sketti Trailer, is awarded a remarkable three stars by Pete Wells.

• Brian Williams is spotted in Times Square asking German tourists if they “like comedy.” (They have a jam-packed week, but they’ll definitely try to stop by.)

• Death, mayhem, the usual.

What else? Add your own predictions in the comments.

Tantaros has worked for House leadership and done an upstate congressional race, but it was back Lehigh University in 2000, that Tantaros -- then the student paper's conservative columnist -- exposed New York's junior Senator as a "power-hungry monster." Here's the parody-defying column, which dwells on the who-killed-Vince-Foster line, and more.

Some favorite excerpts:

....Yup, I guess Mrs. Clinton realizes that her time as first lady is coming to a close and this power-hungry monster feels she and her husband didn`t do enough damage to our country as a whole, so she needs to ruin New York.

Besides the fact that she isn't even from New York and has never even lived or been educated there, Mrs. Clinton is a power-hungry congenital liar....

'Hill' has been involved in multiple scandals (probably) more than all of the first ladies combined) and has lied probably about as many times as her husband has dropped his pants....

Oh, we can't forget the most famous, Whitewater. This was the Clinton's real-estate scam in Arkansas that ended up costing us taxpayers $69 million and White House Deputy Vincent Foster's life. (He was found dead in a nearby park in the heat of the scandal.)

But really, read the whole thing. It's a classic of a lost genre.

UPDATE: Tarantos emails: "Man I was angry. Either the Wawa was out of smokes or I had been woken up before noon when I wrote that." Anyway: "I make a better press secretary than I did journalist, that's for sure."

Hell's Angels, that is. The infamous motorcycle gang inhabits the building right next-door: a dingy, six-story tenement that has been the club's local headquarters for more than three decades. Their comings and goings are heralded with throaty blasts from Harley-Davidson tailpipes, and their block parties are the stuff of legend. Though middle age has mellowed the Angels-their latest noteworthy weapons bust, for a couple of knives, a dagger and pistol, dates back to last year-it's hard to imagine them baking cookies for the housewarming next-door.

"The fact that they tolerated this invasion of their territory is kind of amazing to me," marveled George Bliss, who operated a pedicab hub adjacent to the Angels' clubhouse before the dorm took its place. He recalled the days when tour buses would troll his block, looking for grit: Angels would rise to the occasion, hoisting bricks overhead and menacing the glassed-in out-of-towners. One prankster, he added, liked to crack a bullwhip on the hoods of passing cars.

"I'm sure they feel squeezed," he said. "I still occasionally see those guys, and they have nothing but curses for their neighbors. The shit hasn't hit the fan yet with whoever's going to go in and out of that dorm building, and park their cars in front of that building."

Indeed, the Angels are notoriously possessive of their parking. On the front of their clubhouse, a sign reads: "No Parking Except Authorized Hell's Angels," and they've been known to put cones and saw horses in the street to reserve room for their bikes. Cars have ended up with slashed tires.

But where some folks see chaos, Alta Levat, the associate dean for public affairs at New York Law School, paints a cozy (if eclectic) portrait of scholastic domesticity.

"The East Village is a wonderful place to live, full of students and young people and all sorts of wonderful people," she said. Has she considered a certain subset of those wonderful people, the Hell's Angels? "Well, we're very familiar with the neighborhood, and we don't have any concerns about that," she said.

Ms. Levat added that the law school has been exploring the real-estate market for 20 years and that, to abate the housing shortage, some students have been bunking at Brooklyn Polytechnic. "When we located this building, it was just so ideal that we moved ahead with our planning and incorporated it with our plans for the new academic year," she said. The school signed a long-term lease in May.

Students will start moving in on Aug. 1, and there's already a waiting list for rooms. Rent will range from $1,000 to $1,600 per bedroom, arranged in suites with private kitchens and balconies-some offer a pleasant view of the Angels' roof deck-all just a 20-minute commute from the school's campus in Tribeca. The dormitory is strictly nonsmoking and, as Ms. Levat was quick to point out, it will be monitored by a 24-hour security force.

