Calling all cars (with minorities)

Spielberg sighting in Athens! Athens New York! Click on link above to be a movie extra! http://www.dailyfreeman.com/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=1769&dept_id=74958&newsid=13446223 Actor Nick Nolte's "double" sent me this today. He lives Upstate New York and his family has the summertime music venue, "Romig's Barn" on Grand Manan Island, N.B. The NY Times had also reported that Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise were filming "War of the Worlds" in Bayonne, NJ also. It is good to have him here again. I worked on an archaeology site where he filmed "Batteries Not Included" near Tompkins Square Park. We used to lunch in the "Castillo de Jaguar" just around the corner. Lots of marbles, chamber pots and some "abolitionist" coins circulated to remind people to end slavery in a "drainage feature" next to where he had the "faux" building built. It was supposed to be a housing site and Housing Police Headquarters for all below 42nd Street! Odd, I'm not sure what was built there we had to cross a picket line to work (non-union labor being used on a City funded construction site!) on the archaeology next to the "Latin Kings" gang in the abandoned school (we dug out the "gang toilet" as they were called once, like a large attached outhouse) one a squatters building, and the community gardens Bette Midler helped save by buying them before the City could bulldoze them. Thanks Bette! Congratulations on your parks award on Long Island too! (Heh, I can dream can't I? Give her an elephant for her birthday will ya'?) Turns out it really is Ms. Midler's birthday! Happy Birthday! Original script Mercury Theater War of the Worlds script: (I found this a few weeks ago) http://members.aol.com/jeff1070/script.html Grover's Mills, one of the landing sites, is near to Princeton University and the RCA David Saranoff Research Center (many "wireless" fields in NJ nearby and NY, 6000 acres in Rocky Point, for example, now a State Park given by RCA for $1, were used to bounce signals off the "ionosphere" to Europe. He was a General at the end of WWII). I spent many weeks digging holes in the Princeton Nursery and the RCA property for a proposed interchange on Route 1 that was never built as far as I know, back when space shuttle Challenger crashed. The conical water tower said to have been shot at in the dark, mistaken for a Martian "Crew Excursion Vehicle" was still there when I bought a PCjr internal 300 baud modem made there, when finally, the new bridge was finished. The film with Gene Barry, was a "California" version. His film processing centers were the first I recall in NYC. Interesting, the original book was dedicated to the original Tasmanians who were wiped out by Europeans said H.G. Wells. Athens, NY that must be near West Athens, NY. I went to the "West Athens Hill" site as part of my field school in archaeology (behind the Catskill Animal Hospital) which was going to be a microwave repeater tower until they found the oldest archaeological site in New York State on top of it and new tech decreased the number of towers planned. Still is one of the oldest. Beautiful view of the river plain from up there. The field school professor, R. M. Gramly, Ph.D. worked on it as an RPI student with Dr. Ritchie, the State Archaeologist back in the 60's (he was the State Archaeologist after Arthur C. Parker, whose Seneca name was "Snowsnake" according to the NY State Museum). Ritchie also published the "Archaeology of Martha's Vineyard" (out of print) and the "Archaeology of New York State" starting out near Watertown, NY after WWII I think (maybe he had a war bride). I'm not sure who is State Archaeologist now after Robert Funk's (also State Archaeologist) contributions to "Hudson Valley Prehistory" and research on Fishers Island off the coast of Connecticut, part of New York State. Funny seeing it, "Batteries Not Included" after workings there. Paul Sharits would have liked it, with whom I took some experimental film-making and analysis with, at the Media Center in Buffalo, NY, which was just down Bailey Ave. from the "joint" with Frank Sinatra, Jr., considering that a community movie house opened nearby to show all sorts of films explaining America to recent arrivals. The Media Center was all black inside and showed many locally made films too and was also where Hollis Frampton taught who was working on "Zorn's Lemma", a film journey through a morgue autopsy. Twyla Tharp was in an early film of his (1971?). She choreographed the Billy Joel musical "Movin' Out" on Broadway. The WKBG TV station let me have a shopping bag full of 16mm television commercials to study. Watch out for the two clear frames at the end of the Comet commercial! An archaeologist working in a Bronx park, later employed with the President's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in Virginia, told me this Spielberg-related story. Mr. Spielberg's mother was once in trouble with the city planning department in the Bronx when the contractor took out some of the trees at his sister's place being built near Riverdale Park. I walked much of the Old Croton Aqueduct on Saturdays as a Bronx Historical Society activity with a City Planner, Nestor Danyluk, who said he had the regrettable job of taking pictures of the stumps. I also recall there was some sort of slush fund going on to "alleviate" some of the "crimes" others had from unauthorized cutting, run by the former City Parks Commissioner (twice he was, I think) Henry J. Stern. Years ago, it was though, and I used to think "Oh no! Steven Spielberg's Mom is going to jail!"