He told us that he collected "north of 30,000, easy," and that he "would have gotten a lot more petitions signed if it weren't for the damned rain."

He said the petitions keep flowing in via Federal Express and personal visits to his headquarters, and that most of those who signed were "so furious about the war."

And where are the people angriest?

"Union Square was a gold mine," he said. "The green market in particular."

- Jason Horowitz

I've posted it online here.

Curiously, the script circulated with the video differs from the final version in a couple of places. Suozzi says he "beat New York's most powerful Republican machine." The script says "political machine." And he seems to have ad libbed a line in the middle: "And Albany -- forget about it."

Script after the jump.

SCRIPT:

Tom Suozzi: I beat New York's most powerful Republican machine. In four years as Nassau County Executive, I've turned 'the worst run county in the country' into one of the best. I'm Tom Suozzi and I've never been afraid to shake things up. New York could use some of that right now. Soaring property taxes... Failing public schools ... More Upstate jobs lost every year. And Albany -- forget about it. I'm running for governor to fix that. Because government should work for us -- not the other way around. "

Announcer: Tom Suozzi: A different kind of Democrat for Governor.

The ad-a spot for FedEx-was crashed into circulation by BBDO New York, which has handled the Memphis-based delivery juggernaut's account since 1989. According to Terry Martin, BBDO New York's senior vice president and account director, they came up with the spot to cash in on Mr. Jennings' P.R. bonanza, a media paroxysm that included the late-night talk-show circuit as well as a six-figure book deal with Random House.

It was really more of a save: The moment that sealed Mr. Jennings' compact with the celebrity world was not automatically good publicity for FedEx.

In front of some 18 million viewers tuning in to catch a bit of latter-day game-show history, Mr. Jennings, a steely-eyed software engineer from Salt Lake City, incorrectly responded to this Final Jeopardy answer: "Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year."

The correct response given by Nancy Zerg, a broker from Ventura, Calif.: "What is H. and R. Block?"

"We protect our brand and don't want misinformation getting out about the company. We wanted our moment to be able to clarify the record-and indeed, that our 250,000 employees work day in and day out," said Steve Pacheco, FedEx's director of advertising.

Putting the ad out in under 48 hours, BBDO started to look a bit like a harried accountant on April 15. The spot required a multi-pronged effort to meet USA Today's publishing deadline; secure approval from Jeopardy! producers at Sony Pictures Television; and get sign-offs from FedEx executives and Mr. Jennings himself, who proved an elusive target during his week-long media blitz.

"The biggest challenge was finding Ken in light of his newfound celebrity," Mr. Martin said. "He was in New York, but just tracking him down and getting the ad in front of him so he could be comfortable and approve it was a challenge."

According to Mr. Martin, on the afternoon of Nov. 30-a few hours before the final episode was broadcast showing the end of Mr. Jennings' $2.5 million run-John Osborn, the president and chief executive of BBDO New York, learned that "What is FedEx?" was the response that would close out the highest-grossing game-show run in television history. Much like a hard-driving editor kicking reporters onto a story, said Mr. Martin, Mr. Osborn sent out a memo to get his troops ready for a spot.

"The news cycle on something like this is one week-two, max. Our criteria was to get it in the paper by Friday or we'd have lost the publicity boost of it," Mr. Martin said, adding that these kinds of campaigns fill an effective advertising niche: "I think that there is a newsroom mentality that marketers and agencies should take."

Shows like Jeopardy! are bound to mention brand names. But as brand names increasingly become a part of the pop-culture vernacular, staging last-minute interventions like this one to protect the hard-won (and expensive) image of a company is becoming more and more important. That means cultivating almost a newsroom sensibility at agencies like BBDO.

"This advertisement was a way to capitalize on the publicity when the record-setter ends up losing by calling out one of our clients. We thought there must be a way to turn that around and make that a positive message for FedEx," Mr. Martin said.

"There's only one time FedEx has ever been the wrong answer," the ad's copy opened in block lettering, set in bold for emphasis. Below that, the ad continued: "Congratulations Ken Jennings on your amazing Jeopardy! winning streak. And thanks for mentioning our name. Even if it was the one time you shouldn't have."

Meanwhile, accounting giant H. and R. Block was quick to tap into Mr. Jennings' marketing capital too, issuing a press release the day of the broadcast offering the fallen champion a "lifetime of free tax and financial services."

Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff's ambitious plan calls for the city to invoke eminent domain to clear away the middle of every block from 33rd Street to 42nd Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, in order to create this long, landscaped, car-free Champs Elysées. Mr. Doctoroff, the city's deputy mayor for economic development, hopes to see tall office buildings and residential towers sprout up along both sides of the park.

"Creating this mid-block boulevard, we believe, will create a signature address for the commercial and residential development that will occur on either side of it," Mr. Doctoroff said, "as well as a spectacular park in a neighborhood that basically has none."

And were it not for one pesky building, he would be looking at the easiest land grab since the city took Robert Moses' bulldozers away from him.

Federal Express, the international shipping company, is gearing up for a fight over its World Service Center, which stands in the path of the wrecking ball.

The shipping company doesn't own the building in which it is housed, a 65,000-square-foot facility at 528 West 34th Street. However, over the last 15 years, FedEx has put $54 million worth of renovations into the facility, and sources in Community Board 4, which represents that district, said that FedEx has told them it would cost upwards of $140 million to relocate.

A representative of FedEx's landlord, a family that has owned the building for three generations, wrote in a June 16 letter to the city that seizing the site would put in jeopardy 1,000 full- and part-time jobs.

