Wit and Wisdom of New Yorkers, Part VIII

Had I continued to live in New York City, New York, ever since the mid-1980s, I feel sure that I would have overheard the following comments by New Yorkers speaking to each other at public places in Manhattan:



---"I'm very surprised that I've never heard about a New York City Dutch Heritage Day here as an annual cultural event where the Prime Minister and royalty from The Netherlands are invited to attend. It's the least we could do to show our appreciation to the Dutch people for having founded 'New Amsterdam' here centuries ago!"


---"So where in Manhattan do you find the leading outdoor public monument honoring our city's Dutch heritage? And where in Manhattan do you find the leading outdoor public monument here that honors our city's British heritage? I find it so very odd that we call ourselves 'New York' as if there were no 'York' that came before us! It often seems as if we lack a proper sense of historical appreciation in that way, don't you agree?"


---"Living in New York makes me much more aware of alley scenes in the movies. One of my favorite fantasies as a New Yorker is to compile a new movie that exclusively contains the finest alley scenes from the American cinema of the last 90-year-period. Wouldn't that be great fun, to watch all the bizarre things that happened in dimly-lit alleys in back of buildings in New York City?"


---"There should be a list of special commandments for New Yorkers that includes the commandment that 'Thou Shalt Refrain From Ever Entering an Alley in New York City'. To me, that's one of the top rules for survival here, if you want to achieve a full natural lifespan as a human being. To walk into an alley here is to invite instant annihilation at the hands of the criminal element."

---"You call yourself a savvy New Yorker, but you don't even know the 24-hour-a-day anonymous tip-line phone number to call and report that someone you directly observe here appears to have Mafia ties?"


---"Living in a city with as many skyscrapers as we have, our wedding cakes tend to be a lot taller than the ones you find in a city like Miami. We tend to mirror the man-made scenery here, even in our wedding cakes. The only drawback to our very, very tall wedding cakes in New York is when they collapse if a member of the bride's party actually attempts to slice the cake for guests. A lot of wedding guests look upon that collapsed cake as a bad omen about the future of the newlyweds' marriage."


---"As a home-school teacher here, I thought it would be a fun creative educational project for my 10-year-old son if he would develop a list of all public buildings in New York City that bear a Dutch name. My son's reply, though, was that he is not sure how to identify a Dutch name, so that limits his ability to ace that homework assignment I've given him. Maybe what I'll have to do is provide Tommy with a list of the 100 most common Dutch surnames, which should help him to handle that assignment."


----"She's so embarrassed by the neighborhood of New York she lives in that she always gets off the subway at the nearest subway stop in a neighborhood she is NOT embarrassed by, and then walks the rest of the way home. I told her that her pride borders on vanity, and it could be fatal to her if she's not careful. She has no assurance that all the men and male youths she encounters on her nightly walk to her home will all be honorable toward her."


---"If Horace Greeley's famous advice to New York gentlemen was to 'Go west, young man,' I don't understand why the population of New York City continued to rise during that period of our city's history. I thought Horace Greeley was so powerful  and influential that half of our city's younger men would have evacuated ship for the western half of this country."


---"When you ice skate outdoors here in New York, you try not to curse the person before you who damaged the ice and made it difficult for you to skate over that portion of the rink at Rockefeller Center.  That's an example of what I call nobility here in New York: not cursing a complete stranger under your breath, even when you feel like cursing them."


---"One of the signs that law-enforcement isn't emphasized enough here in New York is that there's no public statue here that honors the finest prosecuting attorney in New York City's history. In fact, if you surveyed New Yorkers and asked them to cite the very finest prosecuting attorney here of the last 50-year period, they would be completely stumped by the question."


---"I thought it would be fun to celebrate New York City's birthday by purchasing a Dutch cake of some type from a local bakery. I find it fascinating that we used to be called New Amsterdam. But I don't even know the name of a first-rate Dutch bakery here, so I'm stumped. What would you suggest? Should I turn to the yellow pages and look under 'Bakeries, comma Dutch?'"


---"I'm never sentimental about the parties I attend here in Manhattan. I consider my party experience a complete failure for me unless I'm handed at least five professional calling cards by the other party guests at the event. The more professional contacts, the better--that's my leading slogan as a business person here in New York."


---"I often debate whether to include my middle name on my professional calling card. If I give a first-time acquaintance one of my calling cards at a cocktail party here, what if I was so drunk at the party that I had handed my professional card to the wrong type of guy? In a worst-case scenario, withholding from him my middle name might be the best personal-safety protection I could possibly have for myself."


---"To me, there are really only two types of New Yorkers: Those who DO have criminal-intent toward others, and those who don't. On any given day here in Manhattan, the New Yorkers who don't have 'C.I.' toward others are outnumbered 10 to 1."


---"I find it ironic that Albert Einstein was associated with the Manhattan Project featuring development of an atomic bomb during World War II that was dropped on a foreign country we were at war with.  In my own life, I often feel as if living in Manhattan is a bit like getting nuked on a daily and year-round basis. It's a wonder I'm still alive in order to talk about it with the news media. But I have no assurance that '60 Minutes'  will ever agree to interview me about my tragic case as a victim of daily and continuous felony-crimes here. I believe that Mike Wallace has retired by now, and he was the only guy I knew at '60 Minutes'."

----"As a New Yorker with a heart condition, I should probably carry an oxygen mask with me whenever I ride the elevator to my 30th floor office job here in Manhattan. Holding a job on the 30th floor of a skyscraper here is a bit like living in the mountains of eastern Colorado. The oxygen is so much thinner up in those mountains, and that can lead to heart attacks if you're not careful. My theory is that anyone working on the 30th floor or higher has the same problem: the air is much thinner up there, at that altitude. Maybe I should listen to John Denver music during my coffee breaks, in order to make the most of my Rocky Mountain High workday experience here in Manhattan!"


----"As a heart patient here in New York, I don't believe that my doctor would agree to let me work in an office job situated on the top floor of a skyscraper. It would take the New York City EMS crew too long to reach me by elevator, and by then my heart would have stopped beating. My only hope would be if there's a special mini-helicopter that could fly directly from the Emergency Room of the hospital into the top-floor area where my office cubicle is situated. That would bypass their having to take the elevator up to my top-floor office job. I think every New Yorker in their mind rehearses scenarios in which they suddenly get a heart attack while working on the top floor of a skyscraper. If you're going to have a heart attack, it probably makes sense to work in a first-floor office job. Besides, what if the New York City EMS crew gets on an elevator to try to reach the 30th floor and rescue me, only to find that the elevator stops working in between floors. That would be a complete wipe-out scenario for me!"


----"I know of lots of New Yorkers who are so fond of working and living 30 floors above the ground or higher that they insist that they must do everything up in the clouds, if at all possible. They want to get married on the 30th floor of a church building, which is very hard to find. When they do shopping, they prefer to do it 30 floors or higher in the air. And when they die, they want their body to be buried somewhere on the 30th or 40th floor of some special skyscraper cemetery that matches their cosmopolitan self-image."


---"I think one of the reasons why we New Yorkers identify with birds so much is that we spend so much of our lives up there in the clouds. Think about it. We live on the 30th floor of an apartment building, we work on the 50th floor of a skyscraper, we take frequent commuter plane flights up in the clouds to Philadelphia as part of our career for a bi-state corporation. The only thing I can't decide is which member of the avian species, as I like to call them, is the most like myself. Maybe I should visit the Bronx Zoo this weekend and attempt to focus on each of the birds there, in order to decide which bird on display most reminds me of myself as a New Yorker."


---"I can't decide whether I admire or pity the New Yorkers who flee to Florida for their retirement years. They probably think Florida will be very peaceful, a Garden of Eden type of place, with no one honking at them when they drive on the roadways down there.  Then they suddenly learn that the other motorists in Florida are almost as aggressive as the motorists in New York are.  Plus, they find that if they want to invite a close friend of theirs out for coffee, the friend is up there in Manhattan. So they would have to make a long-distance phone call to their dear friend in New York and then offer to pay for her $1,000 in travel expenses she'll incur in flying from New York to Fort Lauderdale for that coffee-shop outing. That's a very expensive cup of coffee, if you ask me!"

---"The biggest mistake you're making when you attend art exhibits here in New York is that you're spending 60 or fewer seconds on each featured artwork that you are studying. To do justice to each of the artworks on display, you should allow yourself at least five minutes to totally immerse yourself in that artwork from every conceivable vantage point. Some art patrons like to squint their eyes as they gaze at an artwork, as one way to get a better idea of which images in that artwork are the most dominant from a distance. Other people like to gaze at the artwork from each and every angle, in order to view it from the far-left side, the far-right side, and then from standing directly in front of the artwork."


