Until today the biggest event to occur on my birthday was in 1967 when Mickey Mantle hit his 500th home run. And in 1981 I feared the pope might die on my birthday after he was shot the day before (happily, he survived.) Then on May 14, 1998 two big pop culture events occurred: the final episode of Seinfeld and the death of Frank Sinatra.
I watched the disappointing one-hour finale (from a mostly dissatisfying last season) with my friends Matthew and Gary at Matthew's apartment on West 57th St. Although it was my birthday they were oblivious to the fact, so when our Chinese take-out arrived I felt odd saying "hey, it's my birthday, are you expecting me to contribute?", so I kept quiet. (A week earlier I figured I'd be spending this day with my boyfriend but that relationship suddenly unraveled during a rainy weekend out at Fire Island.) When I woke up the next morning is when I heard the news that Frank Sinatra had died the previous evening.
This episode of Seinfeld telecast delivered a 41.3 household rating/58 share making it the second highest rated show of the season (behind the Super Bowl). A powerhouse performance for sure, but it was 9% below the last episode of Cheers five years earlier.
Other shows that aired their final episodes on my birthday include Family Ties (1989);West Wing (2004); and Moonlighting (1990). However, only Family Ties had much of a ratings sendoff (20.8 rating/35 share).
In addition to Sinatra, some other notable deaths on May 14 were those of Billie Burke (Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz) in 1970; Hugh Beaumont (the father in Leave it to Beaver) in 1982; and 1940's va-va-voom actress Rita Hayworth in 1987.
With our lease up for renewal at the end of May 1992, my roommate had decided to move in with his boyfriend and take a new apartment. Although I didn't want another roommate situation, I couldn't afford to keep the apartment on my own, so I decided to look for a new apartment. On April 29, a Wednesday, I left work at 4:00 to see two apartments, one a garden apartment on Christopher St., the other a small 1-bedroom in the Sheridan Square area of Greenwich Village, both a few short blocks from where I lived. Largely because of the amount of light it got (it was on the top floor), I decided to take the 2nd apartment (where I still live).
After seeing the apartments I got a haircut and then arrived home shortly before 6:00. I switched on the evening news and heard the breaking story that the LAPD officers involved in last year's Rodney King beating had been acquitted. The verdict was met with frightening fury by Los Angeles' Black community and rioting began shortly thereafter.
Later that evening a news-copter showed a truck driver being pulled from the cab of his semi at an intersection in South Central L.A. He was kicked repeatedly in the head and bashed with a cinder block. Like the beating of King, this video clip was aired endlessly. Two days later an overwrought Rodney King addressed the media and delivered one of the decade's most quotable lines, "Can't we all just get along?"
Two days later, a Friday, I signed my new lease before going to work. Then later in the day as I was walking back to work after lunch it seemed that everyone from my office (ad agency NWAyer, located at Worldwide Plaza) was walking in the opposite direction. It turned out the office (like many others) had closed early because of wild stories of looting and transit disruptions.
These rumors turned out to be untrue (e.g., Macy's was being looted, the Brooklyn Bridge had been blocked by rioters), but since no one knew it at the time, my commute home on the subway was made with trepidation as riders wondered what might be occurring above ground. Indeed, some of the stores in my neighborhood were closed and a few had boarded up their windows.
Later that afternoon I was curious to see if there had been any further problems in my neighborhood so I went for a run but found nothing out of the ordinary except for a larger police presence. That night President Bush addressed the nation to assess the situation and assure viewers that calm would prevail and justice served.
The inconvenience suffered by New Yorkers on that day paled by comparison to Angelenos who struggled through nearly a week of unrest. More than 50 persons were killed, thousands were injured or jailed and damage was close to $1 billion. Since the turmoil threatened to spread to affluent neighborhoods, some residents there stood on rooftops with guns. Sporting events were cancelled, freeway and air traffic was disrupted and restricted. It was the worst rioting in the U.S. since the assassination of Martin Luther King 24 years earlier.