The students' security system, however, will have nothing on the one next-door, where six closed-circuit cameras festoon the façade of the Angels' lair. If that's not enough to ward off interlopers, there's a tiny peephole nestled into the socket of a leering skull on the front door, along with a brass plaque that bears a eulogy for ex-Angel (Big Vinny) Girolamo, 1948-1979: "When In Doubt, Knock 'Em Out."

The students and the Angels both have a vested interest in the law, and in a perfect world one can imagine a symbiosis taking root: The gruff but affable Angels would recognize that they've gained a valuable resource right next-door, in the form of free legal services. And the law students would acquire experience, and a dash of thrilling glamour, while defending the Angels in court.

Meanwhile, however, this is Manhattan we're talking about, and so a local community group-Committee for Zoning Inaction-sprang up to protest the dorm's height. They complain that the building's developer used special zoning privileges to erect extra stories.

"This is sort of the Trojan dorm," said Richard Kusack, who assembled the group. "People find it really out of scale."

According to The Villager, on April 26 "a crowd of about 80 angry residents" gathered outside the law-school dorm, demanding that the city's Department of Buildings revoke the permit and chanting, "Take the floors down!"

Community activists aside, do the law students need to be nervous about their neighbors?

Don Muldoon is a retired cop who served the "Fighting Ninth" Precinct for 26 years and got to know a colorful assortment of Angels. They had nicknames like the Elephant Man, the Preacher and Mike the Bike, he recalled.

"They're not the nicest people in the world. I mean, they would cut your leg off in a heartbeat," he said. "But the funny part was, there was very little crime on their block, although we did find some unconscious people lying there once in awhile, you know? Of questionable moral fiber.

"You'll guarantee these kids are from Neverget, Long Island, or Sheepshank, Idaho, or something," he said. "And they're living in the big city here." He paused a moment to contemplate students from corn-fed America living cheek-by-jowl with the Hell's Angels. "Oh … my … God," he said slowly.

Mr. Muldoon left the force in 1991. Nowadays, the Angels fall under the jurisdiction of Inspector James McCarthy, the commanding officer of the Ninth Precinct.

"In October, I arrested one of the Hell's Angels for attempting to break the window of my car," said Inspector McCarthy. He explained that he'd been responding to a complaint-apparently, the Angels had wrecked a parked car by puncturing its radiator with a screwdriver. He'd crept up to the clubhouse in an unmarked cruiser, double-parked it and was walking back down the block when ….

"One of them was about to break my window when somebody yelled, 'Police!'" Inspector McCarthy recalled. "He threw his hammer up to the second-floor fire escape, and somebody took it in. I arrested the individual. He was charged with attempted criminal mischief and possession of a dangerous weapon."

The bikers are also possessive of their outdoor furnishings. During a recent visit, a burly fellow with a Hell's Angels belt buckle cinched around his considerable waist emerged from the clubhouse to inform a reporter that she had been sitting on the club's "private bench."

"We don't give interviews, and we'd like you to leave," he explained coolly. "And that's a private bench right there."

Neighbors confirmed that the bench had recently received a new coat of blood-red paint. Under normal circumstances, it bears a sign that says: "GETAWAY [ sic]: PRIVATE BENCH."

-Jessica Bruder

The Baroness

"Stop barking, Pollicino. Stop!"

Pollicino, a male Yorkshire terrier, was circling around Baroness Mariuccia Zerilli-Marimò's feet. Through an enormous window behind the baroness, one could see Central Park blossoming. It was a breathtaking vision-though not as astonishing as the 79-year-old baroness, who was wearing a little red dress by Raffaella Curiel, bicolored shoes and a blue long-sleeve sweater laid on her shoulders, with thick caramel-blond hair that was surely styled by Sophia Loren's hairdresser.

Baroness Mariuccia is the widow of Baron Guido Zerilli-Marimò, chairman of Ledoga-Lepetit, a Milan-based pharmaceutical empire. She was an employee at the company, a girl in her 20's, when she married the much older Sicilian chairman. When the company merged with Dow Chemicals in the 1960's, the baron retired, became a lecturer, an ambassador of the Order of Malta to Ethiopia and Portugal, and a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of the Institut de France.