"In reviewing the impact of the Hudson Yards rezoning and as laudable as open space uses are, one must be concerned that this City continues to provide employment to all economic strata," wrote Richard Bass, a senior real-estate analyst at the law firm Herrick, Feinstein. "Sacrificing jobs for open space at this particular site is not the right decision."

Mr. Doctoroff conceded that the FedEx facility was the "largest single piece" that his office will have to deal with when it comes time to begin formally negotiating with landlords.

Path Of Least Resistance

The city hasn't publicly disclosed exactly which-or how many-buildings are standing in its way. (Nor will Mr. Doctoroff release an estimate of how much he expects all the condemnations to cost. Suffice it to say, however, that the city stands to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to landowners who lose their properties in the ambitious move.)

But an examination of the proposed route for the boulevard, compared with a tax map of the neighborhood, yields a fairly detailed picture of who and what will be affected by the park.

In all, the city appears to have carved a route of least resistance. Much of the park wends through aging and unused railyards, in addition to small, squat buildings with little aesthetic appeal. There are, of course, exceptions.

About 60 small-sized businesses stand in the way of the wrecking ball, but about 40 of those have short-term leases in one office building; and many of them don't expect to be around in 2007, the earliest that construction could realistically start.

The most established businesses include a Red Cross facility, a high-end catering company, a small advertising firm, a convenience deli, a pipe manufacturer and an auto-body shop.

At least 31 rental housing units are in the way. Of those, about 25 are in a new luxury loft building, and six are located in an aging walk-up building.

Five large businesses will also have to go. They are the FedEx facility, another package-delivery service called Velocity Express, a Best Western hotel, the office building housing the 40 companies, and Splashlight Studios, a high-end, newly renovated photo studio.

Of these, the most problematic for the city is the FedEx facility, which has informally sent word that it intends to fight any eminent-domain proceeding, in which the city acquires privately held properties in the name of public good.

Another interesting negotiation may yet play out between the city and New York Waterway president Alfred E. Imperatore. Arcorp Properties, a real-estate company of which Mr. Imperatore is a principal, owns the three aging railyard lots that the city hopes to use to create its new West Side boulevard.

Separately, Mr. Imperatore's company was served with a federal subpoena in April in connection with an investigation into whether New York Waterway inflated the ferry-service bills that it sent the Port Authority in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. At the time, the company issued a statement saying that it was cooperating fully with the Justice Department and "was confident his inquiry will confirm our good work."

The Port Authority couldn't be reached by press time to comment on the investigation, and Mr. Imperatore's spokesman said that there has been no development beyond the company's April statement that he could address.

According to a spokesman, Mr. Imperatore purchased the lots some 20 years ago, and they have gone unused since then. Right now, Mr. Imperatore is keeping his plans for the properties quiet, perhaps to maintain some bargaining leverage with the city.

"We are aware of the city's plan for the site and hope to achieve an equitable resolution so this exciting project can go forward," said the spokesman, Pat Smith of Rubenstein Associates.

West Side Settlements

On the whole, the small business owners and landlords in the area seem resigned to the city's plan. Most said they felt certain that they would be able to negotiate a reasonably fair settlement with the city for the price of their properties, and none made any serious mention of a fight.

Ken Bookspan has owned a two-story commercial building at 527 West 36th Street for 35 years, where, until about five years ago, he ran a profitable building-materials company. He now rents it out to a similar company. Mr. Bookspan said he doesn't want to stand in the way of progress; he just wants to make sure that he gets a fair price for his property.

"I'm a gentleman who's 60 years old," he said. "It's my retirement package. All I want is not to be screwed …. I don't feel like going to court for the next 10 years."

Bill Ashe has owned his warehouse at 534 West 35th Street since 1979. Mr. Ashe, a commercial photographer, used the building as his studio, mainly to shoot cars. He first heard about the park when city officials sent him a letter this summer, informing him that they needed to check his premises for hazardous materials that might cause a snag in the park's development. (Mr. Doctoroff said that every owner received such a letter and that the city has, to this point, opened a dialogue with about 40 percent of them.)

"If the eminent domain is a fair and reasonable thing, it might be a good idea, because someone is going to make a lot of money from this park," said Mr. Ashe. "Sadly, it doesn't look like it's going to be me."

One business owner who is not so sanguine about the city's boulevard is Henry Geddes, the president of Splashlight Studios. Four years ago, after his father bought the building at 535 West 35th Street, Mr. Geddes commenced a multimillion-dollar renovation of the now-gleaming, handsome, two-story white-brick building. He said it is now arguably one of the two or three highest-end photo studios in the city, and hosts weekly shoots for magazine covers along with the occasional fashion-show event.

Mr. Geddes said his concern stems from the fact that although the city compensates landlords for their buildings, it only provides moving costs for businesses that hold leases in those buildings. So while his family, which owns the building, will probably end up all right, his business, which only finished its renovation around the beginning of 2002, may be unable to re-establish itself after the eviction.

"I'm trying to build up a brand, and they're taking the legs out from underneath me," he said. "Every business owner who is not a landowner is going to be hurting."

Before anything happens, the Mayor's West Side plan has to undergo the standard advisory procedure, dubbed ULURP (for "uniform land-use review procedure"). Once the application has been certified by the City Planning Commission (slated for this spring), Community Board 4 will review it and make a written recommendation. The borough president will then review the plan and submit a written recommendation back to the C.P.C., which in turn will re-review the application before sending it to the City Council and, finally, along to the Mayor.

