NEW YORK REVISITED: AN IMAGINARY EAVESDROPPER'S REPORT FROM MAY 2019

---"I wish I knew the term for the professional bakers here who specialize in cheesecakes. Are they referred to as Cheesecake Specialists? It probably says on their professional calling card, except I never seem to get one from a cheesecake specialist baker. You would think that there would be lots of demand for cheesecakes here, including at wedding parties; and it's odd that as savvy as I am, I don't know who the top-rated cheesecake baker is in this city that's world-famous for our delicious cheesecakes!"

---"Maybe what New York needs is a World Cheesecake Baking Contest here in Manhattan! I love the idea of cheesecake bakers flying into JFK International Airport from all over the world, including The Netherlands, Denmark, France, and Wisconsin, in order to prove in a bake-off here that they are the greatest cheesecake baker in the entire world!"

---"What I've always needed for my coffeetable inside my home is a fully-illustrated 'History of Cheesecake in New York'. I feel sure it would grab my invited guests' attention."

---"What gets me about cheesecake is that when a New Yorker senses he's having a heart attack, the first thing he's most likely to shout is, 'It must have been all the fattening cheesecake I ate here in order to prove that I HEART New York!'"

---"The rough part about living in this high-rise apartment is that I don't get enough sunshine through my window. The sunshine I need is blocked by other high-rise buildings that surround my complex. So the only botanical plants I can raise inside my apartment are plants that don't require much sunshine. I need to find a guidebook for raising indoor plants that thrive under sunlight-deprived conditions!"

---"I find it shocking and outrageous how many New Yorkers have admitted to me that they have occasional very bizarre criminal fantasies about throwing something through the window of their high-rise apartment and then having it strike an innocent pedestrian 50 floors below as he is preparing to cross the street. Those sinister fantasies even extend to their asking me whether I think their attorney could get them off the hook if that ever did happen. Their planned legal defense is that the object in question had slipped out of their hand as they were making a gesture near the window of their condo unit at a time when their window happened to be completely open. Leave it to New Yorkers to confess in advance to flagrant CI that they plan to later attempt to present as mere coincidental evidence when they are actually facing a judge and a jury here! They are hoping one of the jurors would vote against convicting, since that particular juror questioned whether the DA had proved guilt 'beyond a shadow of a doubt'."

---"I would define a conscientious New Yorker as someone who, if he ever at any time accidentally drops something out of his high-rise apartment's window at a time when the window is open, will immediately shout at the top of his lungs to the pedestrians 40 stories below:  '911! I ACCIDENTALLY DROPPED SOMETHING FROM MY WINDOW! LOOK UP TOWARD ME TO AVOID GETTING STRUCK BY IT!'"

---"As a New Yorker, I find that the famous courtroom term 'beyond a shadow of a doubt' always gives me the creeps. It's the word SHADOW in that phrase that absolutely makes me go hysterical! We have so many SHADY characters here whom I would never invite into my own home, and everywhere I go I'm facing the SHADOWS of these disreputable types who are hellbent on stalking me and spying on me! Living in New York is like being an unpaid, involuntary actor in an Alfred Hitchcock movie in which it is never clear whether I myself will be smiling, much less alive, at the end of that movie!"

---"One of my friends is planning to write a best-selling book about what it was like to be targeted for a Snuff Movie here in New York during a time period in which he himself was repeatedly writing to his state lawmaker and urging that legislator to sponsor a bill aimed at preventing snuff movies from ever happening anywhere in our entire state!"

---"I don't know why I've never asked this question, but was Alfred Hitchcock knighted by the Queen of England? If so, that means he became Sir Alfred at some point during his life. But I don't remember anyone referring to that horror-movies director as Sir Alfred. Maybe there's a need for an official British Government-sponsored webpage that lists each of the persons who were knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at any time during her tenure! I could then memorize that list in order to be completely sure whether Alfred Hitchcock was in fact knighted."

---"I would love to find out which of the labor unions here during the most recent 10-year period have had the lowest percentage of their officers convicted of a felony crime. The labor unions with the best record for obeying the law are the ones I want to make a point of praising at cocktail parties. But I never know which labor unions that would be, since most New Yorkers assume that all of the labor union bosses here  have ties to organized crime!"

---"I'm always astonished when New Yorkers who attend cocktail parties are able to remain standing throughout the entire party, when it's obvious that many of the ones attending would fail a sobriety test if NYPD did a raid on that cocktail party! I have always assumed that drunk people tend to reveal it through wobbliness in their legs. Isn't that correct?"