WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

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WPCNR NEWSREE. From State Assemblyperson Naomi Matusow’s Office. October 28, 2002:Naomi Matusow, Assemblywoman for the 89th Assembly District, today announced that she has sent constituent response cards calling for the closing of Indian Point to Governor Pataki.

“I forwarded to the Governor 284 response cards representing 358 people residing in the 89th Assembly District who share my position that the nuclear facilities at Indian Point should be closed down,” said Matusow. “I wanted to bring to his attention our concern that nuclear energy is inherently dangerous and that our concern cannot be ignored,” she continued.

The cards were distributed in mid-August. While the bulk of the responses were returned by the first of September, Matusow waited a month after receiving the last card to make certain that all responses would be sent to the Governor at the same time.

“Any nuclear incident presents a potential catastrophe impossible to overcome,” Matusow said. “No evacuation plan can address the needs of the people residing or working in the metropolitan area, nor will it provide even the minimum sense of security to which the public is entitled.”

“I urge the Governor to encourage the development of alternative energy sources and to promote a serious conservation program to meet the energy demands of all New Yorkers while making our world a safer place in which to live,” she concluded.

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WPCNR PRESS BOX. By John F. Bailey. October 26, 2002: After a gritty first three quarters, two touchdowns in the final quarter lead the No. 1 seeded Ramapo High Gryphons over White Plains Saturday, 28-6, after the Tigers had come back on their first drive of the second half to close within 7-6.

PIGSKIN DETECTIVE: SKID MARKS ARE EVIDENCE OF “IMMACULATE INTERFERENCE” CALL THAT SET UP RAMAPO’S CLINCHING TD: Darrell Mack was matching Ramapo’s receiver heading for the end zone, stride for stride. Both simultaneously lost their footing as skid marks show, on controversial 3rd and 15 pass play that gave Ramapo an automatic first down on the 9, and 4 more cracks at the end zone. Mack, immediately after the yellow flag alighted like a vulture behind the play, was on his knees pleading to the official that he had slipped. The call was big. The Tigers huddle with coaches after the game in the background.
Photo by WPCNR Sports

A controversial “immaculate interference” call when Darrell Mack and Gryphon receiver had clearly slipped on the same soft patch of endzone, gave Ramapo a first down and goal at the 9 to set up the clinching TD.

Turns Tide of the Game after Tigers Had them on the run.

Spencer Ridenhour’s brilliant 21-yard touchdown run around right end and down the sideline and recorded the only 6 points for the Tigers. The Tiger 6 came after they had marched 75 yards in 7 plays to start the second half, and it brought them within 1 point midway through the third stanza.

A facemask penalty (to be fair), set up the Tigers at the Ramapo 42, followed by a perfectly delayed pitch-back play, Mike Devere to Ike Nkuka who scampered to the Ramapo 23, setting the stage for Spencer’s sweep score.

The first half saw the Tigers stop three Ramapo drives inside the red zone, while their offense was stalled by motion penalty after motion penalty. Only one first down was achieved by the Tigers the entire first half, which was plagued with flags against them.

Two Tiger fumbles set up two meaningless late Ramapo touchdowns. The Tiger offense, you sensed, was not the same after the defensive pass interference call prolonged the Ramapo drive.

Quick and Big Is Not Good.

The Ramapo big guys up front were only solved on one drive the entire game when the Tigers used pitch plays to get Spencer Ridenhour and Darrell Mack outside, according to the way one veteran analyst saw the action from the stands. In the first half, hot pursuit and overwhelming pressure by Gryphon rushers nullified Mike Devere’s passing threat, not giving him any time to throw.

The Tigers presented one of their best defensive games of the season, effectively bottling up the Gryphon running attack, bending but not breaking, for three quarters before the Gryphs Ken Adams on counter plays and reverses moved Ramapo 70 yards in 12 plays for their second touchdown. The drive might have been stalled were it not for the “immaculate interference” call, on a pass clearly overthrown. You could see the heart go out of the defense on the next two plays, as they were pushed aside for two consecutive 5-yard gains to put Ramapo ahead for good, 14-6.

In a first half where the Tigers could not, it seemed, run a play without a penalty, it is to their credit and professionalism that they marched down the field at the beginning of the second half and give themselves a chance to win.

The loss effectively ended the Tiger season dropping them to a 4-4 record. Stepinac is next in the traditional White Plains Thanksgiving Day game.

On Sunday it was reported by The Journal News that White Plains will play at Carmel next Saturday in a “consolation game.”

