My Neil Simon memory centers around the movie version of The Odd Couple.I was about 11 years attending a summer camp in Blairstown , New Jersey. Running a temperture I had to spend the night in the infirmary.
Once a week the counselors and Kitchen workers got a day off and usually went "in town" to see a movie.
The movie of choice that day was The Odd Couple. When one of the kitchen workers named Andy returned to camp he stopped by the infirmary to talk to the staff.He reveled about the movie and actually delivered dialogue line by line. His presentation was hysterical . Never forgot it. Every time I watch the movie or the sit-com I think of Andy.
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The adventure park planned for Coney Island is described as "part of larger revitalization efforts in South Brooklyn."
Incorrect.
Coney Island is not part of "South Brooklyn." South Brooklyn is a "historic term for a section of the former City of Brooklyn – now the New York City borough of Brooklyn – encompassing what are now the Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Gowanus, Park Slope and Red Hook neighborhoods.
"It was named for its location, south of the original Village of Brooklyn. It should not be confused with the geographic southern region of the modern borough of Brooklyn, which includes the neighborhoods of Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay, Gerritsen Beach, Seagate, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and Manhattan Beach, Mill Basin and the area near Kings Plaza."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Brooklyn
Coney Island, therefore, should be described as in "southern Brooklyn," or at the "southern tip of Brooklyn."
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@Lifelong Reader...and this comment should be posted elsewhere. ;-)
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LAWYER AKA DOCTOR
With Rudy Giuliani as your attorney,
You'll surely float out of court, on a gurney.
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Some years ago at the Lincoln Center plaza a free Tango lesson's event was held there ,my wife and I were delighted to see Neil Simon walking among the hundreds of couples attending with a smile on his face seemingly making mental notes for his writing.
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My favorite line from “The Odd Couple”: Oscar complaining to Felix about the things he does which drive him crazy, says “You leave me little notes like ‘We’re out of cornflakes, FU.’ It took me twenty minutes to figure out that FU meant Felix Unger!”
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@Allen, when I read that, I at first wondered how that passed the moderating system; then I thought, it was in what was seen as a "G-rated" movie, wasn't it?
These days, or even ten years later, I bet they'd have added a little extra to avoid that dreaded G rating.
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“a map of upward mobility in the city,” (in the quote from Mr., Green)
Interesting that the huge hit plays set in Manhattan (like Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, The Sunshine Boys) came first and helped make his name and fortune, and then the great smashing second act left Manhattan, the major hits set outside Manhattan started in the 1980s (Brighton Beach Memoirs trilogy, and the Pulitzer for 1991’s Lost in Yonkers).
Tune of “If My Friends Could See Me Now” (from Sweet Charity, with its classic Neil Simon book)
If we could see them now
Those great Neil Simon plays
We’d still be saying wow
Like in those great old days
Our folks lined up to buy the seats that went fast.
Today we find the guy had built shows to last!
It wasn’t all that hard
To get the work’s appeal
Like back when Redford starred
As young New Yorker Neil
What a great walk-up, holy cow!
And all that followed it
Let’s go and see them now!
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@Freddie, I just love your song today!
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Hi Freddie,
Neil Simon had a wonderful talent and sense of humor that he shared with all of us, just as you have and do, but you provide us with a daily treat, and often as not more than one a day.
Thanks Freddie—for your rhymes, your sense of humor, and your always interesting commentary.
Cheers,
Allen
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You have inadvertently promoted "a" plan for the former Bayside Oil Depot that is being proposed by a group that has not engaged with or been approved by the community as a whole. Formerly or informally known as "Maker Park", rather than seek engagement with a community that has major issues with their "plan", they are pressing their case in the media to legitimize themselves.
With a simple incorrect use of the definite article rather than the indefinite, and this link, you are helping legitimize them at the cost of what most people want for that area.
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I remember the episode where Oscar can’t take a vacation, and so Felix tells him they should spend a week being tourists in their own city - go to the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building etc. He says “you’ve become a jaded New Yorker.” As a kid I had never heard the word jaded, and still think of Felix whenever I do!
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@Mary, such crazy stuff could happen in the TV version. Oscar suddenly dating Jaye P. Morgan, on an episode where Felix happened to be writing a sing. Felix and Oscar on a theater panel with critics John Simon and Dan Sullivan. And competing on Password, of course.
“Jaded New Yorker” could slip right into the classic "Native New Yorker" with almost no changes. It played on every ride cycle at the bumper cars place in Coney Island, next to the cotton candy stand I worked weekends at on Surf Avenue, along with “Turn the Beat Around” and usually “More, More, More” This Broadway section seems right for Neil Simon thoughts:
“And oh, where did all those yesterdays go
When you still believed love could really be like a Broadway show
You were the star, when did it close?
Oh, oh, oh
You're a native New Yorker” [or: You’re a jaded New Yorker!]
“NatIve New Yorker" - the Odyssey NYC classic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1rH_iaZkv0
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A song from Freddie? My life is complete. Thanks love it!!!
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@Mary, I do have a celebratory "Mary" song if you ever need something peppy where your name is repeated a lot. A nice thing about dropped songs the past decade is there's always unlimited room for them on YouTube! :)
"To A Brand New Mary!" - for anyone named Mary or who knows a Mary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJnyexTjcgM
At Playland in Rye (accessible by Metro North and the Bee Line bus service), there's a log flume ride, as well as a full amusement park, beach, pool and an ice rink! All owned by Westchester County. Come and enjoy. Fireworks on Friday night at 9:15. Free.
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