Watercooler Stories

Mob lawyer to sing for feds

NEW YORK, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- A New York mob lawyer facing charges he transmitted assassination instructions reportedly has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

The New York Post reports Thomas Lee, 38, who represented members of the Bonanno crime family, has been absent from his Bronx law office and his Westchester County home for about a week.

The Post quotes sources as saying Lee has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and was placed in witness protection after he was confronted with secretly taped conversations that included coded messages about killings and other violence.

"This is quite extraordinary," retired NYPD Detective Sgt. Joseph Coffey said of the defection. Coffey twice locked up John Gotti and also arrested Gotti's predecessor, Paul "Big Paul" Castellano.

The wedding was just loverly

RIVERHEAD, N.Y., Sept. 20 (UPI) -- To Henry J. Kuhn and Sonia Usatch, "My Fair Lady" is more than a movie -- it was the theme for the two actors' Long Island, N.Y., wedding.

Kuhn, 62, and Usatch, 64, tied the knot Sunday at the 19th century Vail-Leavitt Music Hall in Riverhead, with the groom dressed as Colonel Pickering and the bride in an Eliza Doolittle-style black-and-white dress with wide-brim hat. The traditional Jewish nuptials were the first to be held in the music hall.

Both Kuhn and Usatch are actors and even set up a casting call for the wedding, red carpet interviews and a wedding cake that looked like a "Playbill," Newsday reported.

No word on whether they danced all night.

Prof plans a car-free California village

HAYWARD, Calif., Sept. 20 (UPI) -- A California political science professor has drafted plans to turn a vacant quarry near Oakland into a car-free village of 1,000 homes, serviced by buses.

Sherman Lewis already has blueprints of his 30-acre dream community of mostly three-story townhomes, apartments, a grocery store and restaurant. The plans leave room for fewer than 100 parking spots.

"We've been building the wrong kind of city for about 60 years," Lewis told the Oakland Tribune.

Lewis, professor emeritus at California State University, East Bay, is set to launch a project Web site next month and has consultants looking at potential costs and market feasibility.

The 30-acre bowl of secluded land is now owned by the state Department of Transportation, and while it will eventually sell off the quarry land, it will be hard for a grassroots organization to become the highest bidder, the report said.

Lewis said he has yet to find a development firm willing to go out on a limb for the project he estimates would cost nearly $30 million to get off the ground.

British now too busy for dirty weekends

LONDON, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Modern life and its responsibilities is taking a toll on the number of British couples who get away for so-called dirty weekends.

A poll by Teletext Holidays published Monday said nearly two-thirds of the 33 million Britons in relationships have not had a romantic weekend away in the past year, and 16 percent have not had one for more than five years.

More than half -- 52 percent -- of the 2,795 adults questioned said they would love to get away for a weekend break if they had more time to spend together.

The research found that the reason for the decline was the many time-demanding pressures of modern life, Sky News said.

Some 38 percent said they would use a dirty weekend to be more sexually adventurous, including 16 percent of men who said they'd be willing to put on sexy underwear to spice up the weekend.