---"I'm from South Florida, and I need to find out as soon as possible the section of Central Park where shuffleboard is being played. Is that in the northwest quadrant of Central Park, the southwest quadrant of Central Park, the southeast quadrant, or the northeast quadrant? I'm assuming you guys use a grid system for guiding visitors at Central Park. Back in Florida, as you know, we use the grid system quite a bit for identifying streets, to make things as simple as possible for our tourists and new residents. So tell me, which quadrant of Central Park is the right quadrant for what I want to do this morning? Also, where do I find the signs giving me directions on how to find that quadrant of Central Park?"


---"I sometimes wish that Central Park were shaped like a rectangle, rather than a square. I've always been intrigued by rectangles, ever  since I was a little kid studying geometry in Public School Number 136 here in New York City."


---"It would probably be more strategic if you called the Mayor's Chief of Staff and asked that individual to meet you for lunch. It would not be good form to directly invite the Mayor to lunch. You need to first invite his Chief of Staff to lunch. Then if the Chief of Staff thinks you might be good PR for the Mayor, the Mayor's appointments secretary might contact you on her own initiative and invite you to meet Mayor Bloomberg himself for lunch."


----"With all the cosmetics being sold and promoted here in New York, I find it surprising that our mayor hasn't expressed concern about the increased risk of skin cancer from over-use of cosmetics here. To me, it would make a perfect headline in the 'New York Post' if Mayor Bloomberg were to declare that he wants to 'Save New Yorkers' Skin' as his next health crusade. Can you imagine what a field day the headline writers for the 'New York Post' would have, when they turn that into a headline? It might go something like: 'Bloomberg to New Yorkers: "I'm Here to Save Your Skin!"'"


---"I don't blame the tabloids here for pursuing photographs of Mayor Bloomberg caught eating junk food in the middle of his workday. Mayor Bloomberg has portrayed himself as being the 'Healthy-Living Mayor', so that invites the news media of New York to find factual evidence linking him to the very same junk-food addictions that everyone else in New York suffers from!"


---"To me, it's very fair to evaluate Mayor Bloomberg's tenure as Mayor by asking yourself, 'Has the natural longevity or lifespan of municipal employees in New York increased significantly during the period ever since Mr. Bloomberg was first inaugurated as our city's mayor?' If the answer to that question is 'no,' then it's fair to say that Mayor Bloomberg may be a quack."


---"I would definitely recommend that you do some research to identify the most healthy-foods restaurant in New York City before you invite the mayor out to lunch. It would be a major insult to Mayor Bloomberg, after all he has done to promote healthy living here, if you asked him to meet you for lunch at a Pizza Hut  restaurant."


---"I admire what Gloria Steinem says about the aging process being a source of fascination for her as she grows older. What I don't find so fascinating to look at on my own face, though, are all the signs of unnatural scars and wounds inflicted on my body by members of the criminal element here! The gangsters of New York are trying to punish me for being virtuous, and they do that by frequently inflicting on me the types of unsightly scars and wounds that identify me as a crime victim, no matter where I go. This isn't a natural aging process---this is slow-motion murder I'm being victimized by here in New York! What makes it doubly degrading is that when other New Yorkers look at the unsightly scars on my body, they often comment that I must have done something to provoke the gangsters, or otherwise the gangsters would have all left me alone!"


---"You call yourself a true and authentic New Yorker, but you can't tell me the architectural style of our City Hall! I find that very disturbing, that you can't immediately tell me what our City Hall's architectural style is!"

---"One of the reasons I fear snowstorms in New York City is that I know for a fact that the snow here hides dead bodies. Call me morbid, if you like, but everywhere I go in New York during a snowstorm, I'm thinking to myself, 'What if there's a dead body under that snowdrift that NYPD hasn't found yet?' I think all New Yorkers look upon snowstorms here as a man-made conspiracy by the criminal element to hide their victims' dead bodies! The murderers are stalling for time. They are hoping the frozen bodies will somehow lose their DNA when NYPD finally gets around to doing forensic exams on those murder victims! The criminal element here is hoping NYPD will conclude that no homicide occurred, since it was just another case of a foolhardy New Yorker who didn't wear enough clothing on a frigid day, so they simply froze to death during a snowstorm! Our city's thugs celebrate with glee whenever NYPD rules out homicide for the most recent dead body found under a foot of snow.  Can you imagine how many pizzas those gangsters devour in their smirking tribute to the latest false findings by NYPD?"


---"There should be a law requiring that all of the elevators here in New York must be high-speed elevators.  If a New York City EMS crew is trying to get to a heart-attack victim who's on the top floor of an office building or apartment complex, the high-speed elevator could save that person's life. Every second counts when it comes to rescuing a heart-attack victim here in New York!"

---"I need to find out whether City Hall here features a special helicopter landing strip on top of that building where Mayor Bloomberg can fly directly back to City Hall after he's gone on a fact-finding trip in an outlying borough of New York. To me, that's the least we can offer our Mayor, since his job obviously demands lots of urgent fact-finding trips to outlying boroughs of New York City."


----"George is a big pessimist. His favorite hobby is pursuing research on occasions when one or more boroughs of New York City were declared a Natural Disaster Area. Those occasions prove that New York City is very vulnerable to natural disasters, George says. I hate the way George smiles when he announces that finding of his about New York City!"


----"There are days when I miss Phyllis Diller, that comedian whose hairstyle should have been declared a human-made disaster area. She always made me feel proud that my own hairstyles at their worst were always a lot better than hers were. She was the walking antonym of the word 'fashionable'. Her unfashionableness always made me feel chic, elegant, trendy, and ever-so-coveted."

----"I had one of the biggest insults of my entire life as a party hostess last weekend when one of my party guests walks up to an original masterpiece painting of mine in my living room and begins to fondle the painting with her fingers! I asked her what she was doing, so she says: 'I couldn't tell if this was an original or a replica, so I decided to find out using the finger method!'"


---"Mayor Bloomberg saves our city's taxpayers a lot of money, since he's a Surgeon General and a Mayor all rolled into one, and he doesn't charge the City extra for his role as our very own municipal Surgeon General.  I should check to find out if he ever attended medical school, with all the good advice he's giving everyone about how to live longer."


---"All of the vases on display in my living room are purely ornamental. I wouldn't ever think of actually putting a bouquet of flowers in any of my vases! That would turn my vases into something practical, and I'm very opposed to that!"


---"I'm embarrassed by your praise for my collection of books in my home. I have read only 1 percent of the books I keep on display. I guess that makes me one percent smarter than before I bought these books."


----"The type size of 'The New Yorker' magazine is so tiny that I bet even the staff members who work there have to use a magnifying glass to read their own publication!"

---"Can you imagine what it's like to be a delegate in The United Nations here, yourself representing a foreign country in the General Assembly, only to find when you entered the United Nations Cafeteria as a lunchtime customer that NONE of the featured side dishes or entrees were inspired by the native cuisine of the foreign country you represent? It would feel like a kick in the teeth, if you ask me!"


---"Personally, I feel that the United Nations Cafeteria situated at the UN headquaters complex here in New York should sponsor an 'Icelandic Day' one day of every year. On that one day, at least 10 of the side dishes or entrees on display in the UN Cafeteria would be inspired by the native cuisine of Iceland."


---"It's always fascinating to observe the Italian delegation in the General Assembly at The United Nations complex here in New York. Half of the members of the Italian delegation appear to be very southern and swarthy in complexion. The other half of the Italian delegation are fair-haired and could easily pass for Austrian based on their physical appearance and demeanor. I don't know of any country here where the delegates identify themselves in terms of a north or south polarity as dramatically as Italy does."



---"I'm in the midst of my debut as a soon-to-be published poet here, and I thought I'd start out with a poem featuring 'New York' at the end of my first line, followed by the word 'fork' in the next line or two.  I'm assuming that most of my readers will agree that 'New York' rhymes with 'fork'.  I know there are many here who pronounce our city's name as 'New Yawk', instead of 'New York'. But I can't think of anything poetic that rhymes well with 'Yawk'. So tell me, where in New York City do you see a forklike image that's poetic? If I'm going to devote an entire line of my poem to a fork image, I need to come up with something profound and sublime. That's my specialty, now that  I'm a poet here."

----"I keep a list of all of the formerly famous persons who still live in New York, and then I make a point of inviting each of them to have lunch with me in a local restaurant. My thinking is that these formerly famous New Yorkers might offer me valuable professional contacts if I give them the impression that I'm talented and I take them seriously despite their current status as 'has-beens'. I need all the letters of recommendation I can get, and many of these former celebrities could still open doors for me here if they praise me enough as professional references for me. I'm not worried about any of them feeling used by me. I'll pay for their meal,  and I'll shower them with praise regardless of whether they agree to write a signed letter of recommendation for me or not. There won't be any quid pro quo, so I'm sure they won't complain."