This unrest coincided with the final episode of the Cosby Show on Thursday. NBC considered postponing the telecast until the following week, but Cosby was against the idea because he felt airing it as scheduled would maintain a semblance of normalcy. (He asked NBC if he could address viewers in L.A. to plead for calm.) The episode posted a 28 household rating/45 share (nearly double its season average), making it the 6th highest rated telecast of the 1991/92 season.
I was starting a new job on March 20, 1995 at ad agency Foote Cone & Belding where I was hired as media research director of its New York office. When my clock radio went off that Monday morning is when I first heard the news about the gas attacks on Tokyo's metro system during the morning rush hour. Members of a Japanese religious cult known as "Supreme Truth" carried out the attacks by puncturing small packages containing a liquid form of the lethal gas sarin. They did this on three train lines; once leaked, the liquid turned into a vapor which felled thousands of passengers and killed twelve.
Of course, this was especially chilling for the millions of us who used New York's subway system to commute to work every day.
One month later homegrown terrorism visited our own shores when a truck bomb laden with explosives tore apart the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing168. Unlike the Japanese terrorists, one of those charged in the U.S. attack, Timothy McVeigh, was executed.
Then five years later an episode of a new show on CBS, Now and Again, brought to mind the Tokyo attacks. A villain known as the Eggman (played by Chinese actor Kim Chan) cracked open eggs filled with noxious gas on a New York subway. All of the passengers died, but in a somewhat more gruesome fashion than those who died in Tokyo.
On February 26, 1993 New York, and the nation, was shaken by the terrorist bombing in a parking garage at the World Trade Center. Two weeks later Mother Nature was preparing her own assault as a monster storm swept up the East Coast. I didn't pay much attention to news of the impending storm until the night before it hit, a Friday. After work I had gone out with friends to Splash, a sprawling new gay bar in Chelsea. Once home I turned on the Weather Channel to hear about the approaching "white hurricane". (And the first day of Spring was just one week away).
The storm's full fury hit NYC Saturday morning (March 13) and continued thru mid-afternoon. (This photo, near my apartment in Greenwich Village, was taken at around noontime.) However, after ten inches of snow had fallen a changeover to sleet and rain began in the late afternoon, keeping the accumulation down. I was outside when the changeover began and the sleet pellets really stung because they were being propelled horizontally by winds gusting between 40-60 mph. The noise the sleet created as it lashed against the windows in my apartment was deafening. I was concerned that my floor to ceiling living room window might blow in so I pulled down the blind.
Happily, I suffered no window damage, but after the storm subsided (at around midnight) that's when my problems started. Hearing a dripping sound I looked up and saw that the ceiling in one corner of my living room was cracking and buckling. It turned out that the snow on the roof (I lived on the top floor) had piled up high enough to cover a drain pipe, so melting snow had nowhere to go and collected in one spot.
I was thankful to be home so I could move my sofa and TV out of harm's way. However, I couldn't get in touch with my building super so I had to make due with a collection of pots and pans to collect the dripping water. However, the steady "ping" of the dripping made sleep nearly impossible. The next morning I got up early and found the super shoveling snow. He was unable to go up on the roof and clear the blockage because snow was drifted against the door so he brought up two large trash bins to my apartment to collect the water which pored out when he poked a few holes in my ceiling.
Compared to other parts of the Eastern U.S. New York was spared paralyzing amounts of snow (a nearby street in my neighborhood is pictured). Elsewhere, however, there were record accumulations not only in the Northeast (Pittsburgh had 26", Syracuse 36") but in the South as well, e.g., Atlanta had 9"; Birmingham 13"; Chattanooga 23". Even Mobile, Alabama on the Gulf Coast reported three inches of snow! The Weather Channel would later rank the storm, which affected nearly half of the U.S. population and left more than 250 dead, as one of the top five weather events of the entire 20th century.
If you'd like to read about other New York City snowstorms I've written a post on my weather blog, NYC Weather Archive, that recaps the snowstorms we've experienced since the winter of 1978/79. To go to it please click here. And on this blog I've written post on four other famous NYC snowstorms:
It was lunchtime on a gray and unseasonably cold Friday with a touch of snow in the air. Our intern Sherida and I were heading to a business lunch with an account executive from the Fox TV network at Pietrasanta, a nearby restaurant at the corner of 9th Ave./46th St. As we walked the four blocks from our office at Worldwide Plaza (we worked at ad agency NWAyer) we noticed a plume of smoke rising in the distance from lower Manhattan. There was also a lot of noise from the blaring horns and sirens of fire trucks racing down the street.
