Wit and Wisdom of New Yorkers, Part V

Had I continued living in New York City ever since 1986, I feel very sure that I would have overheard the following comments on the streets of Manhattan:

---"The other day I met a guy who said he's a professional baker here in New York, so I asked him what his specialty is. His response was that he specializes in marijuana brownies, and would I like to buy a Baker's Dozen from him? He then added that he has Cordon Bleu training, so his gourmet marijuana brownies are the finest in all of New York. I declined his offer. I politely explained that I prefer my brownies without any marijuana in them. Then I made mental notes to myself about what this guy looked like, and what he was wearing, and I immediately called 911 to report him to NYPD. My only worry is that he might figure out I turned him in to the authorities, and he might retaliate by breaking into my home and injecting marijuana into my bloodstream during my sleep. Can you imagine how disgusting that would be, to wake up on your bed and immediately sense that you'd been raped by a marijuana pusher during your sleep?"

---"Do you know how I can find the drug-treatment specialist in New York who has the best success rate at curing anyone who's addicted to speed? I've got that illiict-drug problem myself, and it all happened because I was under heavy pressure at my job to get tons of projects completed for my boss ASAP. So I started taking speed, thinking it would increase my productivity, and now I'm addicted to that evil drug! It's like being in hell! I'm so frenetic and irritable all day that even my girlfriend is complaining that I'm no fun to be around anymore! She's threatened to move out on me, unless I get cured of my speed addiction ASAP!"

---"I think all New Yorkers are experts on how to identify whether a new acquaintance they just met is a drug addict. Personally, I always look very closely at their fingernails. Then I look very closely at their arms, to see if I can identify any pricks on their skin. I screen out any and all drug addicts from my own personal life, and that makes my life here much more enjoyable. I don't trust drug addicts, and I also hate the fact that there is always is a drug dealer in their life who links them to organized crime!"


---"Congratulations, you should get a 'Most Stalked New Yorker' award! I've never heard of a case like yours before, in which you have had to get 30 different court restraining orders against 30 different stalkers of yourself! Maybe you should change your name and emigrate to Iceland, if you could handle the weather up there!"

----"It sounds like you've turned into an expert on death threats here, just by living in New York and being subjected to death threats every day of your life here! Maybe you should enroll in NYU's program that will get you certification as a criminologist, so you can at least get paid for all the factual research you have to do on criminal types!"

---"The death threats I'm subjected to here in New York on a year-round basis aren't all that bad. A high percentage of New Yorkers are pathological liars, so this means that when they threaten to kill me, they're lying to me about what their actual intentions are! What they're really doing is they're trying to accelerate my aging process by raising my blood pressure level and inflicting frequent sleep deprivation on me! No one ever gets charged with a crime when they do either of those things here in New York! In the Big Apple, as you know, it's perfectly legal to be a royal pain in the derriere to all other New Yorkers!"

---"I'm still searching for a nice Italian breakfast restaurant here that will offer me an Italian-sausage omelette for breakfast. I love Italian sausage, but can never find a restaurant that will offer that to me in omelette form for breakfast! Maybe I should contact the Italian Embassy here and ask them if they know the right place for this type of item!"

---"My friend Alex is so intrigued by the obscene graffiti messages left by vandals on the alley dumpsters of New York that he's decided to do an entire PhD dissertation on that topic. Alex's theory is that New Yorkers who feel trashed by others are drawn to dumpsters in order to make a public statement about their self-degradation. My reply to Alex is that his theory does not explain why many of the New Yorkers who feel trashed by others choose to put their obscene graffiti statement on subway cars instead. I also told Alex that he will have a very difficult time defending his dissertation when it goes before a faculty committee. And if he doesn't get his dissertation approved, Alex will be the laughingstock of our entire city as word gets around that he spent years evaluating dumpsters of New York only to get his entire project trashed by NYU!"

---"Ramona told me yesterday that ever since she saw the Al Pacino movie 'Scarface,' she has refused to date any single guy with a scar on his face. Ramona told me her worst nightmare as a single lady here is that she might go all the way with a guy on a date, only to find out the next morning from an associate of his that he is a Mafia thug! Ramona figures that if she eliminates all the single men with scars on their face from her dating life, she can spare herself of the indignity of ever performing fellatio on a Mobster! It's a major point of pride for Ramona that she will never be in bed with the Mafia, so to speak, and I don't blame her! Ramona's very high level of integrity is a good influence on our entire city! If all the single ladies of New York would follow Ramona's rule, that would put an end to organized crime here in a matter of weeks!"