---"Maybe there's a need for a Formerly Famous New Yorkers Association. It seems to me that one of every 10 New Yorkers fits that description these days, and they might enjoy holding annual meetings to discuss and celebrate what it's like to be formerly famous here. Maybe they could hold their annual banquet at the least-publicized and most obscure first-rate restaurant in all of Manhattan. Otherwise, we could meet in a once-great restaurant that is no longer great or famous, but is at least good in quality. Either way might match the theme of that new civic group."


---"I'd love to host a party in honor of New York City's finest artists and actors and entertainers and professional athletes. The only thing I'm worried about is that some of them might object to the drug-sniffing dog I plan to hire to greet each of my invited party guests at the front door of my Manhattan condominium. If a guest fails the drug-sniffing test, he will be automatically denied entrance into my party. To show that I still care about him as a human being, I'll hand him a list of recommended drug-treatment programs and urge him to register with any of those treatment programs ASAP if he wants to qualify to attend next year's annual party in my condo unit."

--"My idea of a Heaven on Earth experience is owning my own condo unit outright here in Manhattan. I can't imagine anything more blissful than to experience life without a monthly herculean struggle just to make rent."


---"I take pride in having a guest bedroom reserved for friends of mine from out of town that's larger than the bedroom I myself sleep in. All of the friends of mine who visit me in my condo unit here are impressed that I give them the bigger bedroom to stay in when they're here. 'So this is 'New York-style Hospitality!', they'll say with an astonished look on their face. Then they will add that if they were in my shoes, they would offer the SMALLER bedroom to the guest from out-of-town. So what I'm doing is proof that New Yorkers are actually more generous than most Americans are. How unfair the stereotypes about stingy New Yorkers are, they will then hasten to add."


---"When I host friends of mine from out of town, they always ask me if I will take them to the top of the Empire State Building . I used to always say 'sure' to that, but lately I've gotten more assertive. I will flat-out ask my friends why they are so hellbent on traveling to the top of the Empire State Building during their visit? I have been to the top of the Empire State Bulding as a tour guide for friends of mine at least 20 times in the last three years.  I feel dizzy whenever I think about it. I've even had recurrent nightmares during my sleep in which I'm up there attempting to point my finger toward a major tourist attraction down below, only to lose my balance and fall off the edge of the building. My nightmares always feature me shouting at the top of my lungs to throw me a parachute, for God's sake, if you want me to show you more of New York!"


 ---"My friend Carol has had this ridiculous fantasy about wanting to get married to her fiance in Central Park. I told her the idea sounds nice, but the minute they actually turn that into a reality, there will be repeated shouts and cries of 'I've just been mugged!' by invited guests throughout that entire outdoor ceremony. That would be a very traumatic start to a new marriage, if you ask me."


---"I never describe weather in New York City as 'muggy', since I have a mental block against that word. I think my mental block began for me the day five years ago when my wallet containing the winning ticket in the $6 million New York State lottery suddenly got grabbed and stolen from me by a mugger during a visit of mine in Central Park. I would like to eliminate muggy days from my life. I'm also allergic to the term 'coffee mug.' To me, there is no such thing as a coffee mug. I drink from a coffee CUP, but I NEVER drink from a COFFEE MUG! I feel a lot better for having banished the term 'coffee mug' from my everyday vocabulary."


---"I would welcome a factual documentary film explaining to me why muggers are the way they are. I have never understood the social psychology behind muggery here in New York. Maybe I could become more empathetic toward muggers here if I watched a documentary film explaining to me why they are the way they are. It may well be that the tendency toward muggery is a genetically inherited trait. That's one theory of mine, at least, whenever I am trying very hard to avoid staring with hatred at the muggers of New York City! There are so many muggers here that I sometimes sense there's a 'New York Muggers Pride Association' that sponsors regular meetings in Central Park. At those monthly meeting, ideas on how to mug innocent people more successfully are exchanged among the various members of that civic group."

---"Do you know of any factual-information website that exclusively profiles each and every building in New York City that is 10 stories tall or taller?  Tall buidings are an obsession of mine, so I'd love to browse that type of website on a year-round basis. In fact, I'd welcome the opportunty to enroll in a continuing education class at City University of New York that's eentitled, 'History of Skyscrapers in New York City.'"


---"So tell me, which city in the world has more total skyscrapers than New York City has? I had always thought we were number one in the world in that category, but recently someone mentioned to me that maybe Tokyo, Japan, has more total skyscraper buildings than we do. You have to think that the Japanese must be obsessed with trying to outdo us in that category!"


---"If there were an International Skyscraper Cities Association, I would gladly represent New York City at that group's annnual convention. Come to think of it, I guess I'd have to be appointed by Mayor Bloomberg before I could  officially represent our city at the annual meeting of that group. Maybe if I could convince Mayor Bloomberg that I'm an expert on skyscrapers, he would then hold a press conference to announce that I had been selected for that  honor.  So the question is, how to I convince our mayor that I'm an expert on  our city's skyscrapers, when I haven't taught a college course on that subject at CUNY and I can't claim to have written a dissertation on the subject of skyscrapers. Maybe I could bribe the mayor into appointing me as our city's official representative at a Skyscraper Cities convention?"


---"If you could select any animal on display at the Bronx Zoo to take home with you as your personal pet, which animal would you choose?"


----"To me, the New Yorkers who  rely on mass transportation and never drive a car should carry a Mass Transit Passenger photo-identification card. Personally, I feel that mass-transit passengers in our state should be charged a lower fee for getting an ID card of that type than the New Yorkers who get a driver's licsense. The ones who never drive a car are doing our entire state a favor by helping to protect the ozone layer."


----"You ask me when was the last time I was RAPED in New York City. A better question, it seems to me, would have been: 'When was the last time you WEREN'T raped in New York City?' The answer to that second question is easy for me. September 10, 2011. It felt great that morning to wake up on my bed inside my bolt-locked one-bedroom apartment unit and immediately sense that no one had molested me during my sleep. This year, I wanted to celebrate my first anniversary of that wonderful morning, but I  lost my appetite for celebrating when I woke up on my bed on September 10, 2012, and immediately sensesd that I had been molested again during my sleep inside my bolt-locked apartment unit in Manhattan!"

Wit and Wisdom of New Yorkers, Part VII

Overheard in New York City, New York, had I been there at the time:

---"I try to schedule one Great Cultural Event per month into my appointments notebook. I call them GCE's, for short, it's like a special abbreviation code that everyone in our household uses. If it weren't for GCE's here in Manhattan, what would be the point of living in The City? I might as well be living in Buffalo, for God's sake. That reminds me that I've got to find a fully-up-to-date guidebook to great cultural events here where the admission charge is $20 or less. I can't afford Off-Off-Broadway productions, so I'm hoping for a new Off-Off-Off Broadway that slashes the admission charge on what I would have paid to see an Off-Off Broadway play."

---"My teenage son and I had a big debate about whether it qualifies as a cultural event for our family if we attend a New York Islanders hockey game. Doug says it does qualify, but I say no. Hockey, to be, is the antonym of the word 'culture'. I hate it when I see the hockey players fight in a very mean way in the middle of a game. It gives Doug dangerous ideas on how to resolve conflicts with his schoolmates. Whenever Doug attends a hockey game with me that features a nasty fight on the ice, Doug leaves the hockey arena at the end of the game with his fists pumped and this glazed look on his face. I find that very worrisome, since Doug could turn into a bully at school if he watches too many hockey games."

--"My teenage son Peter has got such a one-track mind that when I asked him if he wanted to attend an Off-Off Broadway performance with me, he replied that he wouldn't want to be sitting next to me while watching the actors and actresses strip naked on stage. I had to explain to Peter that it's not a 'Take It All Off' Broadway, but an 'Off-Off Broadway,' which is quite different. Peter didn't even listen to me, though, and emphasized that he does not want to attend anything featuring nudity while sitting next to his mother. Even watching semi-nudity on the stage while sitting next to his mother would make Peter very uncomfortable, he said."

---"I still don't know what to tell my teenage son Paul when we attend New York Islanders games and he points to a hockey player with missing teeth. 'Mom,' he says, 'that guy has lost some of his teeth and he's obviously rich and successful! Maybe if I lose a tooth myself, that could be a sign that I'll turn into a millionaire soon!'" That is what Paul likes to claim, anyway, and I still don't have a good response on that. Maybe I should call my dentist and ask him what I should say the next time Paul praises muissing teeth as a sign of wealth and fame."

---"I can never persuade my female psychotherapist friend to accompany me on a trip to Coney Island. Paula claims that Coney Island is a very traumatically Freudian experience for her, since the elongated hot dogs being served on Coney Island are far too phallic and too unattractively shaped for her tastes. In fact, I don't know of anyplace I ever suggest to Paula for a joint outing that doesn't trigger the same type of objection from her."

