A November 2023 Imaginary Eavesdropper's Report from New York City

 ---"I love your empathy in donating $50,000 toward a special art exhibit honoring dozens of great local artists, some of them alive today, who were classified as Homeless for a multi-week period of their lives. The inspirational message to our city's homeless will be that if these other guys could overcome that type of setback and thrive artistically, you can too!"

---"I would like to write a sympathetic non-fiction book about gypsies who immigrated to New York and thrived here. But if I invited local gypsies to attend my book-signing event inside a local bookstore, all my mint-copy books would do a vanishing act if I ever take a 60-second break to use the restroom."

---"I wonder why the published novelists  don't put their middle names on the front cover of their books. It's almost like they're ashamed of their middle name. Agatha Christie was a prime example. Maybe she wanted to keep her total number of syllables on her front cover  to no more than five."

--"No one ever talks about their favorite import store. Maybe that's because any store here  must have dazzling  international scope in what it sells or it's a complete loser."

---"I try to make at least one new personal friend per month. I think everyone here is worried that if we don't add to our friends total on a year-round basis the turnout for our memorial service will be so laughably low that the headline on that event screams that even in a casket  we failed to get any respect!"

---" I know a lot  more about the tenant living directly above me than I would care to. The variety in the moaning sounds he and his 'Girlfriend of the Week' bedroom partners generate makes me feel like a writer for the 'National Enquirer'! I am  experiencing a voyeuristic thrill accompanied by dollar signs in my eyes! But the guy directly above me is not famous or rich, so my opportunity to shine as a highly paid  tabloid reporter is completely ruined for me."

---"Anytime an author living in Manhattan uses a pen name or pseudonym to identify himself on his books, I'm  100 percent sure he is terrified of stalkers. That's my insider's tip for the day. Writers here all suffer from what I call the Salman Rushdie complex."

---"I never could see the point of placing an olive on top of a martini. It's a waste of a perfectly good olive."

---"At what level  does my income have to be at to enable me to move to the East Side? I'm sure that half of the residents here are asking the same question. I look forward to the day when I can finally  tell all my  friends that my wonderful New Life began for me the day I fled from the West side to the East. 'I am a refugee, albeit with bucks',  I plan to tell all  my friends."

---"I must have the best long-term memory in this entire city when it comes to epithets and obscenities muttered near me that sound like they were directed at me. If someone ever talks that way on even  one occasion, I immediately identify them as a crime suspect and avoid interacting with them at any time in the present or future. And needless to say, I also remove them from my future party invitation lists, assuming I even know their name."

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