---"I find it ironic that you are a native of a city that you fondly refer to as 'The Big Apple', but you have never once done any research to find out which variety of apple has, in fact, accounted for the world's largest apple. All you have to do is consult the 'Guinness Book of World Records'. How can you possibly call yourself a New York City chauvinist if you can't even tell me when and where the world's biggest apple came from."

---"I think everyone who lives in New York City is more likely to cite the apple in metaphorical terms in our everyday lives. We honorable New Yorkers typically refer to criminal New Yorkers as 'rotten apples', for instance, which suggests that if only the criminal types would get de-wormed, maybe they'd go straight. I've always found that metaphorical implication humorous in a grim sort of way. In our romantic life, we New Yorkers are more likely to refer to prospective dating partners we enjoy as 'the apple of my eye.' There's a sense of Garden of Eden-like temptation, without any hint of evil being unleashed here. I'm surprised I haven't found a New York City greeting card that declares, 'You are the Big Apple of my eye!' There's an institutionalized apple-mindedness to being a New Yorker, it seems to me, and part of this derives from George Washington's great history with our city. Everyone also associates George Washington with apples. But actually, it just now occurs to me that I may be mistaken on that. I realize now that George Washington is associated with cherry trees. It was a cherry tree that George Washington confessed to having chopped down during his youth. I was thinking of Washington State---that's the Washington and apple connection that had come to mind for me. Lots of apples raised in Washington State, and it's interesting that some of Washington State may be at or near the same latitude as New York City, which again reminds me of the pervasive Big Apple motif that New York has rightfully claimed as our own."

---"So who coined our city's 'Big Apple' nickname, anyway? To me, it's outrageous that most New Yorkers don't even know the answer to that question. The cultural illteracy rate in New York these days is a disgrace, so much so that I can imagine Mayor LaGuardia rolling over in his grave!"

---"I find it odd that I never hear of anyone being served a Big Apple Cake on their birthday here! With all the people here who call themselves New York City chauvinists, the least they could do is honor our city on their birthday through their choice of cake."

---"My husband, Raul, is very obsessed with designing and building a new home for our family that will be classified as a revered historic building here in the 22nd Century. Raul says this is the best shot our family has at earning a spot in New York's history books, so Raul is spending zillions of dollars on making our new home a favorite of architectural historians in the year 2100. My reply to that is that the City of New York might declare our home dilapidated in the year 2100 and order immediate demolition. At that point, Raul's posthomous claim to fame goes completely out the window!"

---"I think every New Yorker cherishes his most tender steak-eating experience from his entire life of dining out here. To me, the year 1997 was a peak year for me from that standpoint. Fortunately, I had my cell phone with me when I dined in a first-rate steakhouse in Manhattan that night, so I was able to take a photo of my tenderest-ever steak before I devoured it at the dining table! That photo is now among my all-time favorite scrapbook items."

---"One of the things I miss whenever I dine in a veggie restaurant here in New York is that the menu does not offer me a Veggie Steak option. I'm a steakhouse devotee, so I prefer to order steaks whenever I dine out."

---"My husband and I recently agreed that for our wedding anniversary, we should head for a restaurant that features massive and crazy-looking salads. Our entire married life has been one big crazy salad experience, so we've decided that ordering a huge salad we could both share would be very appropos. It's remarkable that neither of us has ended up in an insane asylum yet, after all these years of driving each other crazy!"

---"I think every New Yorker should devote an hour per month to talking with a friend about whether Mafia penetration of our City is on the increase or decrease. Personally, I wish our mayor would issue a monthly report exclusively evaluating whether Mafia infiltration of New York is up or down. That type of public statement each month would be very reassuring to me. It would suggest that the City has finally set a goal of fostering one percent decline or 2 percent decline in Mafia activiites here. That baby step in the right direction could save a lot of lives."