High School Football is not what it used to be. The Ramapo stands were only half full for this contest.

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WPCNR White Plains Variety. Review by John F. Bailey. October 25, 2002:To put on a great show you have to have good material. The Fort Hill Players knew they had a winning show in the comedy of manners, Art, could they deliver the goods to hardened Broadway skeptics?

THE $200G “ALL-WHITE” CESSARANO: THE LEAD IN ART R. J. D Amato, R. Scott Faubel and Larry Reina as Serge, Marc and Ivan, three upwardly mobile sophisticates react to Serge’s new painting (which is all white), dominates the Fort Hill Players exact replica of the stage set for the Broadway version of Art. The all-white painting, (spotlighted), steals the show as a virtuoso player in its own right. It works its magic on you.
Photo by WPCNR Arts

WPCNR saw last Friday evening’s performance and we have to say that the exquisitely snooty R. J. D’ Amato, the impossibly cynical and judgmental D. Scott Faubel and the nauseatingly obsequious Larry Reina have done a great play “great honors” at Fort Hills Players production, the first Westchester County staging of the 1998 Tony Award-Winning play.

Restricted: Contains “Adult” Language.

Audiences should be warned that the script is seasoned with “realistic” language. The “F” word is used frequently as is the “S-Word.” But the three talented actors and Director Robert Kahn’s seamless timing make the salty syntax work with the script. The writing does not depend on profanity for effect. The 4-letter words, though obtain an eloquence in the elegant way the deftly performing trio deliver these late twentieth century euphemisms that replace more precise words. Every use of the profanity charts new depths of meaning of emotions in these “expletive deleteds.”

Expletives are not gratuitious, because when D. Scott Faubel as Marc in his smug tone describes Serge’s new painting as “S,” for the first time you know exactly what he really means, his precise staccato “t” at the end, drips with disdain.

All about the Ensemble

What makes Art tough on the actors is there is no intermission. The show runs one hour and 30 minutes, demands terrific bonding and attention on the part of the actors, when all three are on the stage, and the men of Art were up to the challenge. Robert Kahn, who directed the show, had his actors spend much time together bonding emotionally off-stage as well as on, and it showed in how hard and how well the show simply flowed between the three men

D Amato the elegant sophisticate to Faubel’s existential rebel, who take care of Ivan

The premise of Art is to explore the tenuous perceptions and mutual needs that bond men (and perhaps women, too). D’Amato’s tall, aesthetic Serge is very smug at having acquired a “Cessarano” for $200,000. Marc punctures this smugness and sophistication of Serge by expressing incredulity at the purchase of a “white” painting in the most belittling way, like some witheringly superior talk show host, pricking Serge’s confidence and sensibilities. As Serge extols the “confluence” of white lines he thinks he sees in the painting, Marc takes the audience into his confidence with marvelous stares of disbelief.

Serge and Marc’s posturings and reactions to each other’s sudden lack of confidence in what they have always come to expect from each other deteriates, the two actors satirize conversations about sports, politics, taste, finance that menfriends have every day. D’Amato delivers petulant hurt at an ever-increasing (and funny sequence) as he tries to explain his purchase to his friend Marc whom he has always shown off as one of his outrageous friends, only Serge is hurt now that Marc has turned his withering judgmental tendencies on him. Yes, we know that is a complex sentence, but this is a complex play that captures the protocol of male social interaction and its unspoken boundaries precisely. Men will laugh at this play, women will learn.

Ivan the Jester
Reaching you with the emotions of a friendship falling apart.

D. Scott Faubel is relentless as Marc, long the attacker who gains satisfaction of having his cynicism appreciated, only to find he is just as hurt when something he believes in is challenged. He and Serge come to blows when Serge, totally ripped that Marc hates his painting complains about the way Marc’s girlfriend waves her hand at cigarette smoke. This is a scene that tellingly and with great “yucks” shows how when we are really mad at someone we can seize on any small item to irritate us. (Any old flaw will do.)

Reina’s pitifully needy Ivan reaches the audience with his alarmed pleading for the two to show some reason (he does not want to lose them as friends.) It’s at this point that the demands of friendship, the point of the play, in WPCNR’s opinion, comfortingly wash over the audience like a caressing Caribbean wave.

Intellectuals watch it!

Along the way to Art’s crisis point, the audience enjoys some witty satire of typical preconceived notions, art analysis, and stereotyped fixtures of the Sotheby-Parke Benet set from psychiatrists to dentists. D’Amato and Faubel’s superb conversational diction lampoons sophisticated banter so they are not only understandable, but natural, too. It reminds me of those Hamptons sundeck conversations with New Yorker readers at sunset, or on an East 83rd street balcony trying to impress a good-looking woman not married to you.