Sources in City Hall estimate that the city won't be able to break ground on the project for at least several years.

To date, the local community board has not taken a stance on the issue of the boulevard, saying it is too early in the process for any judgment. But the board's district manager, Anthony Borelli, said he is drafting an initial-outreach letter to local landowners "as we speak."

Many of the potentially affected landlords have a similar wait-and-see attitude.

"I hope that it will be resolved peacefully," said Richard Quad, manager of Quadrille Realty, a two-story building at 517 West 36th Street. "We were expecting the Olympics, the Jets stadium, the No. 7 subway line. We've been expecting something-what, we don't know yet. We'll leave it in God's hands."

-additional reporting by John Gallagher

Now, I admit there's something of a Beta boy's boasting to this, a "Dude, I'm going to get so fucked up" bravado that I didn't care for much in college-even though I was getting just as fucked up-and that I find rather unseemly now. I've always believed that one should handle his drinking with the quiet panache of, say, Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair : You keep your mouth shut about your dirty business-even when you're banging Faye Dunaway.

But, truth be told, the anticipation of falling to the floor of some bar is all that's keeping me going these days.

I'll bet you've already guessed why I've marked a future moment of utter stupidity and recklessness with such grandeur. That's right, I'm an idiot. But let me elaborate.

I'm in the final days of a month-long alcohol purge that has transformed me from an affable, disheveled lush into sobriety's acerbic, virulent avatar.

On the last day of January, I told myself- and anyone else who would listen-that I wouldn't drink for a month. And, so far, I haven't. I have come, however, to regret my decision.

You see, in the process of this puritanical cleansing, I've taken on all the attributes that said cleansing is supposed to eradicate. I'm increasingly short-tempered. I curse with abandon. I can no longer concentrate on conversations longer than five minutes, and can no longer meet up with friends who are drinking. Watching them imbibe makes me twitch nervously and tear up cardboard coasters. I've also become addicted to sugar. The other night, I ran across the street from my apartment through a burgeoning snow drift-in shorts-to buy a deep-fried Twinkie.

I can't tell which is worse: being insufferable or batty.

I began my time in Purgatory after what could best be described as a six-month binge of imbecility. Under the influence, I canoodled with girls in whom I would normally have no interest and made ill-timed, sloppy plays for others in whose league I didn't belong. I said terrible things about people I was close to, and cannot count the mornings when I used a combination therapy of yogurt shakes, Alka-Seltzer, eggs on a roll and six cups of coffee to feel like a human being again.

The last day I had a drink, I began my evening at a book party at the Lotos Club sipping Scotch in a room filled with first editions. Seven hours later, at 4 a.m., I was crouched in the corner of a midtown bar, shielding myself from its bored owner, who'd decided to end the night by tossing most of his inventory against the wall.

As the liquor-kissed shrapnel rained down around me, I remembered something a friend had told me months ago. She said I'd reached a crossroads that many "boys"-her term-face in New York. If I kept going, she explained, I'd become someone who felt the need to stay out all the time, who talked down to people whose publications I didn't respect, and who thought that the famous people I met were my friends.

On Jan. 30, I realized I hadn't heeded her warning. I'd wandered away from my life into an excerpt of The Lost Weekend . Staying sober for a month, even if it was the shortest of the calendar, would help me get back on track.

The impermanence of my abstinence only made it worse, however. Friends-alcoholics-who've given up drinking for good have a kind of real clarity to them, because in some ways they're above the clamoring crowd and want to stay there.

But knowing that in a matter of days you'll be back on the floor is like waking up wanting each day to end. Indeed, instead of redemption, my month on the wagon has brought only doldrums. And the realization that I love drinking.

What began with nights hugging a bottle of Boone's Farm strawberry wine while trying not to puke on a friend's letter jacket has, over time, grown into a self-preserving lifestyle. I like the physical act of drinking, and I like myself better when I'm doing it, mostly because drinking acts as a counterweight to my anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive tendencies. And while this statement is the kind of thing that could support a psychotherapist for the next 10 years, the truth is that when I have a cocktail in my hand, I'm far less concerned with the arrangement of my sweater drawer or the matting of my new Frank Lloyd Wright print. Drinking protects me from myself.

And yet I'm still here, counting the days. At this point, it's shame that keeps me with it-the shame of having to face all the people I told about my little exercise and explain why I didn't deliver the ring to Modor.

If there was ever a moment where I was going to fall off, it was at the halfway point, Valentine's Day, at a bar in the East Village. By 9 p.m. I'd torn up five or six coasters and downed six nonalcoholic beers. After waiting a few minutes for the men's room, I finally got in and heard a pounding on the door.

"Just a second," I yelled out.

But he kept going. I yelled out again that I would be a couple of seconds, and the pounding got louder.

When I opened the door, and we exchanged places, I drew close to his face and yelled, "What the hell is your problem?"

He locked me out, but I wasn't finished.

"You fucking dick," I said and then beat on the door myself. I wanted to keep screaming. I wanted to have him come out and shove him to the floor and slam his head against the sink. I wanted to rip out his eyes and Federal Express them to his mother. I'd never gotten into a fight before-unless you count the time a kid named Lamont shoved me to the locker-room floor when I was 12. But I was ready that night.

Instead of a man at peace with himself I'd become a frothy parody of a man who'd had too much to drink.

"Get the fuck out here! You fucking dick!" I screamed.