---"I admire my son Eric's creative ambition. Just yesterday, he told me he plans to make a deal with Donald Trump in which my son will submit architectural design plans for an inverted skyscraper that extends 20 floors into the ground here in Manhattan. My son insists that it would save lots of energy if skyscrapers of New York were built underground. So I told Eric that the people working in that underground skyscraper might get very depressed from not seeing enough sunlight during their workdays. They might even go crazy at their underground skyscraper office cubicle, and that could lead to a shooting spree by a deranged employee who shouts at the top of his lungs that he is NOT a mole, and he refuses to live like a mole anymore!"

---"My son Sam is so vindictive that he is keeping an enemies list in his personal computer that exclusively cites the names of each professional athlete and college athlete who ever at any time reportedly injured a favorite football player of Sam's. When I then asked Sam if that means he plans to pursue research to find out which professional or college football players are blameworthy for the trick knee of Joe Namath, the former New York Jets quarterback, Sam thanked me for the idea. I had assumed he could tell I was being facetious. But Sam took my idea to heart, and he rushed to his computer to add the name of Joe Namath to my son's all-time favorite players who did not deserve to have been injured by an opposing player, in Sam's view."

---"Ever since my boss showed me a toy gadget of his at the workplace that takes a snapshot of me and then gives me a projected image of myself 40 years from now, I have noticed lots of new lines on my forehead and around my eyes and lots of pain all over my body that I never had before. I even suspect that my boss has secretly hired some sly Mafia thug to accelerate my aging process in order to demoralize me and get me to resign from my job. I've also considered the theory that my boss plans to fire me for failing to report to him immediately that I've developed an unsightly limp to my gait at the workplace in the last few weeks. It's gotten to be so bad that when I wake up on my orthopedic bed in the morning, I always feel much worse than before I went to bed! It's making a mockery of the money I spent two years ago for a Swedish Tempurpedic-style massage every night during my sleep!"

---"My boss at my 42nd Street office job loves to tell me every day that he used to work for the Mafia in New Jersey, and that during that prior time period his best friend was a Mafia hit man. I sometimes wonder whether my boss is trying to intimidate me."

---"I don't know of anyone here in New York who doesn't have a favorite Mafia story to tell that's drawn from our everyday life. Every New Yorker takes pride in having had at least one brush with death that featured a Mafia thug. The tourists who visit New York thrill to that type of story. I think they especially like the fact that 20 years ago I was in the middle of praising an Italian-restaurant chef for his delicious ravioli when I suddenly heard the sound of gunshots 20 feet from my dining table. Ever since then, I've associated ravioli with the sound of gunshots!"

---"As a New Yorker, I would like to subscribe to an online data-base service that enables me to simply type in the name of new acquaintance to immediately learn whether he has any ties to organized crime. I can handle New Yorkers with ties to disorganized crime. They're no threat to me. It's the organized crime types that scare the daylights out of me!"

---"Personally, one of my own primary complaints against the Mafia here in New York is that they are so lacking in wit. Never once have I ever heard of any quotable famous last words from a Mafia thug here after he got shot by a Mafia hitman from a rival gang. How's that for proof that the caliber of the Italian people has sharply declined in the period since the Roman Empire days? I will always cherish Caesar's famous last words, the 'Et Tu Brute?' line that may have been the finest-ever famous last words to have ever been spoken by an Italian man. Here in 21st Century New York, you will never find any mobster half as clever with the language as Julius Caesar obviously was."

---"New Jersey has gotten so popular on television these days that may be should host an annual 'Jersey Chic' cultural festival here in New York. It would be interesting to find out what the turnout would be for a festival with that theme here in the Big Apple. Maybe if you surveyed the people attending the festival, they'd all admit they were either born in Jersey and were curious for that reason, or they currently live in New Jersey and wanted to find out why New Yorkers don't agree with their own very emphatic view that Jersey is a complete hellhole."

----"To me, the first thing that pops into my head when I hear anyone say 'New Jersey' is an f-word. Not the standard obscene f-word, but the f-word that's spelled f-r-a-u-d. New Jersey, to me, is a complete hoax. They claim to be one beautiful garden there, but that's an outrageous lie. Their governor should get indicted for deceptive advertising on behalf of their state. It's doubly galling when you ask youself who's the most famous horticulturalist or gardener you ever heard of from New Jersey. If Jersey takes so much pride in its gardens, why is it that I have never once heard about any famous horticulturalist or any famous gardener from the Garden State? If they have a garden going on down there, it's obviously very second-rate. And it wouldn't surprise me if they are growing marijuana in their garden down there, as many potheads from New Jersey as I have run into here in New York!"

---"One of my favorite jokes about New Jersey is that all the candidates for governor there should be asked if they have certification as a Master Gardener. And if not, why in the world do they claim to be capable of taking care of the 'Garden State' in the official role as Governor?"

---"My 8-year-old son has a way of stumping me when I least expect it. Here I was dining with him last Saturday inside Four Seasons restaurant, and I happened to mention Staten Island to my son in passing. So my son says, 'Who was Staten?', and all I could think of was some candidate for President decades ago with a name a bit like that, but I'm not completely sure. In fact, I don't remember his first name. Possibly his first name was Harold. I believe he was a third-party candidate, which doomed his campaign from the start. He didn't get elected, anyway. What I need is a special website for parents with an online address such as stumped-by-my-child-again-and-need-fast-answers.com."

---"My 10-year-old son, Teddy, somehow got this wild idea that our entire family could go island hopping for a three-day weekend on the Canary Islands. Teddy claims that it would work out great for a three-day weekend, since we wouldn't have to fly all the way from Kennedy Airport to Europe for that outing, he says. That would save our entire family lots of time and money, Teddy points out. So when I asked Teddy exactly what he expects us to do on the Canary Islands for that three-day weekend, he said he assumes we'll all be bird-watching there, since there must be a lot of wild canaries on those islands that would keep us busy using our binoculars. I told Teddy that I'd make him a counter-offer. How about if I bought him a canary of his very own, so Teddy could spend all of his leisuretime watching his pet canary in its cage. That would be a lot cheaper than taking a plane flight to the Canary Islands. Besides, I don't even know what language the people of the Canary Islands speak. If the natives there speak pigeon English, I don't know how to speak that dialect. I didn't attend Columbia University as preparation for speaking pigeon English with anyone."

---"I wish someone would invent a new type of long underwear that doesn't make you feel hot and miserable when you wear it indoors during the wintertime. That's what I would dread the most about visiting Montreal this month. I would have to wear long underwear everywhere I go in Montreal, and the minute I enter a building there I'd feel like I was being blasted by a blazing-hot furnace. To me, long underwear should insulate you from the cold without making you feel as if you were being tortured and abused by your own undergarments. If I could find a lighter and more flexible long underwear that wouldn't cramp my style inside public buildings in Montreal, I would feel a lot better about visiting Quebec this Holiday Season. I could also smile a lot more often at the Canadians if I had a more comfortable long-underwear to wear in Quebec. We are all eating a lot more food products from Canada these days, so it makes good sense to smile at them."

---"Wouldn't it be fun if our civic group would contact the Duke of York in England and ask him to please bring his youngest child with him on his next trip to New York City, so our civic group could honor his son as the New Duke of York, or the Duke of New York for short. That would be the first-ever Duke of New York I've ever met, so we could get lots of photos of that historic occasion for our civic group."

---"Oh, I never read the 'New York Times' on the subway for the sake of actually reading the 'Times'. I'm reading the 'New York Times' on the subway because I want to increase my chances of being discovered by another passenger as someone they might want to invite to have tea and conversation with them at a local coffeehouse. I don't have enough tea and conversation partners here in New York. Reading the 'Times' on the subway is one strategy I use for conveying my geniality as a prospective coffeehouse conversation partner."

---"One of my favorite opening lines when I ride the subways here is to ask the passenger sitting next to me if they have a favorite columnist from the newspaper they are holding in their hands? If they reply with a 'yes', I ask them if they have ever thought of inviting that columnist to meet them for lunch at a local restaurant? I like that opening line because it flatters the person I'm talking to. It implies that they are a V.I.P., and that all the newspaper columnists of New York would gladly meet them for lunch and conversation."

---"You're always telling me about the most famous people you have met here in New York. So tell me, who's the most obscure and unnoticed and non-famous person you have ever met here? I think I'd like to meet that person. I find it fascinating that they have somehow found a way to lead a very low-key and quietly unassuming lifestyle in a city where loud egomaniacs in quest of fame are all too prevalent."

---"Personally, I feel we should have an 'Honorable New Yorker of the Year Award' that offers a $100,000 prize to the New York City resident who in the most recent 12-month period distinguished themselves the most admirably in their capacity as a conscientious law-abiding person of very fine integrity and honor and creative idealism. I don't read enough about New Yorkers fitting that description, since they tend to go ignored by the news media here."

