And speaking of old Brooklyn, how's this for an oldie. Now this hotel doesn't exist anymore, however looking at the picture and considering that this hotel would have been in the best location of Brighton Beach, I'd say my building is exactly where this hotel used to be, and my windows would be located where you see that right turret, only 12 floors higher. My windows are facing south and west (can't beat that in Brooklyn) ... that's another reason I love Brighton Beach.
So did Eugene Morris Jerome; he too loved Brighton Beach. And this is reflected in Neil Simon's chronicles his own life in his "Brighton Beach Memoirs" where he focuses on the observations of an aspiring writer Eugene Jerome and his large Jewish family in their overcrowded Brooklyn home in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY, 1937. His parents work and worry and meddle into everyone else's lives -- and they can always find enough to keep them in a tizzy. Here are some delicious quotes from this revealing play:
Eugene, as far as everyone is concerned, has recently become a bit too fascinated by the fairer sex, with much of his attention fixated on his dishy cousin, a would-be Broadway dancer. His older brother works at a blue-collar job and has run up a big gambling debt. And his widowed aunt (much to Mrs. Jerome's consternation) is considering a romance with the Irishman across the street.
Stanley: How horny can you get?
Eugene: I don't know, what's the highest score?
Eugene: What if they took a shower together?
Stanley: Aunt Blanche and Nora?
Eugene: If I could walk in and see that, I would thank G-d and become a rabbi.
Eugene: October the 2nd, 1937. A historic moment in the life of Eugene Morris Jerome. I have just seen the Golden Palace of the Himalayas. Puberty is over. Onwards and upwards.
Stanley: I have a major problem in my life, I haven't got time to describe girls masturbating for you.
Eugene: Just draw me a picture, I brought a pencil. You want crayons, maybe you should do it in color.
Eugene: I'm putting all this down in my memoirs, so if I grow up twisted and warped, the world will know why.
Kate: What would you tell your father if he came home, and I was dead on the kitchen floor?
Eugene: I'd say, "don't go in the kitchen, Pop."
Eugene: The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife, which is more than I could say for the liver.
Eugene: She gets all this special treatment because the doctor says she has kind-of-a-flutter in her heart. So, I have to do all her work. She'd better have a bad heart, or I'm gonna kill her one day.
Eugene: All the best Yankees are Italian. My mother makes spaghetti with catsup. What chance do I have?
Eugene Morris Jerome: What do you expect me to say when you tell me that pop wacks-off?
Kate Get a quarter pound of butter.
Eugene: I bought a quarter pound of butter this morning. Why don't you buy half a pound at a time?
Kate: And, suppose the house burned down this afternoon. Why do I need an extra quarter pound of butter?
Eugene: If my mother taught logic in high school, this would be one weird country.
Eugene [to Kate]: I hear you. Cut my ears off, I would still hear it though my nose.
Blanche: Is your throat sore again?
Laurie: No, it's the same one from before.
Eugene: Liver and cabbage, a Jewish medieval torture. My friend, Marty Gagorio, an A student in science, told me that cooked cabbage can be smelled farther than sound traveling for seven minutes.
Blanche: Do you know how hard it is today for a girl to get a good job without a high school diploma? Tell her, Kate.
Kate: It's very hard.
Stanley: It's puberty.
Eugene: It's what?
Stanley: Puberty. You never heard that word before? Don't you read books?
Eugene: Yeah, the Count of Monte Cristo. It never mentioned puberty.
Eugene: If I had my choice between a tryout with the Yankees, and actually seeing Nora's bare breasts for two-and-a-half seconds, I would have some serious thinking to do.
Kate: How many times have I told you not to leave your things around the house?
Eugene: One hundred-and-nine.
Kate: What?
Eugene: You said yesterday, "I told you one hundred-and-nine times not to leave your things around the house."
Eugene: I'm through, I got him out. I knew I had my stuff.
Kate: Wash your hands.
Eugene: They're clean, I'm wearing a glove [baseball}.
Eugene: I'm always going to the store, when I grow up, that's all I'll be trained to do: go to the store.
And now for the "wordiness" ... I know full well that the above is wordy, I was having fun, but I hope the "wordiness" brought a smile to you at the same time.
