Trial: Julio Gonzalez, 37, accused of setting...

Trial: Julio Gonzalez, 37, accused of setting a fire last March in the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx that killed 87 people, went on trial Monday, and a judge ruled that prosecutors can use the man’s confessions. Supreme Court Justice Burton Roberts said he was satisfied that three statements by Julio Gonzalez were not the result of police pressure. Gonzalez has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

Law Man: A son of retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said his father was disappointed when he left college to become a police officer. But later Virginia State Police Sgt. John W. Marshall, 33, secretly returned and finished college in 1986. He broke the news by presenting his father with invitations to his graduation. And he still may go to law school: “Of course I’d want to be a prosecutor. My dad, he’d shake his head again, I guess.”

Wordsmith: Syndicated humor columnist Lewis Grizzard has signed on with Sony-Tree music publishers to record two albums on which he’ll sing, but he’s modest about his vocal abilities. “They’ve got computers up here; they can make my dog sound like George Jones,” Grizzard said Sunday in Nashville, Tenn. But he sees advantages in warbling over writing: “You write a good chorus, you ain’t got to write another one, you can keep going back to that one. In a column you can’t repeat paragraphs.”

War’s End: Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf makes a farewell call later this month on U.S. soldiers in the Persian Gulf. About 48,000 U.S. troops remain in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and aboard some 30 ships in the Gulf . . . Six parakeets pressed into service aboard a British destroyer during the Gulf War received citations Monday in Gibraltar for bravery. The birds were lent by St. Georges School for use in detecting chemical gas.