---"What I'm hoping is that our Mayor will hold a press conference to exclusively explain to all of New York the specific actions he has taken as mayor to prevent Mafia infiltration of the Mayor's Office. I don't know of any Mayor here who has been willing to hold a press conference of that type. If our mayor does that, I might even call him up and invite him to lunch, provided that we first verify through NYPD and the FBI that the restaurant where I'm going to treat him is not Mafia-controlled."

---"I think anyone who lives in New York City experiences a special sympathy toward the ancient Romans who died very suddenly in the Roman city of Pompeii. Even though we don't have a volcano nearby that might erupt on us, all of us in New York can easily imagine sudden-disaster scenarios here that would annihilate our entire city in a matter of minutes. Our only consolation is that if that ever happens, at least we'll all turn into historic relics for a very popular future museum somewhere that will attract millions of visitors per year. They might even label our posthumous museum exhibit as 'Pompeii II'."

---"The leading crime fighters here in New York aren't NYPD officers. The're the professional actors who portray New York police officers in popular television shows. Those actors are teaching the youths of New York City that crime doesn't pay. To me, the actors who do those shows deserve a very nice crime-deterrence award from our police chief and mayor. Vicky, do you remember ever hearing of an awards ceremony of that type here? I myself do not, but I don't claim to follow the local news shows here every day of the year. The real-life crime news here is so painful to hear about that I can't possibly handle the local news shows here every day of the year!"

----"The crime news here about victims who are under age 18 are the stories that make me especially angry. To me, every New Yorker, no matter what their religious or political beliefs, should be guaranteed of enjoying their first 18 years on this planet without anyone molesting them or assaulting them at any time. Our city's public message to criminals here should always be: 'If you must assault or attack another New Yorker, please, please be careful to pick someone age 19 or older as your victim!'"

---"Personally, I think many of the kindergartners at New York public schools could benefit from a field trip to Reiker's Island. I don't know whether the school board would approve a field trip of that type for kindergartners, but it could remind those children to behave themselves or they might end up in jail for the rest of their life! To me, age six is a good time for deterring juvenile delinquency. But I'm sure that other parents would disagree with me on that."

---"When my 8-year-old daughter accompanies me to the Bronx Zoo, she gets very nervous and upset whenever she looks at the gorillas on display. Amy tells me that 'King Kong' was one of the scariest movies she ever saw, and she is worried that one of the gorillas at the zoo will escape from his cage and suddenly turn into a monster gorilla as scary as King Kong. I don't blame Amy for her concern. In fact, I blame myself for having let Amy watch the classic movie 'King Kong' with me earlier this year. Ever since then, my daughter has been having nightmares about giant gorillas breaking into our home and kidnapping Amy. All I can say to Amy to reassure her is that our home has been gorilla-proofed, since we had a home security expert state to me in writing that no current or future King Kong could ever get into this house! That seemed to calm Amy down quite a bit."

---"My 15-year-old son says he's found the perfect strategy for becoming a millionaire here in New York! Carl says he's invented a new board game in which each contestant picks a card that cites the name of a street in Manhattan. The contestant is then expected to cite the name of one business or public landmark that's situated along that street. If he can't answer that correctly, he has to draw another card, and the opposing player gets his turn in the game. The first player to run out of all of his playing cards is declared Mayor of New York for a day! Carl says it's a perfect strategy for paying his college education. He's hoping to attend Columbia, since he wants to remain here for his college education."

---"I sometimes wish that the mayor and City Commission members here would each be required to publicly swear their allegiance to the City of New York before they are allowed to assume office. Maybe if we drew up a special loyalty oath specifically referring to our city we could reduce our local-government corruption rate by 10 percent. That would be a step in the right direction, at least."

----"I tend to assume that all heavily-tattooed New Yorkers are alike. Maybe I should enroll in a college class on the 'Sociology of Tattoos in New York'. My only problem with that is that even after I complete that class and earn an 'A' from that course, I'll still feel like vomiting whenever I see a heavily-tattoed New Yorker. It takes acting skills these days to not let the heavily-tattoed New Yorkers get to you when you face them on the subways and streets of Manhattan. Fortunately, we have so many actors here in New York City that acting ability rubs off on everyone, even a non-actor like myself. I think every New Yorker has learned the art of suppressing revulsion in their facial expression."

