(05-11-2021, 01:42 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(05-09-2021, 04:07 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Somebody opened fire randomly killing people in Times Square. Does Trump have an alibi?
Yeah, he said it would be on 5th Avenue.
There is much mass hostility to New York City, assumed by many as a Sodom and Gomorrah (I apply that to the Michigan Avenue in Detroit for sexually-related business, whores, addicts, and drunks everywhere, much drug activity, and a huge number of liquor stores) for various reasons (it's probably more Puerto Rican than Jewish, and who accuses Puerto Ricans of inordinate power in America?) that include some extreme wealth and being the central location of the most important media... I'll say this of New York City: if you are at the top of your game in entertainment, cultural creation, or High Finance you end up in New York City. (OK, maybe Hollywood or Greater San Francisco -- where Pixar is)
Just think of the song New York, New York
(copyrighted lyric, for critical analysis only)
Quote:Start spreading the news
I'm leaving today
I want to be a part of it, New York, New York
These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray
And make a brand new start of it
New York, New York
I want to wake up in the city that doesn't sleeps
To find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap
These little town blues
Are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you, New York, New York
New York, New York
I want to wake up, in the city that doesn't sleeps
To find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap
Crème of the crop and the top of the heap
My little town blues
Are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
Come on, Come though, New York, New York
New York is a tough place to live. Costs are high, and for many people it just does not fit the way to which they are accustomed. Audiences are tough, so one must be at the top of one's game. But if you are really, really good you will get there some day. The Big Boys do their thing there. Salaries are high (no fooling -- they have to be much higher there than in Milwaukee, San Antonio, or even Boston). This is the city of Theodore Roosevelt, Arturo Toscanini, Babe Ruth, George Gershwin, Vladimir Horowitz, Walter Cronkite, Jackson Pollock, Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Woody Allen, and Barbra Streisand. Donald Trump? For a while, but New Yorkers were quick to catch on to him. New York is the home of the tough audience.
New York City is not for a mediocrity such as me... that's for damn sure. About all that fits me as a New Yorker is that I am a tough critic. Unless you were born and raised there, I strongly discourage anyone from moving there unless extremely good at what one does. Even Chicago and Los Angeles are on a more human scale than the Big Apple. Visit it? Sure. You will get a lot of it, but you will pay a pretty penny. But you will get more out of a day in New York City than out of a lifetime in the dreary hick town in which I live -- or for that matter, such places as... well, I might offend someone by naming names of awful places that have little to do.
It is impressive to have "New York" on your business card. Somehow "Scranton" is good only if your business is in Scranton.
Frank Sinatra, arguably the greatest entertainer of the twentieth century, is perfect for this song. A brand new start of it? You get your start in a place like Little Rock, where the standards are low, until you polish your act enough for a place like Phoenix, Dallas, or Denver before going to New York. Sinatra never needed a 'brand new start of it'.
The 'little town blues' are that you need a day job to meet the rent in a low-rent district, which you do until you are good enough at some activity at which few succeed or you give up and decide that doing auto-body work or K-12 teaching is adequate for your modest needs that you will keep modest. Many people who know nothing else are satisfied with that, and that is a very good thing. And if you don't like Little Rock, you might be happier in Oklahoma City, anyway... not a bad place, really.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.