Their marriage was a happy one: Pope Paul VI gave them a blessing for their silver wedding anniversary. (The couple had property in Castelgandolfo, the same town where the Pope's summer residence is located; the land later became a golf club.)

When the baron died in 1981, the baroness inherited his fortune.

While she is highly connected in New York society-a donor to the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the City Opera and the New York Philharmonic, for example-she is also an anomaly: She is conservative. She is reverently Catholic. She has never been chased by paparazzi. She had just one love affair, and it became a marriage.

"She seems to be frozen in the 50's," said a Rome correspondent for a prominent newspaper who didn't wish to be named.

"She is really a benefactress," said Antonio Monda, professor at the Department of Film and Television of the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, who appears as himself in Wes Anderson's movie The Life Aquatic.

Her apartment is filled with hundreds of porcelains, red damasks, Mario dei Fiori paintings, a Baldwin piano and plenty of embroidered armchairs.

"I do the embroidery myself," the baroness said. " I do the petit point-a needlepoint worked in fine yarn on very small, single-thread canvas. It relaxes me. It's like playing Chopin."

The porcelains?

"Most of them from Saxony. I always bring them with me, moving from one town to another."

She used to live in Milan, in the English-style Perego Gardens, in a house designed by the architect Giò Ponti. "I sold the Milan apartment 18 years ago, when I decided to move to New York and dedicate myself to spreading the Italian culture in the U.S., which was one of my husband's goals," she said.

In 1987, for about $5 million, she purchased and renovated a 19th-century house a few blocks from Washington Square. She donated the house-which had once been the home of the19th-century American general Winfield Scott-to New York University, and it became the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, home of the Department of Italian Studies. The department hosts about 100 events each year.

"I do not have a family here; Casa Zerilli-Marimò is my New York family," she said.

In Europe, she has her real family: a daughter, Maria Chiara Zerilli-Marimò, married to a Polish count, and a 17-year-old grandson.

The New York apartment is full of portraits of the baron. They married in Lausanne, Switzerland. She sobbed looking at a ring with the Zerilli-Marimò blazon set in a deep blue sapphire surrounded by diamonds.

"His partner in Lepetit was Roberto Lepetit, the heir of the family who founded the chemical company," she said. "Roberto was deported to the concentration camp of Ebensee in Austria, after the Nazis discovered that he and my husband had been hiding medicines behind a wall for the Italian insurgents. He died in Ebensee the day before the Allies liberated the camp."

The baron, she said, loved America: "In 1946, he flew here on a military plane. It took 48 hours from Milan to New York."

Nine years ago, said Professor Leonardo Losito, who used to work with the baron, "the baroness asked me to go the airport and welcome her husband. 'Which husband?' I wondered. 'Didn't the baron die? Had she gone completely crazy?'"

"Please," she'd pleaded, "go and take my husband home."

Mr. Losito discovered that she was referring to a dark bronze bust, which now stands at the entrance of the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò.

A fervent Catholic, Baroness Mariuccia is a member of the delegation of the permanent mission of the Holy See to the United Nations. When the former apostolic nuncio, Renato Martino, now archbishop, asked her to join the mission as a volunteer, she cheered. "I go to the United Nations and listen," she said. "Every year, I print a book in Italian with a collection of summaries of the head of state's speeches at the General Assembly."

The baroness is also a Dame of Grace and Devotion of the Sovereign Order of Malta.

"It's the oldest order of chivalry of Christianity," she said. "Its principle is defense of the faith, assistance to the poor and care of the suffering. It was born at the time of the First Crusade. The Order is a sovereign subject of international law, with its own constitution, passports, stamps and public institutions. At just eight acres, the Order's headquarters in Rome is the world's smallest sovereign state, but it counts 11,000 dames and knights throughout the world."

She disappeared for a moment and returned with a black cape with red lining, decorated by a white cross and four lilies. She said she wears the cape "on pilgrimages with the suffering, or at ceremonies."