Two girls in line looked at me.

"It's all right," one of them said.

"It's not all right," I said. "What is his goddamn problem? I was in there for 30 seconds."

"You weren't in there that long," the other said, moving into den-mother mode. "I don't know what his deal is, but you should let it go."

"I'm not even drunk," I mumbled and walked away, thinking that this month could not end soon enough. Some people make bad drunks. I'm worse sober.

Grab Bag on Wheels

One perennially popular and generally not-too-risky form of theft involves crooks following a Federal Express or U.P.S. truck. "They'll pull up behind or in front of the FedEx truck, and they'll watch the FedEx driver as he's making his deliveries," explained Deputy Inspector Howard Lawrence, the 19th Precinct's commanding officer. "One of them will grab a package and take off and hope the driver runs after him, abandoning the truck. And then it's a free-for-all in the truck. It's a grab bag. Whatever they get, they get."

Deputy Inspector Lawrence wasn't speaking hypothetically, but of an incident that occurred on Aug. 24, though it never reached the free-for-all stage, thanks to the perspicacity of one Federal Express employee.

"The FedEx driver was sharp," said Deputy Inspector Lawrence, adding that the worker spotted a suspicious-looking red Dodge Caravan following him around on East 67th Street shortly after 4 p.m. "He saw what was developing and wrote down the plate number of the van.

"The only trouble," Deputy Inspector Lawrence continued, "is the people in the van saw him writing down the plate number."

They followed the FedEx driver to his next destination-69th Street between Fifth and Madison avenues-pulled up in front of him when he stopped his truck, and confronted him.

"They demand the piece of paper and chase him at knifepoint," the inspector said. "A doorman called the police. They were running circles around the doorman. Then these guys get in the van and take off."

Based on the doorman's description, 19th Precinct police officers Mike Adler and Mark Morales, on routine patrol in the neighborhood, spotted the van and followed it into Central Park.

If there's anything that boosts cop morale (besides a pay raise) and reinforces that all-important sense of NYPD unity, it's a good arrest that involves several different precincts working in tandem. That's what happened next.

Cops from the 19th, Central Park and 20th precincts, hearing the job come over their police radios, joined the pursuit. Even Deputy Inspector Lawrence and Captain James Murtagh, the 19th Precinct's second-in-command, jumped into the inspector's car and proceeded through the 66th Street transverse to Central Park West, where the action was going down.

"The [suspects] are jumping out of the car," Deputy Inspector Lawrence reported. "It comes to rest at 66th Street and Broadway. Adler and Morales get the driver of the van at that location."

After a spirited foot chase, three additional perps were apprehended in the vicinity of 66th and Broadway and positively identified.

While no merchandise or weapons were found in the van, a Pennsylvania license plate was discovered under the front seat of the vehicle, which was sporting New Jersey tags. "One of the suspects had seven or eight previous arrests for truck burglaries," Deputy Inspector Lawrence reported.

Two of the perps hailed from West 96th Street, one from Ozone Park and one from Jackson Heights. All were charged with attempted robbery.

Currency

Devaluation

It's all well and good to be able to tell the difference between a real and a counterfeit $20 bill. Unfortunately, an educated eye is its only reward-unless you spot the fake while its purveyors are still on the premises, as the manager of the OK Falafel House, a restaurant at 1752 Second Avenue, discovered on Aug. 16.

Upon the arrival of the cops in response to a radio call at 8:40 p.m., the manager presented them with two counterfeit $20 bills and explained that they'd been presented as payment (whether for falafel or some other Middle Eastern specialty, the crime report didn't specify) by two men who had recently enjoyed dinner at the restaurant.

There frankly wasn't much the cops could do, except safeguard the evidence and canvass the area. The search turned out negative, since by that point the perps-both of whom were described as stocky (undoubtedly from eating for free off other fake $20 bills)-were long gone.

Ralph Gardner Jr. can be reached at rgard135@aol.com.

One East 77th Street resident found out firsthand just how serious an offense this can be when, on March 16, he was having a couch delivered to his apartment and left his building's front door open for the delivery.

While he was waiting for the furniture, a cat belonging to his neighbors-two women, one of them 34, the other 33-exited the building and fled in an unknown direction. The animal apparently was accustomed to having the run of the apartment building's hallway. While some people might think the cat's owners should bear some responsibility for the consequences of letting their pet frolic about outside the apartment, the owners themselves didn't see it that way.

"You killed our cat!" they allegedly informed the 25-year-old victim. "We will kill you!"

The death sentence was at least temporarily delayed when the fellow found the kitty and returned him to his owners. However, the young man, shaken by the event and still fearing for his safety, filed a harassment complaint with the police. He said that even after he had presented the unharmed cat to his neighbors, they continued to yell and threaten him.

Redecorating

Made Simple

There are many different ways to redecorate your living room. One of them is to purchase on the installment plan. A faster way is to follow a furniture truck, as a couple of suspects did on March 15, and then help yourself to your favorite settee when the driver abandons the vehicle to make a delivery.

That's what occurred at 11:15 a.m. when the victim, employed by the Carlyle Collection of Lodi, N.J., parked in front of 1186 Madison Avenue while making a delivery at 55 East 87th Street. When he returned to his truck, he discovered that someone had broken the latch off the rear door and absconded with a green sofa bed valued at $3,575.