---"I had a wonderful dream last night during my sleep. The sign greeting tourists in my dream declared, 'Welcome to New York City, Where the Undesirables Always Outnumber the Desirables'. My dream had a happy ending, though, since in my dream all of New York City's undesirables enrolled in special educational workshops designed to help them turn into desirables. So my dream ended with the sign at New York's city limits declaring: 'Welcome to New York City: Haven for Desirables'. It was such a marvelous transformation of our entire city in my dream!"

---"I think a lot of actors here wish they could obtain official resident status in both New York State and California during the same time period. But I don't believe that even the best of Hollywood agents can do that for the actors who routinely fly from New York to LA every month. Besides, that might also imply that the actors would be paying income taxes in both New York and California, and they probably wouldn't like that."

---"What I'm looking for is a bagel that's high in monounsaturated fats, since 'Prevention' magazine says that those types of fats are the ones I need to lose weight. So why isn't there a bagel on display in your bakery that you can promise me in advance has lots of monounsaturated fats?"

---"There probably should be an American Children's Day, which would encourage all of us to send a nice greeting card to a child under age 13 whom we are friendly toward. We have a day of each year for fathers, a day of each year for mothers, but I don't know of any children's day that's celebrated throughout our country. So which U.S. senator from New York do you think would be the most likely to agree to sponsor this in Congress?"

---"What I'm looking for is a new database website that will tell me immediately the location of the nearest whatever it is that I'm looking for. Maybe the website could be called 'FIND.NEAREST.com.' I'd love to find out the nearest natural warm springs where I could swim in the middle of winter, but I don't know where that is. If we had an online database that provides me with info of that type that I need, it would definitely boost my morale as a New Yorker. There are days, and maybe I'm thinking of how that famous New Yorker FDR loved to bathe in warm springs, when I want to head to the nearest indoor or outdoor natural warm springs and bathe or swim. Doesn't that sound thrilling, when it's 10 degrees outside?"

--"I would love to send out more 'thank-you' cards to other New Yorkers who are nice to me, but I don't want to give out my return address when I write to someone I don't fully and completely trust. This is the classic dilemma that every New Yorker faces on a frequent basis. Should you write and mail a thank-you card to a friendly acquaintance without citing your own mailing address on the envelope or on the card itself? And if you leave out your own mailing address, might that come across as aloof, which defeats the whole purpose of writing a thank-you card to that new acaquaintance or stranger who befriended you here."

---"A lot of single women in New York are naive about the bachelors they meet who claim that they're employed by NYPD. Those single women tend to think, 'Gee, that means he passed a thorough criminal-background check, so it's safe to date him.' What those single women are overlooking, though, is that the single guy they're talking with may be LYING about whether he's employed by NYPD! If the single lady asks him to present her with his NYPD badge for the sake of verification, it may just be a phony badge! What I recommend to all of my single friends is that when the guy they just met boasts about working for NYPD, she should reply with, 'So let me verify that on my cell phone, before I go any farther with you. What's the name and phone number of your immediate supervisor at NYPD, so I can give him a quick call?' But of course, there's always the possibility the guy you just met will be prepared for that question, and he'll have a friend of his waiting for a phone call from you in order to fake his own identity as the immediate supervisor of that guy!"

---"Everyone assumes that you feel on top of the world when you reach the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Personally, I've had just the opposite experience. You look down on New York City and the people below you down there are as tiny as insects, and you realize that you're part of one tiny ant hill yourself, and that's all it amounts to, so this can be a very, very depressing moment of truth to any New Yorker!"

---"Whenever my wife and I visit Washington Square, she likes to point out that she cannot remember any funny comment that George Washington ever made. So I always reply that it's probably just as well we don't have any Broadway play here honoring George Washington, since the audience couldn't handle all that witlessness for two or three straight hours!"

---"Whenever I wisit Washington Square in Manhattan, I remember the only thing about George Washington that ever stuck in my memory. He warned us all to avoid entangling alliances. So whenever another New Yorker asks me to do a personal favor for him, I reply that I'm a big admirer of George Washington, in that I try to avoid entangling alliances. When I put it that way, they're less likely to call me a jerk."