---"As a parent here, I would love to see a child-friendly public mini-statue honoring George Washington at Washington Square here. It would be the type of statue that a child could stand beside for a photograph profiling that child as a future leader of this entire country. George Washington will always be a favorite president among American schoolchildren. If they can see themselves as being in the same ballpark with George Washington, such as if they are photographed at Washington Square putting their arm around Washington's mini-statue, that could be a huge turning point for them at age 8 or 10."

---"I'm new to New York, and I don't understand the whole concept behind the Goddess of Liberty. I've studied ancient Greek and Roman and Egyptian and Norse religions, and I never read anything about a 'Goddess of Liberty' in any of those ancient religions. In which theology, if any, is there a Goddess of Liberty, and why is it that I've never heard of that religion before?"

----"Personally, I've always wondered how old the French lady was when she posed for the Goddess of Liberty statue that was sculpted by a Frenchman in the 19th Century. Was she in her 30s, 40s, or 50s? There's something very maternal about her that suggests she was in her 30s or 40s. But I may be mistaken."

---"It is not a good idea to crash a party that's being hosted by a foreign embassy here in New York. If you crash a party of that type, they might get you arrested and flown back to their foreign country in order to charge you there with being a 'spy' seeking to steal top-secret information from their country."

---"I've always wondered what the hors d'oeuvres are like at the Albanian Embassy parties. I've never dined in an Albanian restaurant before, so I plan to call the Albanian Embassy to ask if it accepts members of the general public as guests at their Embassy parties. That way, I can add to my 'cuisines of the world' diary my personal reaction to Albanianian cuisine. I plan to use the term 'underrated'in my diary about Albanian foods----unless, of course, I vomit after eating snacks at that party. In that unlikely scenario, I plan to use the term 'justifiably obscure' in my foods of the world diary to describe Albanian cuisine."

---"I'm not a bigness fanatic, but I need to know where in New York I can find the largest homemade pretzels. My cousin is visiting me from Toledo, and he has told me that he's determined to eat the biggest pretzel in all of New York. He wants to get photographed eating that giant pretzel, so that he can then E-mail that photograph to all his relatives back in Ohio."

---"I found it a bit demoralizing to greet my cousin from Georgia here in New York, only to have her immediately ask me which amusement park in New York City do I recommend for her family during their visit? I told her that I am not aware of any amusement park here, since all of New York City is very, very serious and very opposed to having fun."

---"I'm a newcomer to New York, so I need to know where the public indoor garden is hidden inside Madison Square Garden. I don't recall having ever seen any indoor garden or atrium featured on television at that indoor stadium."

--"I think I've figured it out. Madison Square Garden was obviously built at a site that previously was known as Madison Square. The word 'garden' was then tacked onto the name, in order to attract as many tourists as possible."

---"I personally feel that there should be a second Goddess of Liberty statue situated at the city limits of New York City that greets anyone moving to New York City by motor-vehicle or train. I also feel that there should be a third Goddess of Liberty statue greeting everyone who lands at Kennedy Airport by plane. The current system is biased in favor of those arriving here by ship, and arbitrarily denies a full and up-close Goddess of Liberty greeting to anyone who travels to New York by motor vehicle or train or plane. That, to me, smacks of inhospitality toward those three categories of newcomers to New York."

---"I need to find out whether the stock market went down or up on the day when I was born here. It means a lot to me to know that my very first day as a New Yorker was a very good day for Wall Street. As a stock market broker, I like to think that it was my destiny from day one to pursue a lucrative career as a broker."

---"I'd love to find out just how tall the Goddess of Liberty is. She has to be the tallest woman in the entire world, unless you can cite a lady somewhere on this planet who's taller. These days, I'm thinking that the Goddess of Liberty would make a fine pro basketball player, since it would be so easy for her to get the ball into the hoops. But come to think of it, she'd have to throw the basketball down in order to put it into the hoops. That might be a bit tricky for her."

---"You'd think that New York City would be a haven for tall women, since the Goddess of Liberty is so tall that she promotes that theme to everyone here. Our beloved Goddess of Liberty is the patron saint to all of New York's tall single women, I would say. But I've heard so many of the tall women here complain that their height makes it hard for them to land a date. So not every bachelor here is thinking 'tall' when they're searching for a female dating partner. My reply to that is that the tall women should spend more time attending New York Knicks pro basketball games. The single men who attend those games tend to be biased in favor of height, so it gives tall single ladies here a good well-lit site for landing a first date."

---"I'm relieved that we have a Garment District here. I think that makes the right statement about New York City not being a nudist colony."

---"My idea of a fun time here in New York is to go on a skyline-gazing adventure. I plan my itinerary for the night to exclusively feature visits by myself to a series of restaurants and coffeehouses that each offer me the very finest nighttime views of the New York City skyline. Then I travel from one restaurant or coffeehouse to another, ordering something light in each, until I've had enough exhilarating gazes at our skyline that it all feels divinely decadent to the point of exhilarating for me. At that point, I rush home and take a nice hot bath, to soak it all in."

---"There are days when I feel sorry for the other great cities of the world. If New York is the greatest city on the entire planet, then what does that say about London or Madrid or Paris, not to mention Montreal or Rome? Are they greater than most, without being greatest of them all? I almost feel like shedding a tear for each of those not-as-great-as-New-York cities. I guess I take pride in having empathy toward those who are less fortunate than we New Yorkers are. That's always been a strength of mine."

---"I'd love to attend a Puerto Rican Cultural Festival here, but I never seem to find that event on my calendar. I wonder why that is. Maybe the organizers of the annual Puerto Rican Cultural Festival here in New York are very modest, and don't want to toot their own horn. Maybe they're hoping that word of mouth will be all the advance publicity they need. That reminds me. I should find out if we have a New York Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce, so I could call them to ask which day of the year I should plan to attend their leading cultural event. I'd even make a point of buying a Puerto Rican sombrero, in order to attend that annual cultural event in proper style. But I don't know for a fact that Puerto Ricans call their hats sombreros."

--"Since I suffer from a fear of heights, I need to live in the section of Manhattan where the apartment buildings are the shortest in height. Do you know which part of Manhattan that is?"

---"Whenever I call a cab to ride home, I make a point of giving my taxi driver a home address for myself that is two blocks away from where I actually live. I don't want the taxi driver to know my exact street address, because so many of the taxi drivers here are sexual maniacs. For all I know, many of these taxi drivers are convicted sex offenders who would stop at nothing to break into my apartment unit and attempt to rape me when I'm sleeping in my bolt-locked apartment. The only disadvantage to my strategy is that when I walk the two blocks to my apartment unit from where the taxi driver drops me off, I'm at risk of getting raped during that two-block walk if it's late at night. Here in New York, you are always having to choose which of the potentially-disastrous options available to you are the least likely to be trigger your own demise. I can never be completely sure whether I chose the safest option, but my talking to you now proves that I've survived New York's many pitfalls so far. Maybe someday I'll get to teach a class on that subject for a local community college."

--"So tell me, of the 20 ethnic groups most commonly found in New York City, which ethnic group do YOU think is the most under-represented by the annual cultural festivals here? If I knew the answer to that question, I could turn that into a freelance festival-organizing stint for myself that could earn me a lot of much-needed income. After all, it takes a lot of income every month just to hold onto my apartment here in New York. So I have all the incentive I need to find out which ethnic group feels the most snubbed by the current annual cultural events calendar here in New York!"

---"The only ethnic group I don't hear much about here in New York are the sons and daughters of gypsies from Europe who now call New York their home. I guess those descendents of gypsies are not willing to publicize their ancestry through a New York Gypsy Appreciation Day. Maybe they sense that most New Yorkers would be afraid to attend any cultural event that the gypsy-heritage group would sponsor, since the non-gypsies would be at risk of having their wallet or purse stolen from members of the gypsy-heritage group during that cultural event. You'd think that the New Yorkers who don't have gypsy heritage could just leave their wallet or purse at home when they attend that partciular cultural festival. Then they could stuff some cash in their brazierre or their underwear as they travel to the event, which would work out fine until they are suddenly asked by a guy near a turnstile to each pay him the $20 admission charge in exchange for a ticket to that New York Gypsy Festival."

--"My advice to you is: Beware of any stock market broker here who is fond of astrology. If you ask him for advice on whether to invest or sell on any given day, he'll reply by asking you your birthdate. Then seconds later he will inform you that it is not astrologically recommended for you to invest that day---and 24 hours later, you'll learn that his advice to you was dead wrong. You will feel like an asteroid that has just been smashed into bits by the real world."