Does she cook?

"I don't have time," she said, noting that she has a favorite caterer, Jolanda Garretti, founder of Acquolina Catering on Third Avenue. In May, Ms. Garretti catered the Casa Italiana's annual board meeting: risotto with pears and veal marinated in a tuna sauce.

"There was a fantastic cake with pineapple as well. I served me twice, which is not good for my weight," the baroness said with a smile.

Sun was flooding through the Central Park South apartment. The baroness said that, with summer coming, she would soon leave Manhattan for Monaco, where she is a resident.

-Silvia Grilli

376 Hudson

Whenever I'm invited to a dinner party, I get an idea of how it will go. I stare at the invitation and imagine the dining-room table in the sconce light. The wine is flowing and, like Italians, we will smoke after the meal. There are about a dozen of us. We tell tall tales and laugh our asses off. It's nice. And then I actually go to the dinner party-only to find myself in a rented hall filled with 300 people. The food circulates on trays carried by pissed-off actors. These are the only dinner parties I ever get invited to, the ones for 300 people. But somehow the invitation tricks me every time. I should know better by now.

But I wanted to tell you about 376 Hudson. That's the address of the United States Passport Agency. I had to get a new passport recently, and so I ended up there.

I gathered the necessary forms at a post office and filled them out in advance. I wanted to be ready. And I had a pretty good idea of how it would go. Now, sure, I've seen the line that forms outside 376 Hudson. I didn't arrive in New York yesterday. I knew I would be standing in that line. It would be shady, though, I correctly predicted, with the rising sun blocked by the building.

I could see myself going through the security checkpoint. I would probably set off the beep. I was prepared for that. They would run that radio-stick, or whatever it is, up and down my body, and it would make a staticky sound at my crotch. Then I would wait in another line, receive a number, and then it would be my turn to go up five flights of stairs.

The passport agents would not be like other bureaucrats. They would have a dash of elegance. They would enjoy their work. I would see them passing in the halls, chatting about this and that. One would mention the movie 3 Iron, and his colleague would reply with a wisecrack about Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Eventually, my name would be called. I would be sent to office No. 12.

I would pass green door after green door. Each would have a window of fogged glass. I would grab the doorknob for No. 12 and turn it. The office would be shabby, but it would at least provide its inhabitant with the dignity of privacy. A few volumes of an out-of-date encyclopedia would line a metal bookshelf-and over there, almanacs and telephone books. Beside these would be stacks of fresh U.S. passports, all of them blank on the inside.

At first, the agent would not look up at me. He would be wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, tie knotted up to the neck, hair a little greasy. He would be staring down at the papers on his desk-my papers-as a fan turned on a swivel in the corner. Venetian blinds would make the sunlight bearable.

"Mr. Maynes, is it?" he would say, staring down at the sheet.

"Yes, it is."

"Sure now?" He would lean back. The chair would squeak. He would tap the eraser end of his pencil on the metal surface of his desk. Crazy music would play in my mind.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Good. Have a seat. Planning a visit to old Mexico, are we?"

"Well, I am, at least."

"Very good, Mr. Maynes. Know something? I haven't taken a proper vacation in two years. Not one. Can you believe it? Here I sit, day after day, helping others visit destinations far and wide, and yet …. Ironic, don't you think so?"

"I suppose it is."

"Rainy this time of year in old Mexico."

"All I know is what I read in the guide books."

"And what do they say, Mr. Maynes?"

"They say the rains are more frequent the farther south one travels in that country. They also say that they are more likely to come later in the summer."

"Is that so? Fascinating. Will you be going there for business or pleasure?"

"Pleasure."

"Going all by yourself?"

"I don't see how that's any of business of yours, Mr. …. " I would take a look at the nameplate on his desk. "Mr. Chen."

"Ah, but it is my business, Mr. Maynes. It is my business indeed. Guess you might say I'm Uncle Sam's eyes and ears. Uncle Sam doesn't ask much of us, but now and then he likes to check in with his 'nephews' and 'nieces.' I ask you again: Will you be traveling alone?"

"The wife. With the wife."

