CSI: Fact Or Fiction

  Nothing makes for a better story than when fact and fiction come face to face.  Except for when it happens twice…in one week.

  And that’s just what happened—first last Tuesday, and then again on Friday—on the sets of CSI: New York and CSI: Miami.  In stories that were almost too startlingly similar to be chalked up to coincidence, dead bodies were found on or near the production sites of the sister shows.

  It started last Tuesday, while the cast and crew of CSI: New York shot on location at an apartment complex in downtown Los Angeles.  (Oh, come on.  You didn’t think it was actually filmed in New York, did you?)  As cameras rolled two floors above him, a building engineer knocked on the door of a fifth-floor tenant who was late paying his rent.  When there was no answer, the engineer let himself in and discovered, according to press reports, the tenant’s “mummified” remains. 

  Weird, right?  But then on Friday, as crew members for CSI: Miami filmed helicopter shots near Biscayne Bay, just outside of Miami, another dead body washed up on the bay’s shore.  A homeless man discovered the body and alerted an off-duty cop who was working as security on the set.  No signs of trauma or foul play were evident.  According to Detective Delrish Moss, who responded to the scene, “Unfortunately, it’s not unusual during certain times of the year that people who have fallen into the bay, either homeless or people who were asleep or in some cases boaters who had a mishap, fall into the bay and turn up days later.”

  Needless to say, there has already been a lot of speculation as to whether or not this might be a publicity stunt.  As a rule, conspiracy theorists are wack-jobs.  But consider if you will that, by the time the news really broke, it was Monday.  And CSI: Miami’s fifth-season premier was Monday night.  Hmmm.

  Now I know it’s far-fetched.  And I know that the World Wide Web is a seedy place, replete with lies and rumors, like the world’s largest water-cooler surrounded by unreliable halfwits and gossip-mongers.  That being said, according to a post on the L.A.-based online gossip rag, Defamer.com, the apartment-building “mummy” is bogus.  A so-called “informant” claims that CSI producers contacted his friend, who is in charge of developing a Beverly Hills condominium site.  “They said they wanted to shoot on the site and when asked what it was they’d be shooting, they said they wanted to plant a dead body and ‘discover’ it,” says the source.  “Because the fear was that the location would receive a bad rap and potentially dissuade investors, they said absolutely not and sent CSI on their way.”  According to the source, the CSI producers offered to pay the complex $2,000 to use the site.

  You can make what you want of this.  I think it seems strangely coincidental, but, as they say, fact is stranger than fiction.  And of course, it’s so obviously a publicity stunt that it just might not be.

-From Pulse
   September 21, 2006

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Painting The Town

As I write this, Stanley “Tookie” Williams has been rejected clemency by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and will face the needle in just over two hours. Williams was the topic of last week’s column. Perhaps I’m slipping into moral bankruptcy; I find myself siding more and more with the criminals in our society. I’ll explain.

A few weeks ago I was flipping through my copy of Esquire magazine, “The Genius Issue.” I came across an article about a graffiti-artist in London named Banksy. As I thumbed through the pages of photographs, I thought to myself, “This is illegal?”

Banksy’s identity is unknown. It’s just the nature of the job. Using stencils, he paints lifelike pictures—some of them three or four stories high—and he does it overnight. This isn’t “Kilroy Was Here” and they’re not gangland taggings. These are sweeping pieces of social commentary, anti-establishment and pro-peace declarations that should be in museums, except that museums don’t draw the kind of traffic that street corners do.

“Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums,” Banksy wrote in one of his books, Banging Your Head Against A Brick Wall. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors…Graffiti is generally the voice of people who aren’t listened to.”

And so, cloaked by night, he moves through London with a backpack full of Krylon spray paint and stencils, leaving his mark on the city by the Thames. A cavalry of soldiers, armed with assault rifles and surrounding a tank; their own faces replaced with yellow smiley faces. Two male bobbies making out on a street corner. Armed soldiers painting over a peace sign. A masked guerilla soldier tossing a bouquet of flowers, as though it was a grenade.

It is simply breathtaking.

Esquire named him their Artist of the Year, calling him “the premier guerilla street artist in the world.” The mere mention of his name brings smiles to the faces of Londoners of all walks of life. “Since spotting my first few Banksies, I have been desperately seeking out more. When I do come across them, surreptitiously peeping out of an alley or boldly emblazoned on a wall, I find it hard to contain myself…They make me smile and feel optimistic about the possibilities of shared dreams and common ownership.” So said journalist Simon Hattenstone, writing for “The Guardian,” and his reaction is not unique.

His website plays host to a “manifesto,” so I checked it out, hoping for profound statements about what drives him. What I got was profound and cryptic, an excerpt from the diary of a British soldier who was among the first to liberate a Nazi concentration camp in 1945. As the soldier trundles through the unspeakable carnage, resisting the urge to save every life, a shipment arrives. It’s not much-needed food, water or medicine. It’s lipstick. “At last someone had done something to make them individuals again…no longer merely the number tattooed on their arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.”

Visit Banksy’s world at www.banksy.co.uk.

-From Pulse
December 15, 2005

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Saving Tookie

Before Jamie Foxx played Ray Charles in “Ray,” he played Stan “Tookie” Williams in “Redemption: The Stan ‘Tookie’ Williams Story.” On Tuesday, Tookie Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection in California’s San Quentin State Prison.