---"One of the interesting facts about the Mafia I've learned here is that none of them are ever cremated. Each of the Mafia thugs here insists on garnering a huge Italian-designer cemetery tombstone of his own that refers to his being a great and noble American who died unexpectedly. To me, it's never unexpected when you die after being shot 10 times in the head with bullets. But the Mafia never refer to the fatal gunshots in their tombstones here. In their tombstones, they want everyone to know that it came as a complete surprise to the Italian-American community and the Roman Catholic Church that Joe Ravioli of Manhattan has headed for Heaven much sooner than expected."

---"I recommend standing as close as possible to the back wall of the elevator whenever you ride an elevator here. That gives you a chance to rest your back by leaning against the back wall of the elevator. I can't remember if my orthopedic specialist was the one who came up with that tip for me, or whether I came up with it on my own. Ideally speaking, I've always felt that the back wall of the elevator should be orthopedically designed to make it very comfortable for passengers to lean against that back wall as they ride up a skyscraper here. I love the idea of New Yorkers getting the back massages they urgently need merely by standing as far back as possible inside an elevator."

---"I'm a firm believer in carrying a mini-flashlight with you whenever you ride an elevator here in New York. If the elevator suddenly stops in between floors and the lights go out, you can pull out your flashlight and use it to quickly find the emergency buttons you need to push."

---"Anyone who has lived in New York for more than a year knows what it's like to ride an elevator here that suddenly comes to a halt in between floors. I would rank elevator-ride-disaster stories among the leading disaster stories that we New Yorkers love to tell to all our friends and relatives who live outside our metro area. We New Yorkers feel we're like those American astronauts whose spaceship mission failed in mid-flight, but who somehow managed to escape from their spaceship and return to earth alive and well. There's a bit of Tom Hanks in all of us, and I'm referring, of course, to the movie in which courageous astronaut Tom Hanks famously announces to the entire world that 'Houston, we have a problem.'"

---"One of the reasons I always carry breath freshener with me in New York is that I never know when I'll be riding an elevator here and it suddenly goes out of order in between floors. This means I'll be having to converse with the other elevator passengers. I would experience a lot less interpersonal anxiety in that awkward scenario if I could freshen up my breath inside the stalled elevator."

---"One of the odd things about living in New York City is the surprising sense of camaraderie you develop toward the regulars on the subway routes that you yourself take on a regular basis. They're familiar faces, which can be very reassuring, even though you also know that you either never talk with them or you talk with them only occasionally. Their regularity assures you that they are not likely to be fly-by-night criminal types, at least. But I always try to keep in mind that many of the criminal types here may well keep regular schedules of some type. Their regularity, in fact, may just be a ruse they use in order to fool NYPD detectives into thinking them honorable and law-abiding."

---"My cousin and I have this game we play, whenever we get together. I will tell her my most recent estimate on how many total times I've been raped here in New York City in the last one-year period. Then she will reply that she feels very sure she's been raped more often than I have raped in the last one-year period. My cousin seems to take pride in having been raped more often in New York than I've been raped here! To me, getting raped shouldn't be something you brag about!"

---"My cousin tells me that she's getting raped every night during her sleep inside her bolt-locked apartment, but NYPD refuses to investigate because they say she hasn't proven to NYPD beyond a shadow of a doubt what the illegal point of entry into her apartment unit has been! The burden of proof is on her, according to NYPD detectives! Well, I told my cousin that it's very unfair for her to be expected to play the role of a police detective before NYPD will even think of visiting the ongoing crime scene inside her apartment! She's never had any formal training as a police officer, much less in the field of forensic science! Why do we pay taxes to the City of New York if NYPD is telling us they have a do-it-yourself policy toward criminal investigations of rape cases?"

---"I wanted to have my home professionally cleaned, but I didn't want to damage the DNA evidence at the scene of the crime---which is my home. As you know, I'm a daily and year-round victim of continuous rape crimes and personal-injury crimes during my sleep inside my bolt-locked home here in New York! But NYPD refuses to investigate! They say I haven't proven to NYPD any illegal point of entry into my home! So in the meantime, all the DNA evidence from illegal intruders inside my home every night is completely going ignored by the police!"

---"I find it embarrassing to note that the only subject I could possibly teach a college course on here is rape. As a single lady in New York, I seem to know more about rape than any other subject. I've been a rape victim so many times here that I'll probably get a special entry in the 'Guiness Book of World Records' for having been raped more times than anybody else in world history! So if I agree to teach a class on rape at a local community college here, how can I be sure that one of my male students won't assume that I'm secretly trying to seduce him through the topic I chose for my course? That's the inevitable dilemma I'll be facing if I pursue a career as Professor of Rape Studies here in New York! I just know that the week before final exams, one of my male students will ask me to visit him inside his college dorm room and help him prepare for his final exam using a hands-on approach to the subject matter! The risk of trivialization of my rape course could defeat the whole purpose of teaching a class of that type!"

----"I like to joke that my apartment unit here in New York has turned into a DNA factory. All I have to do is go to bed at night inside my bolt-locked apartment where I live alone and always sleep alone, and I'm guaranteed the next morning of waking up to dozens of fresh fingerprints all over my apartment and at least 10 new new pubic hairs of a variety of hair colors---from blond to red to jet-black----all over my bed from the latest round of illegal intruders age 29 or younger who molested me during my sleep. NYPD refuses to investigate, since NYPD says my bolt-lock to my front door apparently has not been broken. According to the geniuses at NYPD, this proves that I myself allegedly either slept-walked or walked from my bed to the front door of my apartment unit at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., and, later, at 5 a.m this morning, in order to myself allegedly greet a variety of complete strangers at my front door by allegedly saying to each of them: "Hi, I'm Jane, I'll be your sleeping sex genie for the night, so please come in and feel free to molest me any way you like on my bed during my sleep! And please leave behind on my bed as many pubic hairs from your groin area as you possibly can! I crave pubic hairs from younger guys like yourself, and in fact, one of my favorite hobbies is collecting pubic hairs from as many men in their twenties as I possibly can! So far, my pubic-hair collection contains 1,000 hair follicles from 1,000 different men age 29 or younger! I find it terribly exciting to open up my pubic-hair collection scrapbook in my living room and sniff each and every one of those precious pubic hairs from 1,000 different younger men! That, to me, is truly an exhilarating heaven on earth experience!'"

---"All you have to do here in New York is complain to NYPD that a male stranger has raped you inside your home, and NYPD will immediately reply by asking you: 'Do you have any history of being a paid prostitute, or do you generally do it for free with the male strangers you agree to entertain inside your home?' Talking with NYPD afterward is almost as painful and disgusting to me as getting raped was."

---"So when the NYPD detective examined my naked anus and told me he didn't see any semen in there so no anal-rape crime could possibly have occurred, I tried my best to be polite. I asked the detective what his response would be if I could show him several ounces of semen in my anus the next time he visits my apartment in response to my next 911 call to NYPD at that future date. The wise-guy detective then says to me: 'The semen in your anus would only prove that you had planted it there yourself! That would immediately make you the suspect to arrest, since you'd obviously be guilty of filing false charges and providing fraudulent evidence to NYPD!'"

---"I'm hoping that NYPD will offer a 'Crime of the Month' feature profile at their official website. I love to read about new and exotic crimes being commited here. You might say it's one of my favorite pastimes as a New Yorker. I guess I'm a criminologist at heart. I'm a bit like Sherlock Holmes, except I don't smoke opium or heroin, or whatever it was he smoked in his leisuretime. I'd love to earn an honorary degree in Criminology from NYU if that were possible. But from what I've been told, you have to become famous first before NYU would even think of offering you an Honorary Degree. So now I have to figure out how to turn famous here in New York, in order to get consideration for an honorary degree in Criminology at NYU!"

---"One of the biggest surprises about life in New York is that none of the colleges here currently offers a 'Professor of Mafia Studies' endowed faculty position. You'd expect every one of the colleges of New York City to offer at least one independently-endowed professorship of Mafia Studies. The only problem I could foresee with a faculty position of that type is if the Mafia attempt to meddle by contacting a Mafia Studies professor and demanding that he revise his syllabus to reflect the demands and expectations of the local Mafia community. The Mafia representative who contacts the professor to present the Mafia's demands might then add that failure to comply with the Mafia's demands would be grounds for immediate termination, so to speak, of that faculty member."