The cops canvassed the area, with positive results-not in the sense that they caught the perps, but in the sense that they at least found a witness to the deed. A man who was also making a delivery in the area told the police that he'd seen two men pull up behind the truck in a red vehicle, remove a sofa from the back of the truck, place it on top of their rig with the skill and alacrity of expert movers, and flee northbound on Madison Avenue. One of the movers, the witness reported, was even dressed for the part, in a green work suit.

Special Delivery

In another crime of opportunity, an employee of Max Mara, at 813 Madison Avenue, left four boxes outside the store at 4:10 p.m. for FedEx to pick up. The boxes, whose contents (assorted clothing) was valued at $10,425, were taken promptly-unfortunately, not by the express-mail service.

Two unknown perps jumped out of a dark blue minivan, helped themselves to the parcels, jumped back in the van and fled northbound on Madison Avenue. The victim did manage to jot down the license-plate number before they departed.

Labels for Much Less

The cops had more successful results on March 15 at around 1 p.m., when a couple of members of the 19th Precinct grand-larceny squad (they go out hunting for grand larcenies in progress) chanced upon some action going down at the Gap at 1149 Third Avenue.

The police officers-Neil Hicks and Neil Ariano-observed a man and a woman enter the store. The supposed shoppers caught the attention of the two cops because they fit the description of individuals wanted for numerous grand larcenies at commercial establishments.

A short time later, Officer Hicks witnessed the man depart with a duffel bag. This was particularly significant in light of the fact that he hadn't been carrying one when he entered the store. As the suspect got into his car, a 2001 white Toyota, the cop stopped him and asked him a few questions. As he did, he happened to notice enough clothing in the back seat-all of it with the price tags still attached-to open up a small boutique.

The suspects, a 21-year-old man from Elmhurst, N.Y., and a 56-year-old woman from Ozone Park, were placed under arrest and taken to the 19th Precinct, where they were debriefed by Sergeant Benny Carbone of the grand-larceny squad.

The perps proved to be quite cooperative, supplying the police with the name and location of the place in Jackson Heights where they go to fence their stolen merchandise.

Ralph Gardner Jr. can be reached at rgard135@aol.com.

While the city and the nation remain on high alert for the next terrorist attack, some common criminals apparently don't consider themselves in any peril of falling prey to the heightened security. On Oct. 14, a 29-year-old man was walking home along the Upper East Side shortly after midnight when a robber simulating a weapon (reminiscent of the good old days, when that was about the worst one had to fear from city living), approached him and demanded cash.

"I need some money," the perp stated.

When his intended victim inquired, "How much?"-perhaps assuming his assailant would show some self-restraint-the perp replied, "Everything." No surprise there.

At that point, the robber also simulated the aforementioned weapon and added, "Or I'll kill you. I swear on my mother's grave, and I'm not joking."

This encounter occurred on Fifth Avenue between 65th and 66th streets-one the city's better neighborhoods, though not the busiest location at that time of night, and certainly not a place where one would normally try to bargain down a guy with a gun.

However, this victim, an East 85th Street resident, did. He flatly refused to turn over his wallet, prompting his would-be robber to backtrack. He was only joking, the perp explained convivially: "I only need a buck or two."

The complainant still declined to make a contribution. So the perp, who was 5-foot-11, 200 pounds and approximately 30 years old, simply gave up and fled down Fifth Avenue, then eastbound on 62nd Street. The police canvassed the area for the suspect, but with negative results.

Security Blanket

Another sign, though not necessarily an encouraging one, that normalcy may be returning to the Upper East Side are the shoplifters dropping by some of Madison Avenue's finer shops. One such perp visited Frette Home Couture, at 799 Madison Avenue, on Oct. 27.

Rather than simply contenting himself by absconding with, say, one of the boutique's superior-quality flat and one-fitted sheets-which, by the way, can set you back a week's pay at Frette-he made off with a mink blanket worth $8,500.

For those who aren't yet paralyzed by recession fears and might be in the market for such a throw (or who weren't but are now that they've heard that something so wonderfully decadent exists), the item measures approximately 53 inches by 71 inches. If you would like it in different dimensions-and frankly, if you can afford a mink blanket in the first place, why stop at a measly four by six feet?-it can be specially ordered for you from the store's factory in Italy.

A Frette salesperson attested that not only the front but also the back of the blanket, made of pure silk, is lovely (so that, come the revolution, one could always flip it over and sport the cloth side).

As for the aforementioned perp, he apparently visited the store around 9:30 a.m., before it was officially open for business, and was let in by the morning cleaning woman. He fled with his prize in an unknown direction.

Priority Mail

A high-ranking Israeli politician was staying at the Regency Hotel on Oct. 17 when a member of the Shin Bet, the Israeli secret service, assigned to his detail became suspicious of a FedEx envelope delivered to his room. The envelope, the agent noticed, included no tracking slip.

After a brief investigation, it was learned that the envelope had been delivered at around 1 a.m. (an odd hour for mail delivery under any circumstances) to the hotel's front desk by an unknown male who wasn't wearing a FedEx uniform. It was then placed in the hotel guest's mail slot.A member of his staff retrieved it around 8 a.m. and brought it upstairs to his room.

After Israeli security examined it, they turned it over to a State Department special agent, who summoned the NYPD. A Hammer (Hazardous Materials Emergency Response) team arrived and decided to evacuate the surrounding rooms pending the arrival of the bomb squad. The bomb squad X-rayed the package, which was deemed to be nonexplosive, and the Hammer team sealed it for its trip to the lab under the auspices of detectives from the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Designer Anthrax

There have been nearly 100 radio runs generated by citizens concerned about anthrax, according to Captain Howard Lawrence, the commanding officer of the 19th Precinct. Not one proved positive. One complaint on Oct. 23 involved a suspicious package discovered by employees of the U.S. post office at 217 East 70th Street.

