East Coast reviewers in a "hick town"

 In yesterday's post here, I noticed the NY Times writer noted the comments of "East Coast reviewers."

LOL - what about reviews in the newspapers in Minneapolis?  Missoula?  Des Moines?  Bismarck? - - dammit, what about television show reviews in the Akron Beacon Journal??  Huh?  How about those?!

        He only cared about reviews by writers on the East Coast.

This touches on a phenomenon where some people see residents of New York City as being actually quite provincial and myopic, like only seeing things from their own narrow point of view, when we might expect them to be very open-minded, sophisticated, and liberal, because they live in a city that is vibrant and rich with cultural opportunities and experiences.

        Someone once said, "New York is the biggest hick town in America" - I googled this quotation - it comes up, but doesn't assign it to any personal source - like no one knows who said it first.

Woody Allen is one example - and this isn't a criticism, only an observation - he has said, himself, he doesn't like to "leave the city" because why would he? - it has everything you want and need.

        In the '70s when I arrived in Boston to go to college, I noticed in several students' dorm rooms there would be a poster on the wall depicting New York City as the center of America.

Googling that, I got the picture below.  Very unclear to look at, but we can get the idea. ...

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second thoughts

 

        In the May 25, 1971, New York Times, George Gent wrote:

------------------------- "All in the Family," which stars Carroll O'Connor as Archie and Jean Stapleton as his long suffering wife, opened to a mixed critical reception, 

    ...with some of the East Coast reviewers dismissing the program as unfunny and as a potential contributor to the bigotry it was allegedly spoofing.  

        Many of these same critics later had second thoughts.

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meet me at the cemetery, baby

 

        Listening to a video on You Tube about a charismatic preacher, where he groomed and had affairs with a number of young girls in his various congregations....

The narrative mentions that, with one of his girlfriends, he would meet her in several different locations, sometimes the local cemetery.

 

These cults.

They always end in some hang-wringing craziness.  

Do people never learn?

Well, maybe the answer is, there are always new people coming along who haven't heard about the last 75 "train-wrecks" of this type, and they want to participate in some spirituality, and they get sucked in.

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...but not for dancing

 Rob Reiner had an interesting career in films and television - as a director, and an actor.

Usually a person in "the business" is one or the other; Rob Reiner's body of work was kind of unique, in that way.

Before he directed any movies, he played roles as an actor in several TV-series on a one-time basis, and then in the hit show All In The Family, as one of the regular characters, seen there every week.

We can experience his acting on there by watching a You Tube video titled

The Bunkers and The Swingers

uploader / channel:  All In The Family

        Rue McClanahan appears in this episode - if you have watched "The Golden Girls" (in the '80s) you will remember her as Blanche Devereaux.

        Isabel Sanford is in it, too.  She is the one who finally has to tell Edith, "Those people are here to change partners, but - not for dancing. ..."

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at that moment, I knew

 

        Another of the interviews with older married couples in the Rob Reiner film, When Harry Met Sally... shows these people talking - 

wife:  Uh, he - was the head counselor at the boys' camp, and I was the head counselor at the girls' camp.  And - they had a social, one night, and he walked across the room.

        I thought he was coming to talk to my friend, Maxine.  -  'Cause people were always crossing rooms to talk to Maxine.

        But he was coming to talk to me.

        And he said --

husband:  I'm Ben Small.  Of the Coney Island Smalls.  

wife:  At that moment, I knew. 

I knew, the way you know about a good melon.

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9 extra floors

 

Another older-couple interview in When Harry Met Sally... - the husband and wife in this interview, telling their story of how they met, they overlap, and talk over each other - it's so funny, and typical....

**  husband:  We were both born in the same hospital...

wife:  In 1921...

husband:  Seven days apart!

wife:  In the same hospital.

husband:  We both grew up - one block away from each other...!

wife:  We lived in tenements -

husband:  ...On the Lower East Side...

wife:  On Delancey Street.

husband:  My family moved to the Bronx

wife:  He lived on Fordham Road...

husband:  Hers moved when she was eleven.

wife:  I lived on 183rd Street.

husband:  For six years, she worked - on the fifth floor, as a nurse...

wife:  I worked for a very prominent neurologist...

husband:  ...Where I had a practice, on the fourteenth floor, the very same building...

wife:  (in a hushed tone) - "We - never - met."

husband:  ...(same hushed tone) - Never (nev-ah) met.

wife:  Can you imagine that?

husband:  You know where we met?  In an elevator...

wife:  I was visiting ...

husband:  In the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago.

wife:  He was on the third floor, I was on the twelfth.

husband:  I rode up nine extra floors, just to keep talking to her. ...(!)

wife (in a tone of dreamy wonderment) - - - "Nine extra floors."

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"but I never forgot her"

 

In the movie When Harry Met Sally... there are these brief little interview scenes where an older married couple are speaking to an interviewer.  You don't see the person doing the interview, only the couple.

** wife:  We fell in love in high school.

husband:  Yeah, we were high-school sweethearts.

wife:  But then after our junior year, his parents moved away.

husband:  But I never forgot her.

wife:  He never forgot me.

husband:  Naa-ah, her face was burned on my brain. - And - it was thirty-four years later, that I was walking down Broadway, and I saw her come out of Toffenetti's.  

wife:  We both looked at each other.  And it was just as though not a single day had gone by.

husband:  She was just as beautiful as she was at sixteen.

wife:

(she puts her hand affectionately on his arm) - He was just the same.  -- He looked exactly the same!

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