"Very good, Mr. Maynes."

He would study my papers more intensely and with a worried air. How I would squirm! But suddenly he would break out his rubber stamp and press it to the inkpad. With flying hands, he would make mark after mark on page after page. And then he would pass them to me.

"Your passport will be ready shortly, Mr. Maynes."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. I was merely doing my job."

"Thanks all the same."

I would get up to leave. As I stepped out, he would say, "Mr. Maynes?"

I would look back at Mr. Chen one last time, saying, "Yes?"

"Have a nice trip."

All of this was going through my mind at 376 Hudson as I stood in a large, featureless room talking to a man who sat in a tiny space behind a thick wall of bulletproof glass. The time was 2:13 p.m. The passport agent was one of a dozen or so bureaucrats seated in a row, all of them behind the bulletproof glass like mere postal employees.

"Mr. Maynes? Mr. Maynes?"

"I'm sorry, I …. "

"Go to will-call."

"Can I get it today? I'm leaving in a couple days. I need the-"

"It says on your ticket."

I checked the ticket and went over to the will-call area, where I waited in a plastic bucket chair for another hour and a half. Then I heard my name coming over a tinny loudspeaker.

-Steven Maynes

Less than a week after Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver killed Mr. Bloomberg's plan to build a combined football-Olympic stadium over the West Side rail yards, the city and Mets' owner Fred Wilpon announced plans to build a new ballpark adjacent to the Mets' current home, Shea Stadium. The Mets would pick up almost the entire tab for the $600 million facility.

The Mets have been looking to replace their aging ballpark for nearly a decade. Amazingly enough, Shea Stadium is one of the oldest major-league stadiums in the country, although a good many of us can remember its opening in 1964. Only Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field in Chicago, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and, of course, Yankee Stadium in the Bronx are older. (Yankee Stadium really doesn't count-a massive renovation in the mid-1970's robbed the stadium of its old-fashioned feel.)

Given the way ballparks have changed over the last 15 years, with a premium on expensive skyboxes and faux charm, the Mets have every right to replace Shea, which has no glassed-in skyboxes and even less charm. As it happens, the Mets' desires meet the city's needs: The new stadium will be converted for use in the Olympics if New York is awarded the Games next month. And by proposing a stadium in Queens, the election-year conversation has been changed as well: No longer will we need to hear from the advocates and opponents of the Jets' stadium on the far West Side.

The new stadium deserves everyone's support. The Mets, unlike their counterparts in the Bronx, have been good citizens. They've never made any noises about moving from their home borough. They have never hinted darkly that they might move across the Hudson River to New Jersey if their demands were not met.

Instead, Mr. Wilpon and other team executives have waited patiently while the city has been distracted by other issues. Mr. Wilpon first proposed a stadium, which he envisions as a modern recreation of the Ebbets Field of his youth, in the late 1990's. He has been working quietly, behind the scenes, ever since.

Now the moment seems right. The Mets, their fans and the city deserve this stadium.

Bush and Kerry at Yale

Many Democrats have yet to get over George W. Bush's defeat of John Kerry last November. How did the principled, dignified war hero lose to the goofy, ne'er-do-well Connecticut preppie in Stetson boots? How could Americans choose four more years of Mr. Bush, after he had endangered the nation with foolish tax cuts that pushed the federal deficit toward $5 trillion? Why would we re-elect a man who had cooked the books in order to plunge the country into a hugely expensive and ill-conceived war, meanwhile having alienated our historic allies and declared that civil liberties were expendable? How could the country embrace a man who was stripping away environmental protections and fattening the wallets of his cronies in pursuit of a radical right-wing domestic agenda? Surely John Kerry, though hardly charismatic, could unseat such an unsuitable President.

And yet he could not. Somehow, Americans bought Mr. Bush's version of John Kerry more than they did Mr. Kerry's version of himself. And for all the post-election grumbling about the Republican Party's brilliant, bloodthirsty strategists, the fact was, John Kerry defeated John Kerry. There was something-it had to be said-a bit phony about Mr. Kerry's entire campaign. A sense that he was somehow not leveling with voters. The popular image of Mr. Kerry was that he was "the smart one," as opposed to Mr. Bush's rather dopey demeanor. But just how smart was Mr. Kerry? He was always cagey about releasing his college transcripts from Yale University, and now it's clear why: It turns out the smart one wasn't quite as smart as the dumb one.