After returning from lunch I heard the news about a truck bomb exploding in the underground parking garage of the North tower of the World Trade Center and realized that was where the smoke was coming from. It was chilling to hear speculation that the goal of the bomb was to collapse the North tower and have it fall into the South tower. Unfortunately, as bad as this attack was (6 died, more than 1,000 injured), it was just a prelude to the horror of the attacks on 9-11.
The verdict in the civil suit brought against OJ Simpson for the wrongful deaths of his wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman coincided with President Clinton's State of the Union Address on the night of February 4, 1997 (the first of his second term). Word that a verdict had been reached came shortly before 7PM but the reading of it was delayed for more than three hours until all interested parties arrived at the courthouse in Santa Monica.
It was Tuesday night and I was preparing dinner after doing a weight workout at the gym. Since both events were of high news value NBC resorted to a split screen to show both unfolding. And although it seemed somewhat disrespectful to the President, truth be told, the verdict was largely the reason I switched on the TV. Finally, at the conclusion of the President's address the verdict came in. Reporters inside the courthouse signaled to the crowd gathered outside that the verdict was - guilty! On one side of the split screen President Clinton was shown shaking hands while and on the other side a defeated Simpson was show leaving the courthouse followed by the triumphant Goldman and Brown families. I let out a cheer.
For me, this verdict took some of the sting out of the contentious not guilty verdict reached in the criminal trial in 1995. Shortly afterward I called my friend Marina down in Baltimore to share the news. She had passed the Maryland bar six months earlier so I asked her to explain why this type of suit could be filed after a verdict had already been rendered in the criminal case, in other words a do-over. (I still don't understand the legal reasoning.) Thus ended a tragic case that had been part of the nation's zeitgeist for nearly three years. (However, it wasn't the last we'd hear from OJ.)
The evening the war began, January 16, 1991, found me sitting at a "welcome" table in a meeting room at the Gay & Lesbian Community Center in Greenwich Village where the gay professionals group Out Professionals was holding its monthly meething. I was treasurer and collecting the meeting fee when a member approached the desk at around 7:30 and excitedly tried telling me something. However, because he had a pronounced stutter it took him a while to get out what he wanted to say - that the U.S. bombardment of Baghdad had begun. (The guessing game as to when this would occur had been the week's #1 topic of conversation ever since Congress voted the previous weekend to give President Bush authority to go to war.)
The following evening, a Thursday, found me at HMV Records on the Upper West Side where I had gone after leaving a work-related function at Tavern on the Green (both establishments are now out of business). Instead of playing music over its speakers a radio broadcast was reporting the chilling news that Iraqi missles were being fired into Israel. At this very early stage of the war I was feeling a bit uneasy, wondering what Saddam Hussein might have up his sleeve for our troops or here on U.S. soil (he had promised the "mother of all battles"). This feeling of unease was in stark contrast to the party-hearty lyrics of a very popular song playing on the airwaves at the time - Everybody Dance by C & C Music Company. To this day whenever I hear the song memories of the war come to mind.
(One of George Clooney's earliest films, 1999's Three Kings, was inspired by the first Gulf War. Other war related films include Jarhead, starring Jake Gyllenhaal & Jamie Foxx, Courage Under Fire and Towelhead.)
I first heard word of the impending blizzard on Saturday evening while I was out in New Jersey visiting my brother and his family for a late holiday get-together. I was enthralled by the blizzard warning scrolling on the screen of The Weather Channel because I'd never before experienced a full-fledged blizzard. The next day the snow started falling at around noon and it was coming down fast and furious by late afternoon. That night I walked around my Greenwich Village neighborhood in the teeth of the storm (with howling winds gusting to 40-50 mph) snapping beautiful photos that were enhanced by the visual effect the flash had on the snowflakes.
