There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company. — E.B. White, ‘Here is New York’
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There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company. — E.B. White, ‘Here is New York’

(via luppiters)

Source: Flickr / sotomeior

So I had this dream last night, that I was watching a movie starring Steve Martin and Gilda Radner that was made back in the late seventies. And in my dream I LOVED this movie (despite the fact that, in reality, it doesn’t exist) so I knew what was going to happen ahead of time (which is fortunate, because it doesn’t exist and I didn’t get to “watch” it all before I woke up).

Anyway, the movie was about this group of…sort of slow people (eccentric, maybe even mentally-challenged, I guess, but functional) who live together in a halfway house-ish place. One of them is Gilda Radner, who is her usual, Gilda Radner sort of character (childlike, hilarious, etc.) and I think another might’ve been Madeline Kahn, who was pretty uninhibited and flirty. Anyway, there were about four or five of them, split evenly between men and women (I want to say that one of them was an old character actor from the thirties/forties; again, it’s a dream, it didn’t exactly make sense.)

So all of them travel in a van and go to Disney World, and then, on the way back, they stop at a deli owned by Steve Martin. And he’s sort of a quiet, shy, reticent dude, and of course Gilda falls in love with him at first sight. And he’s just sort of like, “What are all these crazy people doing in my deli?” because they’ve all sort of latched onto him and won’t leave. And he’s very nice to them and actually grows to kind of like them—and then his estranged wife comes in and sort of shooes them out (and Gilda is sad to find that he’s married, so she leads the retreat).

Steve Martin’s wife is one of those movie characters who married below her means and wants to live above her means, and she tries to get Steve involved in this not-exactly-legal scheme that involves raffle tickets or something. And of course he gets caught and is arrested for grifting.

So on his way to the courthouse (which he’s walking to, because you can do that in my dream, apparently) the van full of eccentric people see him and stop and sort of take him for a joy ride before his trial. And they go to a petting zoo and to New York and Vermont (again, it’s a dream) and Gilda is in love with him and he sort of falls on love with her despite the fact that she’s loopy. And he just has a good time in general, herding these cats.

At one point, at the petting zoo, they meet Harvey Keitel, who lives next door to the petting zoo and is this really belligerent guy who wears home-made armor and carries around a shotgun. He falls in love with Madeline Kahn and sort of is adopted into the group, although I never got to that point in the dream. For the most part, he’s just yelling at the group to leave the petting zoo and waving his shotgun around.

The group takes Steve Martin back to the courthouse, where I think he just gets a slap on the wrist or whatever the legal equivalent is for a first-time grifter. And he goes back to his deli. When everyone visits him some time later, it seems as though his wife is still with him and is back to controlling his life, although in reality he’s just about to kick her to the curb, and he doesn’t want the group to come around anymore because he feels like a loser not worthy of friends, and wants to let them down easy, so he lets them think he’s gone back to life as usual, with his wife. Which breaks Gilda’s heart, and it’s sad.

And then I woke up. This isn’t the sort of movie that doesn’t have a sad ending, so ultimately Steve and Gilda get together, but I don’t know the specifics. When I woke up I genuinely believed that this was a real movie, and was thinking that I totally had to find it, before gradually realizing that Steve Martin and Gilda Radner never made a movie together. But it felt real, and was very in depth, and I wanted to write it down before I forgot the details, which tends to happen with dreams. So yeah, that’s it, that’s my movie dream. I’d watch it if it were real, man.