Mr. Kerry's cumulative average at Yale was 76; Mr. Bush's was 77. It seems neither man lit up the New Haven sky with brilliance. Instead, they were masters of mediocrity. During his college years, Mr. Kerry, class of '66, earned five D's, including two in history and one in political science. Mr. Bush, class of '68, only received one D, in astronomy. Mr. Kerry's highest grade was an 89, in political science. Mr. Bush's highest grade was an 88, which he earned in three courses: anthropology, history and philosophy.

That Mr. Kerry stumbled through Yale with a C average doesn't mean he would not have made a better President than Mr. Bush. But it does expose the distance between the campaign image Mr. Kerry tried to project-that of the cerebral realist running against the dissolute party boy-and who he really was. And the voters detected that false note, in several aspects of Mr. Kerry's persona, and concluded there was something a bit arrogant about the man from Massachusetts. And because Mr. Kerry just wasn't comfortable being himself, he allowed Mr. Bush's team to define him.

Clearly, John Kerry could learn something from George W. Bush-even if neither learned much at Yale.

Has America Gone Crazy?

Feeling a bit bonkers today? You're in good company: A $20 million federal study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, reports that more than half of Americans will develop a mental illness at some point during their lives. The survey, which appears in The Archives of General Psychiatry, classified as "mental illness" any condition which met the criteria in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Of course, there is an ongoing, vigorous debate on whether the boundaries of mental illness are being too widely drawn these days, given the current fashion for medicalizing all sorts of problems which previously might have been written off as mere human quirks. But even with that caveat, the new study indicates that Americans are becoming more, rather then less, mentally troubled in this new century. Studies in the 1950's, for example, diagnosed mental illness in just 20 to 30 percent of Americans.

The researchers, led by Dr. Ronald Kessler, a professor of health-care policy at Harvard Medical School, found that the most common problem was depression, striking about 17 percent of Americans at some time in their lives, and alcohol abuse, which afflicts about 13 percent of the population. Also prevalent was social phobia, a crippling anxiety which was reported by 12 percent of respondents.

Most problems first surface at a young age, sometimes as young as 11, pointing to the urgent need for parents, teachers and social workers to look closely for signs of depression and other mood disorders in children, and to make sure they receive treatment. As Dr. Kessler said, in admitting that the study's definition of mental illness covered a lot of ground, "The fact is that there is a very wide range included here, with the equivalent of many psychiatric hangnails. We don't want to demonize those, but we don't want to trivialize them, either, because we know in many cases they lead to serious problems later on."

Most disturbingly, the study found that only a third of those suffering a form of mental illness sought out an effective treatment. One hopes that with the increased visibility of public figures who have discussed their own brave battles with mental illness-prominent Americans such as William Styron, Mike Wallace, Dick Cavett and Jane Pauley-the stigma will continue to lessen, and more people will seek help.

But there was one problem: George W. Bush and members of Congress have been slow to adopt many of the commission's most urgent recommendations, and the country remains in grave danger of future attacks. So this week, the members of the commission announced they would be calling more hearings, having re-formed themselves into a private group: the 9/11 Public Discourse Project. The new group, which doesn't have subpoena power, is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and other philanthropic organizations. The hearings will look at the Bush administration's counterterrorism efforts and will culminate in a new report which will likely point to the vast gaps that still exist in the country's ability to defend itself.

This is very good news. The commission members, chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, are the true patriots of American life at the moment, and their dedication toward getting results is a much-needed antidote to the Bush administration's hypocrisy and dissembling in the so-called "war on terror." As the group said in a statement, "The perils of inaction are far too high-and the strategic value of the Commission's findings too important-for the work of the 9-11 Commission not to continue."