Not surprisingly, the office was closed on Monday (some co-workers from NJ were out two to three days). The snow stopped falling early in the afternoon and again I went out with my camera. The texture and deepness of the snow brought to mind walks on the beach. At one point I trudged over to the West Side Highway and found that there was no rush hour traffic whatsoever. Instead, a phalanx of garbage trucks put into service as snowplows was the only activity here and on most city streets.
The storm was especially paralyzing in Philadelphia and NJ where 2 to 3 feet of snow fell. It was such an expansive storm that 1-foot accumulations extended all the way westward into Kentucky and Ohio. Here in NYC 20.2" fell with 3 and 4-foot drifts topping cars and taxis parked on the streets. There was no mail delivery for two days and no trash pick-up for eight. Staten Island reported 29", Newark 28" and LaGuardia Airport 24". Manhattan's normally congested sidewalks were made even more crowded by walls of plowed and shovelled snow (in addition to bags of uncollected trash & discarded Christmas trees) that confined pedestrians to narrow pathways. Persistent cold weather kept the snow around for a number of weeks.
This was the deepest snowfall of my lifetime, topping the 17.6" that fell in a big February 1983 snowstorm. (However, some of the snows of my childhood back in Pittsburgh, especially the 15" that fell in January 1966 and 14" in January 1964, seemed deeper because I was a few feet shorter than my adult height of 6'1".) This blizzard contributed mightily to the winter of 1995-96 becoming New York City's snowiest winter ever. 75.6 inches fell in Central Park, close to fifty inches more than a typical winter.
If you'd like to read about other New York City snowstorms I've written a post on my weather blog, NYC Weather Archive, that recaps the snowstorms we've experienced since the winter of 1978/79. To go to it please click here.
I was away on business in Los Angeles visiting my company's office there for the first time (ad agency NWAyer). That evening, a Thursday, I was in my hotel room (the newly renovated Biltmore) getting ready to drive into West Hollywood for a bite to eat when I heard a breaking story on the evening news about Grammy-winning vocal duo Milli Vanilli (Best New Artist of 1990). It was revealed that they hadn't done their own singing when recording or performing!
Despite this deception I couldn't understand why a class-action lawsuit was filed to obtain refunds for those who purchased MV's CD/record Girl You Know It's True (which sold nearly 10 million units and produced five top-5 singles). After all, the wildly popular songs were unchanged, with the same great hooks and beats, so if fans previously liked hits such as Girl I'm Gonna Miss You why would they no longer enjoy them now? Of course, MV had to give back their Grammy. And unlike Vanessa Williams, whose career took off after a scandal (nude photos) forced her to step down as Miss America in 1984, the fledgling careers of Rob and Fab were largely over (and, sadly, Rob committed suicide in 1998).
The fascinating clip below shows them accepting their People's Choice, American Music and Grammy Awards.
It was Friday afternoon and I was sitting in my office at ad agency NWAyer when I first heard on the radio news of the rather contentious confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill, a former colleague of Thomas', had made allegations about lewd comments and sexual harrassment she had been subjected to when they worked together (he was her manager at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.) Curious, I walked down the hall to the office of the director of national broadcast buying to watch some of the live testimony on his TV.
I was taken aback by Hill's frank testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, e.g. Thomas' comment about a pubic hair being on a can of Coke on his desk during a meeting with her (perhaps the most ignominious brand mentions of all time?). Never before had words such as these, or for that matter, "penis" and "oral sex" been talked about so openly in a public forum. (This was 7 years before the references to the semen stain on Monica Lewinsky's blue dress.) The riveting "he said/she said" testimony continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening (when Thomas got his chance at rebuttal).
In addition to watching some of it at the office I continued watching the coverage at home before and after I went to the gym and then after traveling out to New Jersey to spend the night at my boyfriend Tom's apartment.
Four days later Thomas was approved in a very close vote in the Senate. In fact, the 52-48 vote was the closest confirmation vote of the 20th Century. (By comparison, Elena Kagan was confirmed this summer by a 63-37 vote, Sonia Sotomayor by 68-31 and Chief Justice John Roberts by 78-22.) The book The Prince & the Pauper: The Case Aganst Clarence Thomas provides an essay that offers background into Thomas, an analysis of his confirmation as well the political process that resulted in his selection.