---"I'm so used to being victimized by crime here in New York City that in my diary entries I only make a crime-related note for the days when I woke up on my bed and immediately sensed that NO ONE had molested me or raped me or injured me or physically tortured me or rudely awakened me in the middle of my sleep earlier that morning inside my bolt-locked apartment. September 3, 2011, and September 10, 2011, were the ONLY two days of the last one-and one-half-year period when I woke up and immediately sensed that no illegal intruder inside my bolt-locked apartment had physically tortured me on my bed in any way that morning. One theory of mine is that the criminal element held a two-day convention here in New York on Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011, and Saturday, Sept. 10, 2011, and that is why the usual thugs were not available to harass me and harm me during my sleep those two total mornings. Another theory of mine is that a devil-worshipping cult is the local religious group that's been repeatedly breaking into my bolt-locked apartment and repeatedly subjecting me against my wishes to anal rape and personal-injury crimes during my sleep, and that September 3, 2011, and September 10, 2011, were each religious holidays for that devil-worshipping cult. They were too busy practicing their voodoo and hexes rituals at a local devil-worshippers' meeting site to physically torture me and harm me during my sleep on those two total Saturday mornings of September 2011 that I will always cherish the rest of my life as having been very rare and very special occasions for me!"

----"As a newcomer to New York, I would appreciate the opportunity to attend a 'Get to Know Our CEO's' cultural event here. It would help me to decide which of the CEO's of corporations headquartered in the City are the ones I'm most likely to want develop a personal E-mail relationshnip with."

---"Do you think the New Yorkers who never get any sleep are afraid that if they do sleep, they'll enjoy it so much they'd remain asleep for years, a bit like Rip Van Winkle, and now I can't recall how the 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow' ends. Maybe if he had owned an alarm clock, he would have never had any difficulty waking up at the right time. It's odd that I can identify with Rip Van Winkle---he's very upstate, and I don't believe he ever lived here in Manhattan. From that standpoint, I don't have much in common with him."

---"As a newcomer to New York, I need to find an annotated bibliography of each of the very finest novels and short stories and theatrical plays and poems that were primarily or partly set in New York City. It's good to have a sense of your city as an inspiration for literature. It adds to the romantic appeal of living here when I can recall great works of fiction I've read that highlight New York at its best and worst."

---"I think it's very sad that there's no particular hot tea blend that I primarily associate with New York City. As an avid tea drinker, I would like to be able to boast to my friends that we New Yorkers take pride in our distinctive hot tea blend that was developed here first."

---"As an environmentalist, I would like to see more roadway signs along the highway that announce exactly how many miles you will have to drive or ride in order to reach a cited state park or national park or other public natural attraction such as the beach. As things stand, all you learn about on those roadway signs are dry statistics on how many miles you will need to drive or ride in order to reach Melbourne, Long Island."

---"I'm so in touch with the 'yen and yang' of life that I am surprised our state has never named any of our islands 'Short Island.' All we ever hear about is the famous Long Island, but there must be some New York State island that is tiny enough in length to merit the name 'Short Island'."

---"So tell me, how many islands are there that are considered to be part of our state's territory?"

---"If 'Moosewood Cookbook' is still a leading vegetarian cookbook, and that cookbook was written by residents of upstate New York, why hasn't any restaurateur here ever thought of opening up a Moosewood Cafe in New York City that highlights the very best of the 'Moosewood Cookbook' menu? After all, not every New Yorker is willing to travel to Ithaca for an enjoyable vegetarian meal."

---"Personally, I'd like to see an Upstate Avenue somewhere in New York. I'm talking about an avenue that features outdoor statues honoring each of the greatest contributors to our state who lived in upstate New York. An example of that might be the authors of the 'Moosewood Cookbook.' It's impressive how many New Yorkers here in the City have been turned on to vegetarian cooking because of that cookbook from upstaters."

---"My daughter complained to me that our state government shows prejudice against short persons. She points out that we have a well-known New York island called 'Long Island', but there is no famous island off our coastline that's called 'Short Island'. My reply to Suzy was that if she wants to see our Legislature name an island as 'Short Island,' maybe she should come up with a petition. She could cite and praise the shortest island worthy of being visited that she would like to see be renamed by our Legislature."

---"My 11-year-old son, Todd, is so sharp that when I recently asked him to please tell me based on his geography studies how many square miles is the total land area of the City of New York, Todd replied that he would prefer to answer that question in terms of square kilometers. Todd is so very 21st Century, and I respect him a lot for that. If only the rest of our country were as devoted as Todd is to making the conversion to the metric system, our beloved USA would be in much better shape than it is today!"

---"I'm new to New York City. Can you tell me where to go here to find the very best outdoor public statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that New York City has to offer? He was a favorite president of mine, and I'd like to see him up close!"

---"I wouldn't want to live too close to the Bronx Zoo. What if a tiger manages to escape from his cage in the middle of the night? I'd prefer to be living more than a mile away from the Bronx Zoo if something like that ever happens!"

---"I try to keep at least two Dutch recipes in my recipe collection inside my kitchen, in case I have a weekend guest from out of town who asks me to offer him something in keeping with New York's Dutch heritage for a meal inside my home here."

---"He told me he had expected to find some windmills in Manhattan, since New York City takes pride in its Dutch heritage, he said. So I told him that if he wants to find windmills, he should plan a trip to the Netherlands instead of New York."

---"He had expected to find a Dutch Theater here in Manhattan, in honor of New York City's Dutch heritage. Well, I told Peter that I have no idea what Dutch Theater is. Is that a theater featuring windmills or dikes as stage props, I asked him. I have never heard the term 'Dutch Theater' in my entire life. In fact, the only thing theatrical about the Netherlands I've ever heard about are all the people there getting high on illicit drugs every day. Drug-crazed people can be very dramatic----unless they're high on quaaludes, in which case they might come across as anti-dramatic."

---"There are days when I wish we had remained as New Amsterdam and all illicit drugs were legal here, like in the Netherlands. Then at least we could do an official annual census to find out exactly how many of our city's residents are marijuana addicts, how many of our residents are cocaine addicts, and how many of our residents are methamphetamine addicts. Those are the types of stats about New York that intrigue me the most. And if illicit drugs were legal here, everyone might be willing to provide an honest answer in a drug-addiction census of that type."

----"So which restaurant do you most associate with the anti-marijuana community here in New York? I am asking you that question because from what I've observed, 90 percent of the waiters of New York are potheads. I can't think of any restaurant here where the waiters aren't potheads, in fact, and I would love to dine in a restaurant where leaving a tip is not financing a waiter's marijuana addiction."

---"I dread the day when New York legalizes marijuana and the wedding ceremonies here will all feature passing the joint from the bride and bride-groom to everyone attending the event."

---"There are days when I look up at the Statue of Liberty and I sense from her facial expression that she's recovering from a hangover. How's that for a classic case of projection on my part?"

---"If New York has remained as New Amsterdam, there would be a red light district throughout our entire city. But that's pretty much the way it is right now, so I guess we have been very faithful to our Dutch heritage in that one category."

---"If Mayor Bloomberg were so concerned about the medical health and lifespan of New Yorkers, why doesn't he begin by imposing a ban on the sale of marijuana paraphernalia in our local stores? Marijuana has been proven to be very harmful to the health, but half of our city's residents consume it as if it were a sacred substance!"

---"Sarah came up with this wild idea of celebrating her entire birthday month of June by exclusively dining throughout that entire month in each of the five-star restaurants of New York City. I told Sarah that her idea sounds fun, if her husband is a billionaire and he wants to throw away half of his fortune in one month's time."

---"If New York is the leading city of New York State, which city should get second-best-city status? To me, it would be nice if our New York state legislature would confer an honorary award on our state's second-best city, since I have no idea what that city is and it definitely deserves more recognition than it's currently getting. I love the idea of a 'Welcome to New York's Second-Finest City' sign greeting anyone and everyone as they enter that city, whatever it is and wherever it's located, and I frankly have no idea what or where that city is."

---"I feel sorry for the upstate New Yorkers who get tired of hearing that they live in the 'hinterlands'. I, for one, do not regard upstate New Yorkers as inconsequential nobodies. In fact, five of my friends live in upstate New York, and I'm very proud of that fact. And besides, it gives me a place to stay without having to pay for a hotel room, whenever I visit upstate New York. That is definitely one of the leading perqs from having a designated upstate New York friend, I would say. I always make a point of handing my host family a free copy of the 'New York Times' as a present to them during my overnight stay, which gives them a chance to vicariously thrill to what we cultured New Yorkers are doing in Manhattan."

Wit and Wisdom of New Yorkers, Part VI

Overheard in New York City, New York, had I been residing there today:

---"My daughter made the mistake of marrying a taxi driver here in Manhattan. Now whenever they are making love in the privacy of their bedroom, her husband repeatedly interrupts everything to announce that she owes him $15 for each additional minute of the ride he's giving her."

