The top of the city

William Wright has posted about Vizzini, a character played by Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride (all Mormons know and love that movie; there are no exceptions), which reminded me of the only other Wallace Shawn movie I’ve seen: Vanya on 42nd Street. I left a comment saying that was a link to the number 42 and the Empire State Building, but I had misremembered. It’s not the Empire State Building that’s on 42nd Street.

It’s the Chrysler Building. You know, the one that’s as big as a preternaturally big slug.

The main character in Eleanor Cameron's Mushroom Planet series is David Topman, who is based on the author's own son David. Chrysler is from Kreisel, meaning "top" (the spinning toy), so Topman is basically a translation of Chrysler.

It occurs to me that the 1993 Kate Bush song "Top of the City" -- reportedly inspired by the skyline as seen from her hotel room when she was in New York promoting Hounds of Love in 1985 -- could be an unintentionally specific reference to the Chrysler Building, which is the "top" of the city in two senses.