"My daughter is so obsessed with mathematics these days that when I comment to her that we live at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street, she immediately replies with '24'. She then explains that 'six times four is 24'. Everything to her is a math problem. I try to encourage her to think mathematically, but I don't want her to neglect other ways of looking at life here. Unfortunately, though, if I mention the Empire State Building to her, all she wants to know is how many feet high. The rest is of no interest to her. Maybe she'll grow up to be a statistician. That reminds me that I should do some research to find out what her monthly gross income will be as a statistician here. She has to have a gross income high enough to handle the astronomical apartment rents here. I always remind her of that, to keep her mindful of the realities of what her everyday life will be like when she graduates from elementary school."
---"I find it fascinating that Avenue of the Americas has a dual personality. On the one hand, it suggests a favorite candy bar of mine, when I'm thinking Sixth Avenue. On the other hand, it conjures up images of the Amazonian jungle in South America, when I'm thinking Avenue of the Americas. It is difficult to reconcile those two images. Maybe I should travel to South America with a bagful of Sixth Avenue candy bars. That would give me the perfect opportunity to get fat while being eternally terrified by Amazonian beasts."
"I find that I appreciate a mayor of New York the most about five years after he left office. It's a bit like savoring a fine wine: the bouquet is enhanced with time. These days, Mayor Bloomberg ranks retrospectively as one of my favorites."
--"New York is not about waiting to get discovered, it's about aggressively finding the ones who DO discover and reward new talent here, and then doing everything you can to ingratiate yourself upon those talent scouts. It doesn't matter how many times you have to invite them to lunch or breakfast or even dinner in order to prove your point, you keep doing it until they are so fatigued they offer you a job."
---"This is one city where I recommend that you never refer to yourself as being passive. Passive types don't last long here. It takes a very aggressive style to survive in Manhattan. Even your handshakes should be full of energy. But you don't want to incur a lawsuit from injuring them with your handshake. You might want to hire a professional handshake trainer who, for a fee, will teach you how to make the right POLITELY aggressive statement each time you shake hands here."
---"I don't recommend that you ever refer to a fellow New Yorker as having a 'Type A' personality. Your listener will immediately reply that he agrees with you about that individual being a disgusting a-hole. The letter 'a', here in New York, is nearly always seen as synonymous with the word 'a-hole'. This is one of the reasons why some school teachers here hesitate about teaching schoolchildren about the letter 'A' in the alphabet. Teachers here worry that the next word they'll hear from their entire class will be, 'like in the word 'a-hole'!'"
---"For a sociology project designed to glean insights about the mindsets of other New Yorkers, I began tape-recording what other residents here muttered about me whenever they were within 10 feet of me, including at my workplace. The primary vocabulary words they used were 'bastard', 'son-of-a-bitch', 'that f-u-c-k-e-r!', 'a-hole', 'butthole', 'moron', 'jerk', 'gross', 'Fascist', 'weirdo', 'narc', 'snitch', 'fool', 'racist', 'queer basher', 'serial killer', 'homo', 'closet case', 'possible pedophile', 'atheist', 'freak', 'freak of nature', 'someone I don't like', and 'very naive'. Now I have to do a sociological analysis about what that all tells me about New Yorkers of today."
---"There are days when I wish I could subscribe to a 'Dial a Professor' hotline service. I would pay $100 per month for that service, and it would give me the opportunity to make a five-minute oral report to a hotline-service professor about my most recent culture-shock experience I had here. I would then wait for the Professor Expert on the other end of the phone line to explain to me why what I was just subjected to against my wishes was not, in fact, grounds for any concern."
--"New York is not about waiting to get discovered, it's about aggressively finding the ones who DO discover and reward new talent here, and then doing everything you can to ingratiate yourself upon those talent scouts. It doesn't matter how many times you have to invite them to lunch or breakfast or even dinner in order to prove your point, you keep doing it until they are so fatigued they offer you a job."
---"This is one city where I recommend that you never refer to yourself as being passive. Passive types don't last long here. It takes a very aggressive style to survive in Manhattan. Even your handshakes should be full of energy. But you don't want to incur a lawsuit from injuring them with your handshake. You might want to hire a professional handshake trainer who, for a fee, will teach you how to make the right POLITELY aggressive statement each time you shake hands here."
---"I don't recommend that you ever refer to a fellow New Yorker as having a 'Type A' personality. Your listener will immediately reply that he agrees with you about that individual being a disgusting a-hole. The letter 'a', here in New York, is nearly always seen as synonymous with the word 'a-hole'. This is one of the reasons why some school teachers here hesitate about teaching schoolchildren about the letter 'A' in the alphabet. Teachers here worry that the next word they'll hear from their entire class will be, 'like in the word 'a-hole'!'"
---"For a sociology project designed to glean insights about the mindsets of other New Yorkers, I began tape-recording what other residents here muttered about me whenever they were within 10 feet of me, including at my workplace. The primary vocabulary words they used were 'bastard', 'son-of-a-bitch', 'that f-u-c-k-e-r!', 'a-hole', 'butthole', 'moron', 'jerk', 'gross', 'Fascist', 'weirdo', 'narc', 'snitch', 'fool', 'racist', 'queer basher', 'serial killer', 'homo', 'closet case', 'possible pedophile', 'atheist', 'freak', 'freak of nature', 'someone I don't like', and 'very naive'. Now I have to do a sociological analysis about what that all tells me about New Yorkers of today."
---"There are days when I wish I could subscribe to a 'Dial a Professor' hotline service. I would pay $100 per month for that service, and it would give me the opportunity to make a five-minute oral report to a hotline-service professor about my most recent culture-shock experience I had here. I would then wait for the Professor Expert on the other end of the phone line to explain to me why what I was just subjected to against my wishes was not, in fact, grounds for any concern."
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