When the proverbial chit hits the fan, who ya gonna call? The Ghostbusters are busy trying to get Bill Murray to do another one, and meanwhile you need a lawyer. In clubland there are many lawyers handling licensing and such, but in criminal cases -- which unfortunately sometimes arise (tell me about it) -- Sal E. Strazzullo stands ready. I've known Sal for a long time; we worked together in days of yore. While others saw nightlife as a career, Sal put himself through law school. He was often telling promoters and others to think of their futures and use the money they were making to prepare for a different life, as he was. Some listened ... others didn’t. Sal had an exit strategy and stuck to it. Now he handles high-profile cases, and I see him saying ”no comments” and lawyer things to reporters on the six o’clock news. His experience with nightlife gives him an insider's perspective, which can be invaluable in court. Sal’s journey using nightlife to pay for his tuition and books should underline the importance of nightlife work. The people making a living in clubs are often people going someplace else, building a future. They become actors, artist, photographers, mothers, writers, doctors -- even lawyers.

I hear from Michael Alig quite often, although for many months I have stopped writing and visiting him. His bust in jail for illegal drugs indicated to me that he wasn’t taking my advice and efforts to reintroduce him to the world in a positive light seriously. He is in a repeat drug offender facility in solitary, with few privileges, about five hours from where I write. In a letter I received from him the other day, he was coherent and remorseful and understanding of my position. He has cut out many of the enablers from his ridiculous “fan club,” taking himself off their message boards. He seems to be trying again to get himself ready for the world. Our mutual friend, the brilliant artist Fernanda Cohen, visited him and read him the riot act. He swears he will embrace the “normal” and adult and creative friends he still has and forsake the Manson-like cult followers that celebrate all that is wrong about him.

Liskula Cohen, a model who has posed for Armani and Versace as well as gracing the cover of Vogue, is suing Google over comments made by a blog hosted on the server. Specifically, the anonymous blogger in question dubbed Cohen the “#1 skanky superstar” following an incident in the bar at the Hudson Hotel where the doorman “was jailed after smashing her in the face with a vodka bottle,” says the New York Daily News. The site went on to call the model “a desperate ‘fortysomething’ who ‘may have been hot 10 years ago’." Oh, yeah, and "desperation seeps from her soul, if she even has one." Ouch, getting a bottle in the face aside, no one deserves to hear that. Besides, Cohen is only 36.