Police officers who responded to the scene at around 6 a.m. were informed by a postal employee that he'd placed the package, sent from Iran to an East 64th Street address, on a table when a small amount of red powder emerged from a hole in the bottom of the package.

Post-office workers further stated that this was the second such package they'd received in recent days. On Oct. 19, a similar package arrived bound for an address on First Avenue in the 60's. The area of the post office where the boxes were located was evacuated and secured by a Hammer team, which removed the packages-the earlier one had apparently remained undelivered-and placed them in bags. Further investigation by the Department of Health determined no danger was posed by the red powder.

Traffic begins in Mexico with border policemen Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) and Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Vargaz) intercepting a truck full of illegal drugs and arresting the drivers. When they are stopped along the road by their supposed crime-fighting superior, General Salazar (Tomas Milian), and a contingent of his troops, they are relieved of their haul and their two prisoners. Javier and Vargas suddenly realize that Salazar is simply working for one drug cartel against another, and that there is no law and order in Mexico where narcotics are concerned. The two policemen are faced with the difficult and dangerous prospect of choosing sides in a web of corruption, betrayal and assassination. Mr. Soderbergh scores a realistic coup by having all the Mexican characters speak Spanish when they are speaking with each other-at which point there are English subtitles.

The late, great French aesthetician André Bazin credited Jean Renoir with a stroke of realism in Grand Illusion (1937) by having his characters speak French, German and English interchangeably as the linguistic occasion demanded. Of course, there is nothing new about subtitled foreign-language dialogue inserted into predominantly English-speaking films, but the very structure of the narrative in Traffic makes it virtually bilingual.

The American section of Traffic is spearheaded by Michael Douglas as Ohio State Supreme Court Justice Robert Wakefield, named by the President as the new anti-drug czar. He is a hard-nosed enemy of drug dealers at the outset, determined to win the war on drugs with new strategies. On a fact-finding tour, he is somewhat chastened to learn that the dealers can outspend the government at every turn, and that his proposed partnership with Mexican authorities has fallen through with the arrest of General Salazar. Even closer to home, Wakefield and his wife Barbara (Amy Irving) are suddenly confronted with the ruinous drug addiction of their A-student daughter, Caroline (Erika Christensen).

Closer to the front lines of the drug war are undercover agents Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzmán). Their job is building a case against the notorious Obregon drug cartel. After one of the most explosive and prolonged gunfights in the film, Montel and Castro bust a mid-level trafficker named Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer) and succeed in making him turn state's evidence against upscale suburban drug kingpin Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer). He is dragged off in handcuffs in front of his pregnant wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her little boy. She and her child are quickly threatened by her husband's business associates and shadowed by D.E.A. agents. From a state of innocence, she is thrust by necessity into the business of killing a witness against her husband and otherwise protecting his interests. In this she relies on shady attorney Arnie Metzger (Dennis Quaid), who sees an opportunity to move in on Helena and her growing family while her husband languishes in prison.

Mr. Soderbergh has shot much of the film with a hand-held camera to give it the newsreely look that goes back to Open City in 1946 and to Dogma 95 in our own time. There is no background music used for the traditional function of emotional underlining. The rhythm of the film is derived instead from the editing and from the multiple perspectives on the action. Actually, Mr. Soderbergh photographed the film himself and, being denied a "directed and photographed by" credit, uses the pseudonym Peter Andrews as the cinematographer.

As to what the film is saying, opinions may differ. It strongly suggests that we are losing the war on drugs and shall continue to lose it well into the foreseeable future. Yet the alternatives of decriminalization and legalization are not argued as feasible solutions. Mr. Soderbergh insisted in interviews that he was not interested in making a film simply about drug addiction, its cures and its consequences. The world of Traffic is enmeshed and immersed in narcotics not as a clinical subject, but as a form of entrepreneurial capitalism. Indeed, the most damning thing that is said about the Mexican police is that they routinely regard their jobs as an entrepreneurial opportunity.

As for the high incidence of drug abuse among American teenagers, the only solution rests with the parents, as the last communal shot indicates. Still, it is not surprising that Traffic was voted this year's Best Picture by the New York Film Critics. By not taking a polemical position on the issue of narcotics, Mr. Soderbergh and his colleagues have given the actions of their characters greater credibility. This is the way the world is, not the way the world might or should be. And by keeping the pressure on all his characters for most of the film's running time, great opportunities are provided for all the players to show how much grace they can summon. Mr. Del Toro, Mr. Douglas, Mr. Cheadle and Ms. Zeta-Jones are especially noteworthy in this regard.

But the real star of the film is Mr. Soderbergh, who has demonstrated this year in Erin Brockovich and Traffic the full range of his versatility since his spectacular prize-winning splash at Sundance and Cannes in 1989 with Sex, Lies, and Videotape , a movie everyone I know said was grossly overrated. Contentious as always, I said I liked it a lot, and was determined to follow his career with special care. On the whole, he has not disappointed me, though his second film, Kafka (1991), struck me as something he had to get out of his system. King of the Hill (1993) was a humanist triumph, and what is wrong with a film commemorating the Great Depression and the people that survived it? The Underneath (1995) was much underrated by everyone but me. Schizopolis (1996) didn't quite come off, but Gray's Anatomy (1996) did everything that could be done cinematically for the comedy of Spalding Gray. But with Out of Sight (1998) and The Limey (1999), Mr. Soderbergh was truly out of sight with a Hawksian range of genres. Traffic marks him definitively as an enormous talent, one who never lets us guess what he's going to do next. The promise of Sex, Lies, and Videotape has been fulfilled.

Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away , from a screenplay by William Broyles Jr., is a very ambitious movie both for the director and his star, Tom Hanks. It is the kind of picture in which its makers obviously spent a great deal of time saying, "Let's do this; no, let's do that, and we can straighten out everything in the cutting room." In other words, Cast Away is the kind of movie in which innumerable choices have been made, the kind of movie that is so intimidating I have to make jokes at its expense in self-defense. Still, I must say I prefer it to Forrest Gump (1994), which I found overly cute, and I wouldn't mind Hanks' garnering a third Oscar for his portrayal of Chuck Noland, the workaholic FedEx systems engineer who finds himself alone on a remote island after a harrowing plane crash in the Pacific Ocean. It is a simulated crash you may be sure you will never see on an in-flight screen.

This brings me to my first big objection to Cast Away . There is a joke about a puny piece of product placement in David Mamet's State and Main , but Cast Away adds a new dimension to the practice by serving as a feature-length movie about one company (FedEx) while bad-mouthing its competition. Then again, I couldn't believe that there was an uninhabited island anywhere that hadn't been snapped up by Club Med.

As it happens, I caught a screening of Cast Away a few days before I was to undergo a dicey bout of oral surgery. Therefore, I did not need a brutal scene in which the becalmed Chuck uses an ice-skate blade from a washed-ashore FedEx package to extract a painful tooth. I had not witnessed such dental savagery, albeit self-inflicted, since Laurence Olivier made life hell for Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man (1976). Also, it didn't seem to me that Chuck had enough reliable sources of food over his four-year ordeal.

When I tell people that Chuck starts having serious conversations with a volleyball salvaged from the crash-along with a great many other marginally useful FedEx packages that washed up on the shore for more far-fetched product placement-my listeners look at me strangely. "Ah, but," I continue weakly, "it's not just the volleyball he's talking to, but a face he has drawn on the volleyball." "Oh," they say, and move on.

And then there is Helen Hunt as the love interest, mostly in absentia . The Observer recently listed the Hollywood movies in which Ms. Hunt does not appear, and it is true that she seems to be suffering from overexposure. Though I like her, I do think she is too often playing the same kind of hard-bitten broad with a heart as big as the Grand Canyon. By this time, she is beginning to seem soggy with sincerity. Just once I'd like to see her play a slut or a bitch-but then, I suppose, people wouldn't like her, and she wouldn't get any more awards.

But I'm stalling. My ultimate objection to this updated Robinson Crusoe story is its preachy subtext of self-improvement through enforced loneliness and privation. The original Robinson Crusoe, as Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) portrayed him, displayed an ingrained passion for property. Old Crusoe would have chortled at any currently gaseous invocations of the human spirit. Nonetheless, this movie offers Mr. Hanks ample opportunity to tear every scene to tatters, and this should impress the Oscar voters.

Traffic begins in Mexico with border policemen Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) and Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Vargaz) intercepting a truck full of illegal drugs and arresting the drivers. When they are stopped along the road by their supposed crime-fighting superior, General Salazar (Tomas Milian), and a contingent of his troops, they are relieved of their haul and their two prisoners. Javier and Vargas suddenly realize that Salazar is simply working for one drug cartel against another, and that there is no law and order in Mexico where narcotics are concerned. The two policemen are faced with the difficult and dangerous prospect of choosing sides in a web of corruption, betrayal and assassination. Mr. Soderbergh scores a realistic coup by having all the Mexican characters speak Spanish when they are speaking with each other-at which point there are English subtitles.

The late, great French aesthetician André Bazin credited Jean Renoir with a stroke of realism in Grand Illusion (1937) by having his characters speak French, German and English interchangeably as the linguistic occasion demanded. Of course, there is nothing new about subtitled foreign-language dialogue inserted into predominantly English-speaking films, but the very structure of the narrative in Traffic makes it virtually bilingual.

The American section of Traffic is spearheaded by Michael Douglas as Ohio State Supreme Court Justice Robert Wakefield, named by the President as the new anti-drug czar. He is a hard-nosed enemy of drug dealers at the outset, determined to win the war on drugs with new strategies. On a fact-finding tour, he is somewhat chastened to learn that the dealers can outspend the government at every turn, and that his proposed partnership with Mexican authorities has fallen through with the arrest of General Salazar. Even closer to home, Wakefield and his wife Barbara (Amy Irving) are suddenly confronted with the ruinous drug addiction of their A-student daughter, Caroline (Erika Christensen).

Closer to the front lines of the drug war are undercover agents Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzmán). Their job is building a case against the notorious Obregon drug cartel. After one of the most explosive and prolonged gunfights in the film, Montel and Castro bust a mid-level trafficker named Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer) and succeed in making him turn state's evidence against upscale suburban drug kingpin Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer). He is dragged off in handcuffs in front of his pregnant wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her little boy. She and her child are quickly threatened by her husband's business associates and shadowed by D.E.A. agents. From a state of innocence, she is thrust by necessity into the business of killing a witness against her husband and otherwise protecting his interests. In this she relies on shady attorney Arnie Metzger (Dennis Quaid), who sees an opportunity to move in on Helena and her growing family while her husband languishes in prison.