The fact that Tookie Williams’ story made its way to the silver screen should come as no surprise; indeed, it was ripe for the pickin’. The short, short version? In 1971, he co-founded the Los Angeles Crips, the notorious street gang that would sweep the nation throughout the eighties and nineties. In ’81, he was convicted of murdering four people during two robberies and was sentenced to death. Over the past 24 years, he has written nine children’s books from death row, urging kids to stay out of gangs. He has written a memoir about his incarceration and rehabilitation, directed toward at-risk high school students and prisoners. He almost-single-handedly orchestrated the truce between the Bloods and Crips. He has been nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize and four times for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

On Tuesday—barring a grant of clemency from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger—Stan “Tookie” Williams will die. (That, in itself, has the makings of a sequel, huh?) If clemency is granted, Williams’ sentence will be commuted—most likely, to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

I need to make something clear. This is not a manifesto. I am not coming out against the death penalty. I have not signed any petitions to save this man from the needle. But I probably should.

None of the physical evidence from Williams’ 1981 trial points to his guilt. There were fingerprints at both crime scenes. None belonged to Tookie. There was a bloody boot print found near one of the victims. It was not Tookie’s. The shotgun tied to the killings was found under the bed of a married couple under investigation for a separate murder. It was not Tookie’s.

To this day, Tookie Williams admits that he has done a lot of wrong in his life. In an apology posted on his website, www.tookie.com, he writes, “I pray that one day my apology will be accepted. I also pray that one day your suffering, caused by gang violence, will soon come to an end as more gang members wake up and stop hurting themselves and others. I vow to spend the rest of my life working on solutions.” However, he insists that he is innocent for the crimes that landed him on death row.

Jamie Foxx, who played Tookie in “Redemption,” and Snoop Dogg, a Crip member, have both gotten involved in the movement to save Williams’ life. The Archbishop Desmond Tutu was among four Nobel laureates that signed a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger asking for clemency. Laurence Fishburne, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Tim Robbins, and Bonnie Raitt are also reported to have signed it.

For good or ill, Stan Williams has become the new Mumia Abu-Jamal, a face to put on the fight against capital punishment. But time is running out for Williams. If you’d like to know more about Tookie Williams or would like to voice your opinion on his fate, visit www.tookie.com or www.savetookie.org.

-From Pulse
December 8, 2005

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An Evening To Forget

  It’s a hot and humid Saturday night in Miami.  Celebrities have taken to the city like Mediterranean fruit flies to California grapes.  Outside the posh Shore Club, an off-duty Florida Highway Patrolman works security amid throngs of screaming fans who are eager to get in.  VIP’s are ushered in, through the crowd to the Red Room.  Among them are Paris Hilton, Suge Knight, Eddie Murphy, Jessica Alba, the Black Eyed Peas, and The Game.  It’s an elite group, but one that wasn’t too hard to assemble.  An invitation to Kanye West’s pre-MTV Video Music Awards bash isn’t something often refused.

  The mood is one of celebration and relief.  Miami had just dodged the bullet of Hurricane Katrina, and the VMA’s were less than 24 hours away.  Inside the Shore Club, bikini-clad models drifted around donning angels’ wings, and white mist wafted throughout the club.  About 600 party-goers thanked the heavens that they were enjoying this evening in the company of their favorite celebrities.  It was a night they’d never forget.

  But now, no one can remember exactly what happened at 42 minutes after midnight.  It was then that a man, maybe a black man wearing a pink shirt, maybe a man in a grey, hooded sweatshirt, walked into the Red Room.  He walked up the Death Row Records founder Suge Knight with little commotion.  From his pants he pulled a pistol and squeezed off at least two shots, maybe six, maybe more—party-goers can’t really remember.

  Within seconds, Knight was on the floor under a pile of bodyguards.  He was bleeding from the leg.  Many of those attending the party were also on the ground, others stampeding toward the door.  Knight was rushed in a limousine to Mt. Sinai Medical Center, where he would undergo surgery to remove the bullet in his leg and to repair a broken bone.  Meanwhile, police and firefighters evacuated the Shore Club.  They questioned those in attendance, none of whom could provide any answers.  They just couldn’t remember seeing anything.

  Suge Knight is hardly a saint.  It was Suge that was driving the car when Tupac Shakur was killed.  It was Suge that was rumored to be involved in the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.  It was Suge that was accused of provoking the stabbings at last year’s VIBE Awards, and who, rumor has it, once dangled Vanilla Ice from the rooftop of a skyscraper.  He is a known affiliate of the Bloods, one of America’s most notorious street gangs.

  Again, Suge’s no angel, and he probably didn’t fit the motif of Kanye’s heavenly-themed soiree.  And throughout his illustrious career as one of hip-hop’s most powerful moguls, he has made more enemies than friends.  Soon, the rumor mill will begin to offer theories as to who is responsible, but currently police investigating the case are being met with blank looks and dumb stares.

  “We don’t have any physical description.  We don’t know how many subjects were involved, which is mind-boggling, with all those people around,” Miami Beach police spokesman Bobby Hernandez told The Miami Herald.

  Apparently, it was an evening to forget.    

-From Pulse
   September 1, 2005

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