The group has asked the Bush administration for access to recent information about how the C.I.A., F.B.I. and State Department are responding to terrorist threats. It's safe to say that the White House and leaders of Congress are not thrilled. After all, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld vigorously opposed the previous hearings and fought with the commission over evidence and witnesses. Without any power to force witnesses to testify or subpoena documents, will the new hearings be effective? Fortunately, the 10 members of the commission are no slouches, and it would be foolish for the White House to stonewall them. In addition to Mr. Kean, they include well-known power brokers like John Lehman, a former Secretary of the Navy; former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey; Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs; Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic former deputy attorney general; and former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste.

High on the group's agenda will be to ask why Mr. Bush hasn't taken more action to track down the stores of nuclear materials which are scattered through the former Soviet Union, and which could result in unimaginable catastrophe if obtained by terrorists. The group also wants to know why unified radio frequencies haven't been established for police and fire departments throughout the country. In addition, the hearings will look into the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

By refusing to silently slip away while George Bush bungles the job of protecting the nation, the members of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project are reminding the country that a committed group of private citizens still has the power to shine light on the truth.

Bloomberg and Klein Get an A

When Michael Bloomberg set out to do for public education what Rudy Giuliani did for crime, many thought he was setting himself up for failure. The city's public schools were mired in mediocrity, a situation which seemed to upset neither the teachers' union nor the bureaucracy. The Board of Education was accountable to no one, and school chancellors came and went in dizzying succession. Everybody-except the students and their families-had an interest in maintaining the bleak status quo.

But, just as Mr. Giuliani showed that New York was not an ungovernable hellhole of crime and disorder, Mayor Bloomberg is demonstrating that personal accountability and high standards can make a difference in public education.

The latest evidence of Mr. Bloomberg's success comes from the city's fifth-graders, whose test scores increased dramatically this year. This comes on the heels of similar good news from the city's fourth-graders, whose scores are also up. It is noteworthy, too, that children from minority households are showing the greatest improvement.

New test results show a dramatic increase in the number of fifth-graders who scored high enough to earn an automatic promotion to sixth grade. Last year, about 78 percent of fifth-graders earned promotion through testing. This year, about 91 percent did.

The scores vindicated Mr. Bloomberg's stated goal of ending the practice of social promotion-that is, the well-meaning but highly dubious practice of moving children to the next grade regardless of classroom performance. Under his watch, fifth-graders have had to show that they can handle sixth-grade material before they are rewarded with promotion.

Mr. Bloomberg had every reason to be jubilant. "Our reforms are working," he said. Who can deny it?

Critics were appalled when the Mayor said he would end social promotion-then again, critics were appalled when Mr. Giuliani insisted that there is no such thing as a victimless crime. Both disregarded the criticisms and have been proven right.

Overall, city public-school students in the third, fifth, sixth and seventh grades recorded the best reading and math scores in more than a decade. Those students, their families and their teachers deserve congratulations, along with Mr. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

The Luxury of Gratitude

What does it mean to be rich? The writer, TV personality and economist Ben Stein put his finger on it in a recent essay for The New York Times, in which he wrote that the only way to truly feel rich is to cultivate a feeling of gratitude for whatever you have.

Mr. Stein tells the story of his father, Herb Stein, who as a Jewish undergraduate at Williams College wasn't allowed to join a fraternity, but who took a job washing dishes in the basement of the Sigma Psi frat house. When he asked his father if he felt angry about this, his father replied, "Not at all. I didn't have the luxury of feeling aggrieved. I was just grateful to have a job so I could go to one of the best schools in the country." Herb Stein went on to become a well-known economist and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.

That inner gratitude, Ben Stein concluded, was the "secret ingredient" in his father's success and happiness. He writes that he tries to apply that lesson to any frustrating situation he finds himself in. For example, if you're stuck in an endless line at an airport while on a business trip, don't focus on the long wait; focus on the fact that you have a job, and that having a job is a very good thing. As Mr. Stein writes, "Be grateful about everything and you'll feel a lot richer than the billionaires I know who are always moaning about everything that happens and who lament, like King Canute, that they cannot control the waves of the market or the business cycle."