Grumpy cat

Fran Lebowitz is New York City's Jiminy Cricket... an opinionated conscience of what NYC is. And was. And ought to be.

"It would take the Dalai Lama just one subway trip to turn into a raging lunatic," she barks.

Martin Scorsese has a horsepile of Netflix cash to celebrate his cranky gal pal, and some wildly novel musical and archival ideas for his new Netflix offering, Pretend It's a City. 

He makes nearly four hours' worth of rants by a very odd 70 year-old woman watchable. (It's chopped into seven half hours.)

I laughed out loud--often at Marty's creative editing--but equally for Fran's well-rehearsed dictims, practiced at a thousand lectures.

Sarcasm and snarl is her job; she hasn't written a book in decades.

Rolling Stone gives Pretend It's a City a rave.

Time says it's endlessly charming, a pleasure.

Variety says it's self-indulgent crap.

Hey, it's way funnier than The Irishman.

The show's title is what Lebowitz shouts at tourists and camera-clickers who impede her march thru NYC sidewalks: "Pretend it's a city!"