---"It is impossible for a man to live in New York without being called a jerk by someone at least once a day here. I should be hardened to it all at this point, since every other man in New York is also being verbally abused that way every day. I admit, though, that being called a jerk is demoralizing to me. I wish I had a good come-back line when I get called that, since it's bad for my self-esteem to not have a good come-back line. I have to find a come-back line that won't trigger physical assault. I want a come-back line that speaks up for myself without daring the other guy to physically attack me. This is the classic New Yorker's Dilemma: How to be Assertive Without Inviting a Fist-fight!"

---"Whenever I refuse to buy chewing gum for my 8-year-old son Andrew, he always replies that the New York Yankees all chew gum during their pro baseball games, so Andrew should also have the opportunity to chew gum for hours on end! I wish I had a good reply to that."

---"We have so many famous people living in New York that whenever I see photographers rushing up to take someone's picture, I immediately ask myself, 'Do I recognize that famous person's face?' If I don't, I immediately classify him or her as a 'Miscellaneous Celebrity.' In my book, the only celebrities who count are the ones I can actually identify by name when I see them up close."

---"We have so many Miscellaneous Celebrities here in New York that I wish we had a special website entitled, 'Miscellaneous Celebrities in New York.com.' That website would help me to identify the famous faces here that otherwise would have been very obscure to me. It's probably good to know their names, at least, even if you're not likely to ask them for their autograph."

---"We've had so many celebrities here undergo a religious conversion that I wish we had a special website devoted to that one topic. It might be called 'New York Celebrities Religious Conversion Experience.com'. Madonna is one of the most famous ones, but I frankly forget what her current religious affiliation is after she had that conversion experience. It was her conversion that made big splashy headlines, another sensational and wild adventure for her."

---"One thing about New York: For every one total adult younger gentleman who admires you here, you will find 50 older men who admire you. If you agree to date the one total adult gentleman younger than yourself in age who admires you, you'll be harassed and stalked forever by the older men."

---"Why is it that 99 percent of the conspiracies here feature New Yorkers plotting and scheming to harm someone? Aren't there any conspiracies here in which dozens of New Yorkers are plotting and scheming to actually HELP someone? Conspiratorial philanthropy, I guess you could call it."

---"If you were Catwoman, which tall buildings of Manhattan would you climb the most often?"

---"You enjoy Batman so much that maybe you could write an essay for your English class in which you compare and contrast Batman's real-life character, Mr. Wayne of Wayne Enterprises, with Mayor Bloomberg of Bloomberg Media Company."

---"David Letterman's TV show is the best possible advertising that his cardiologist ever gets. Everyone knows the name of his cardiologist, and when they see David Letterman looking alive and well on his talk show, they immediately see it as proof that his cardiologist works miracles."

---"My 9-year-old son wants to know if New York City has an official municipal flag of its own, and if so, which colors are featured on our city's official municipal flag? I told Robert that he should write to the Mayor and ask him that question, since I don't know the answer myself. I'm too busy trying to make rent every month to bother with questions of that type."

---"To me, the unsung heroes of New York are those guys who have the courage to lift manhole covers and actually go down below into the darkness and dirt to help keep this city functioning properly. Those municipal emlpoyees of the City who do that are so low-key that no one even knows their job title. And that's why I feel we should honor those guys with a special annual tribute to the manhole cover lifters throughout our entire city, or whatever they're called."

---"One of the questions that I need to ask Mayor Bloomberg is how many languagues does he speak fluently? I'm hoping he will cite at least three languages, so I can use that as ammunition when I'm trying to persuade my 10-year-old son Will to take his foreign language courses more seriously. I plan to smile sweetly at Will and say, 'So you see, son, if you turn trilingual you can also get elected Mayor of New York someday!'"

---"If I did volunteer work for a Travelers Aid society here in New York, what would prevent me from being at the mercy of con artists who falsely claim to be stranded here with no money?"

---"My 15-year-old son, Ted, recently commented to me that the Statue of Liberty is shocking to him because it presents women as having their clothes on all the time. Ted pointed out that it isn't natural for a woman to have her clothes on 24-hours-a-day, and never reveal herself in the nude at any time, Ted said. I told Ted that he's becoming so over-sexed at age 15 that he might as well apply for a job at 'Playboy' magazine. At 'Playboy,' he can get paid to ask an X-rated artist to draw sketches of the Statue of Liberty in the nude."