FOR years, Brigham Young's city in the Great Salt Desert has been trying to get rid of its image as a holier-than-thou Hicksville.
The son of a German-Jewish Holocaust survivor but raised as a Roman Catholic in Hicksville, a middle-class suburb on Long Island, New York, Joel was steered toward classical music by his parents and began piano lessons at age 4. At age 14, enamoured of the British Invasion and soul music, he began playing in bands.
Shana Cox was a pupil at Holy Trinity Diocesan High School, Hicksville, when she set a US high school record for the 300 metres.
But while Richman's spots are often in the middle of Hicksville, over here the punishment, sorry challenge, appears to have moved to fashionable restaurants.
From the perspective of Charles van Commenee, the head coach of UK Athletics, the acquisition of the women from Hicksville and Ypsilanti is a mutually beneficial piece of human resource management.
She comes from Hicksville, USA – the hamlet on Long Island where Billy Joel and Lorraine Bracco of The Sopranos and Goodfellas fame were also raised.
"I used to curse the owner: 'Fucking rich bastard, probably never worked a day in his life.' " Though Joel was born in the Bronx, he was reared in Levittown, the postwar planned (and originally racially segregated) community, near Hicksville, on Long Island.
As a teen, he was busy enough working late nights as an organist, in bands and bars — and then sleeping those nights off — that he was denied a diploma from Hicksville High.
Compared with the surrounding towns — Hicksville, Bethpage, Wantagh, East Meadow — Levittown is still relatively cheap.
He later referred to his "suave, sterling style" on Broadway Hollywoodd to his mind was mere "Hicksville".
He and Brenner had first met in junior high and later played football together for the Hicksville Comets — Rothschild at quarterback and Brenner at center.