Mr. Soderbergh has shot much of the film with a hand-held camera to give it the newsreely look that goes back to Open City in 1946 and to Dogma 95 in our own time. There is no background music used for the traditional function of emotional underlining. The rhythm of the film is derived instead from the editing and from the multiple perspectives on the action. Actually, Mr. Soderbergh photographed the film himself and, being denied a "directed and photographed by" credit, uses the pseudonym Peter Andrews as the cinematographer.

As to what the film is saying, opinions may differ. It strongly suggests that we are losing the war on drugs and shall continue to lose it well into the foreseeable future. Yet the alternatives of decriminalization and legalization are not argued as feasible solutions. Mr. Soderbergh insisted in interviews that he was not interested in making a film simply about drug addiction, its cures and its consequences. The world of Traffic is enmeshed and immersed in narcotics not as a clinical subject, but as a form of entrepreneurial capitalism. Indeed, the most damning thing that is said about the Mexican police is that they routinely regard their jobs as an entrepreneurial opportunity.

As for the high incidence of drug abuse among American teenagers, the only solution rests with the parents, as the last communal shot indicates. Still, it is not surprising that Traffic was voted this year's Best Picture by the New York Film Critics. By not taking a polemical position on the issue of narcotics, Mr. Soderbergh and his colleagues have given the actions of their characters greater credibility. This is the way the world is, not the way the world might or should be. And by keeping the pressure on all his characters for most of the film's running time, great opportunities are provided for all the players to show how much grace they can summon. Mr. Del Toro, Mr. Douglas, Mr. Cheadle and Ms. Zeta-Jones are especially noteworthy in this regard.

But the real star of the film is Mr. Soderbergh, who has demonstrated this year in Erin Brockovich and Traffic the full range of his versatility since his spectacular prize-winning splash at Sundance and Cannes in 1989 with Sex, Lies, and Videotape , a movie everyone I know said was grossly overrated. Contentious as always, I said I liked it a lot, and was determined to follow his career with special care. On the whole, he has not disappointed me, though his second film, Kafka (1991), struck me as something he had to get out of his system. King of the Hill (1993) was a humanist triumph, and what is wrong with a film commemorating the Great Depression and the people that survived it? The Underneath (1995) was much underrated by everyone but me. Schizopolis (1996) didn't quite come off, but Gray's Anatomy (1996) did everything that could be done cinematically for the comedy of Spalding Gray. But with Out of Sight (1998) and The Limey (1999), Mr. Soderbergh was truly out of sight with a Hawksian range of genres. Traffic marks him definitively as an enormous talent, one who never lets us guess what he's going to do next. The promise of Sex, Lies, and Videotape has been fulfilled.

Casting for a Third Oscar

Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away , from a screenplay by William Broyles Jr., is a very ambitious movie both for the director and his star, Tom Hanks. It is the kind of picture in which its makers obviously spent a great deal of time saying, "Let's do this; no, let's do that, and we can straighten out everything in the cutting room." In other words, Cast Away is the kind of movie in which innumerable choices have been made, the kind of movie that is so intimidating I have to make jokes at its expense in self-defense. Still, I must say I prefer it to Forrest Gump (1994), which I found overly cute, and I wouldn't mind Hanks' garnering a third Oscar for his portrayal of Chuck Noland, the workaholic FedEx systems engineer who finds himself alone on a remote island after a harrowing plane crash in the Pacific Ocean. It is a simulated crash you may be sure you will never see on an in-flight screen.

This brings me to my first big objection to Cast Away . There is a joke about a puny piece of product placement in David Mamet's State and Main , but Cast Away adds a new dimension to the practice by serving as a feature-length movie about one company (FedEx) while bad-mouthing its competition. Then again, I couldn't believe that there was an uninhabited island anywhere that hadn't been snapped up by Club Med.

As it happens, I caught a screening of Cast Away a few days before I was to undergo a dicey bout of oral surgery. Therefore, I did not need a brutal scene in which the becalmed Chuck uses an ice-skate blade from a washed-ashore FedEx package to extract a painful tooth. I had not witnessed such dental savagery, albeit self-inflicted, since Laurence Olivier made life hell for Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man (1976). Also, it didn't seem to me that Chuck had enough reliable sources of food over his four-year ordeal.

When I tell people that Chuck starts having serious conversations with a volleyball salvaged from the crash-along with a great many other marginally useful FedEx packages that washed up on the shore for more far-fetched product placement-my listeners look at me strangely. "Ah, but," I continue weakly, "it's not just the volleyball he's talking to, but a face he has drawn on the volleyball." "Oh," they say, and move on.

And then there is Helen Hunt as the love interest, mostly in absentia . The Observer recently listed the Hollywood movies in which Ms. Hunt does not appear, and it is true that she seems to be suffering from overexposure. Though I like her, I do think she is too often playing the same kind of hard-bitten broad with a heart as big as the Grand Canyon. By this time, she is beginning to seem soggy with sincerity. Just once I'd like to see her play a slut or a bitch-but then, I suppose, people wouldn't like her, and she wouldn't get any more awards.

But I'm stalling. My ultimate objection to this updated Robinson Crusoe story is its preachy subtext of self-improvement through enforced loneliness and privation. The original Robinson Crusoe, as Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) portrayed him, displayed an ingrained passion for property. Old Crusoe would have chortled at any currently gaseous invocations of the human spirit. Nonetheless, this movie offers Mr. Hanks ample opportunity to tear every scene to tatters, and this should impress the Oscar voters.