Reina playing the unsophisticated Ivan who perhaps has more reason than either of his superior friends, quietly displays that strength through sacrifice of pride (like a good wife) that eventually brings his two friends to a happy ending, and preserves what he needs: his friends. Reina though not totally the image of the part, too aging a flower child in corduroys for this, I thought, but that is quibbling. He occasionally overmodulated but perhaps that is more real for a crisis of friendship.

Reina’s Ivan is the most difficult part, so easy to overact, but ultimately he hit just-the-right note of pathos, mixed with reason and projection of the alternative to breaking up the friends brings the “odd trio” to higher ground. Reina a lawyer by trade is in the right part. D’Amato and Faubel have all the great lines, but Reina had to carry enough vulnerability to bring the two alpha males to their senses.

Moments to remember in theater

You will love the ultimate act of trust that Serge offers to Marc to close the argument over the painting and knits up the tattered fabric of their long friendship (It is completely silent and involves a magic marker that he offers Faubel to alter the painting.) D’Amato and Faubel get this absolutely right. The silence, the mutual acknowledgement of trust of giving in, giving responsibility is superbly acted.

The last lines sent the audience home with hopefully new perspectives on friendship:

“If I’m who I am because I’m who I am and if you’re who you are because you’re who you are, then I’m who I am and you’re who you are.”

“If , on the other hand, I’m who I am because you’re who you are and if you’re who you are because I’m who I am, then I’m not who I am and you’re not who you are.”

Simple. It’s a man thing, and perhaps a woman thing, too. See Art the way “The Odd Trio” of D’Amato, Faubel and Reina deliver it and you’ll understand.

The Fort Hill Players production is directed by Robert Kahn. Set design, tastefully and strikingly executed by Anthony Fabrizio and Joan Charischak. The just-the-right shade of lighting was created by David Ullman, and executed subtlely with deft hand by Light Board Operator Nancy Weiss. Terry Hanson colorcoordinated actors wardrobes and swathed the onstage chairs in their “distinguishing hues of white.”

Next production coming up is Charlotte’s Web for children, a free performance on November 10 at 2 PM at the White Plains Library.

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WPCNR Common Council Chronicle-Examiner. October 24, 2002: The White Plains Board of Ethics found Councilman Robert Greer to not be in conflict of interest in voting on the New York Presbyterian Hospital biomedical complex and proton accelerator facility proposal last August, in an opinion released Wednesday.
The ruling was in response to a criticism leveled by Lynn Huber of White Plains that because Mr. Greer’s wife works for the New York Presbyterian Hospital, he should not have been allowed to vote on the hospital proposal.

The Board of Ethics rejected Mr. Huber’s contention on two grounds: 1.) That the Board has no jurisiction, because, according to city code, “advisory opinions (of the Board of Ethics) are to on ethics-relateed matters involving prospective conduct and may be requested only by the individual officer or employee (Mr. Greer) whose conduct may be called into question.” Therefore, only Councilman Greer would have standing before this Board to seek an advisory opinion as to his prospective conduct.

However, the Board said, it was allowed “to receive from any person a written complaint questioning the compliance of any City officer or employee with the Code of Ethics,” and agreed to consider Mr. Huber’s letter a complaint, making the following accessment.

The Board of Ethics pointed out to Mr. Huber that Mr. Greer sought an opinion from Edward Dunphy, City Corporation Counsel, on just this ethics issue, and received an opinion from Dunphy at the time in 1998, in lieu of the Board of Ethics being operational at the time. The Board of Ethics noted to Mr. Huber that Mr. Greer, acting on Dunphy’s opinion disclosed his wife’s duties to the Council on April 6, 1998, and did so again at the August 5, 2002 meeting where the most recent NYPH proposal was considered and passed.

The Board in its letter to Mr. Huber concluds that, given Councilman Greer’s reasonable reliance on the Corporation Counsel’s opinion, the absence of any change in circumstances since the opinion was rendered, and his consistent disclosure on the official minutes of the Common Council’s meetings of his wife’s part-time employment with New York Presbyterian Hospital, there is no basis for an investigation of Councilman Greer’s vote…

The Board dismissed the complaint by a 3-0 vote, Gerald Stern, Nancy Barry and James Noonan voting for, with Mark Elliot abstaining. William Vrooman was absent.