---"The walls between my apartment and my next-door neighbor's unit are so paper-thin that every time he goes to the bathroom, I'm praying from inside my living room that he won't sit on his toilet. If he sits on his toilet, I hear every grunt that he generates. I've had mornings when his grunts from the toilet were so loud that I was awakened from my bedroom in the middle of my sleep there. I thought of knocking on my neighbor's door and urging him to put more fiber in his diet ASAP. But then I decided it would not be wise to irk my neighbor. If my apartment ever turns into a crime scene, I'll need all the witnesses I can get. So I hold my tongue in the hope that someday down the road, he'll be willing to testify about what he saw or heard in regard to the crime I was victimized by inside my bolt-locked apartment."

---"I'm very typical of most New Yorkers. I'm always scheming to become a personal friend with one police officer, one private detective, one attorney, one market analyst, and one medical doctor who each invite questions from me on a 24-hour-a-day basis."

----"My boyfriend has such a dirty and suspicious mind that when I asked him to call a Yellow cab for me here in Manhattan, he angrily informed me that my uttering the word 'yellow' comprised a Freudian slip that revealed my craving for other men's semen, according to Al. So then Al has the audacity to add that if I'm happy with my sex life with Al, I should be asking for a regular cab instead."

--"My boyfriend is such a sexual maniac that he insists on wearing a condom inside his underwear throughout each of our dates here in New York. Peter says he never knows when he might need a condom during a date with me, so he likes to be fully prepared for that spontaneous moment. I told Peter that he is turning into a Condom Nerd, and I find it disgusting. Peter replied that I'm not being fair to him, after all there's no risk he'll ever get me pregnant, particularly since he wears a double-condom in case one of them breaks, Peter says. He then adds that getting an abortion can be a very traumatic experience, and I should be thanking Peter for never putting me in the position where I might have to get an abortion."

---"To me, provincialism is not knowing the height of the tallest building in Buffalo. Any New Yorker who is fond of skyscrapers should make a point of learning the exact height of the tallest buildings in Buffalo. I think you haven't developed a truly sophisticated understanding of the entire world until you acknowledge the possibility that there are tall buildings upstate, too."

---"To me, David Letterman is always at his most obscene when he talks about having attended Ball State University. It's as if his entire life were a perverted version of 'Hamlet', in which David Letterman is always declaring to the entire world: 'To ball or not to ball, that is the question!'"

---"As a parent with two young children, what I need is a guidebook to New York City that's exclusively focused on cultural offerings for New Yorkers age 5 or younger. I need to find out which museums here are the best ones to take my four-year-old son to. I also need to find out which restaurants here are the best for diners who are age 5 or younger. For instance, which restaurants provide the best bibs, at no extra charge, for diners age 5 or younger."

--"I would define snobbishness in New York City as refusing to socialize with writers who haven't had their first book published. To me, there should always be a place in your heart for the pre-published crowd, provided that they are law-abiding, polite, and don't smoke marijuana."

---"What we need in this city is a Manhattan Party Hosts Association that develops a good code of honor for party hosts here. For instance, never let anyone into your party, even if he was an invited guest, if you have any reason to suspect that he brought any illicit drug with him to the party site. A good party host should have the courage to turn away anyone who might compromise the moral integrity of the party."

---"I recently learned that my cousin is a pothead, so I asked him how long he thinks he can get away with it before NYPD does an Internal Affairs investigation on him. My cousin is a police officer here, and I told him he should know better than to light up a joint during his leisuretime. His reply is that he's making the transition into marijuana brownies, since he's fairly sure that none of his colleagues at NYPD would ever learn about it if he ingested all of his marijuana in brownie form. So I told Jim that he's very naive, NYPD could easily arrest a marijuana-brownie baker tomorrow morning and that baker will quickly hand over his entire list of pothead clients in exchange for a reduced prison time pledge from the DA. At that point, Jim's chances of staying in the free world are slim to none. Jim could spend the rest of his life at Attica, and that definitely is NOT a fun place to be!"

----"All my friends say I spend too much time at parties here staring at everyone's nostrils. My friends say it looks neurotic for me to stare at the other guests' nostrils during a party. My reply is that I'm trying to find out ASAP which of the other party guests don't snort cocaine. The ones who don't snort cocaine have nostrils that look healthier and more natural. And if a party guest passes the nostril test, I make a point of introducing myself to that gentleman or lady. I take pride in being one very rare New Yorker who can truthfully say that NONE of my friends ever snort cocaine. I've achieved that success here with help from this invaluable screening device. It's not that I'm snubbing the snorters. It's just that I refuse to socialize with the cocaine addicts until they seek treatment for their addiction and are then certified as having gone 12 straight months without any cocaine consumption."

---"Have you ever noticed that New York is the type of city where the people you haven't met yet are always a lot more interesting to you than the people you have actually spoken with in person?"

--"I've heard of a coffee klache, but your decision to join a cocaine klache here in New York strikes me as perverse to the point of appalling. What makes you think that someone snorting cocaine in your presence will make a good conversation partner for you, much less a good moral influence on you?"

---"Why is it that all of the most photogenic New Yorkers are the very ones I never meet in person? Is there some conspiracy by non-photogenic New Yorkers to deprive me of the opportunity to socialize with New Yorkers who are actually attractive?"

---"To be a responsible party host these days in New York, you probably need to hire an off-duty NYPD officer to administer a breath test to each prospective party guest at the front door of the party site. Anyone who flunks the breath test gets denied entrance into the party. I'm also planning to ask the off-duty NYPD officer I hire to frisk each invited guest at the front door, in order to determine that they have no illicit drugs on them before they're allowed to attend the party."

---"I'm probably a rarity among Italian-Americans here, since I haven't decided yet which brand of imported olive oil is my personal favorite as a dipping sauce for bread or nuts. I wish I could attend an olive-oil sampling party here in Manhattan where I'd get a chance to compare 15 different brands before I decide which one I feel passionately about."

---"My biggest challenge as a New Yorker is deciding which residents here are hopeless cases, and which residents here may appear to be hopeless cases, but aren't. The former group are depressing and demoralizing to associate with. The latter group can put a smile on your face. They give me the satisfaction of helping a fellow New Yorker achieve an all American-success story that no one else here expected him to achieve. It feels good at the special banquet honoring that individual to hear him tell everyone that I was one extremely rare New Yorker who expressed confidence in him during the many years when everyone else rated him as a nobody. I guess I'm a bit of a talent scout in the grand tradition of the Medici family of Italy during the Renaissance Era. I don't even have any Italian blood in me, but I can certainly admire the grand tradition of those Medicis at fostering greatness in others. Too bad there isn't an American Talent-Scout Award from a non-profit Medici Foundation in this country. I would win that award, for sure."

---"I still can't decide which cars' honks are the most pleasant to listen to here in Manhattan. You would think I'd be an expert on that subject, as often as the other motorists honk at me for driving too slow in New York."

---"Has anyone ever told you who coined the term 'ne'er-do-well', and whether the individual who coined that term was a New Yorker describing a fellow resident of this city?"

--"His only accomplishment from his first 20 years on this planet is that he's successful at playing video games. In fact, someday his epitaph will probably read: 'He exceled at playing video games, and nothing else'. Maybe that will serve as a lesson to future generations, as they ponder whether they want their own future tombstone to sum up their entire life like that."

---"I worry about the loss of thought-provoking epitaphs because of this trend away from tombstones. New Yorkers who ask for cremation of their own body after they die usually don't leave behind a pithy public statement summing up what they achieved in their life. I find that very sad."

---"You can't survive in New York City if you are susceptible to power of suggestion. Over the course of any given week, 100 New Yorkers will tell you to 'drop dead'. If you take them literally, you might either have a heart attack, trip on a crack in the sidewalk and end up in the hospital, or fall from the top of the Empire State Building."

---"New York City is the one city in the entire world where philanthropy and misanthropy are battling against each other the most fervently, on every street and alleyway of this city, on a year-round basis. It can be very exciting to watch the many year-round battles taking place in this city."

--"I always feel relieved when I see a black New Yorker ordering vanilla ice cream inside an ice cream shop here. It means that I can also order vanilla ice cream without anyone calling me a racist for doing so."

--"One of my favorite fantasies is a Manhattan restaurant named NARC's DELIGHT that is owned and operated by off-duty police officers who are not in uniform. Those NYPD officers would routinely administer breath tests and urine tests inside the restaurant to any customer who appears to be either intoxicated or high on illicit drugs. The drama from that restaurant would come from the frequent visits into that restaurant by NYPD officers in uniform as they handcuff and haul away the most recent round of criminal-law suspects from their dining table. It would be grand entertainment for everyone else dining at the restaurant. They could pat themselves on the back for having complied with the law that particular day."

---"Personally, I've always wanted to dine in a restaurant here in Manhattan that is dedicated to replicating the playing conditions of the board game 'Monopoly' at all times. If a customer in that restaurant picks the wrong playing card from his dining table, he goes directly to jail, a special holding facility inside that eatery, before he is released on bond in order to re-join his dining companions at their dinner table. Doesn't that sound like great fun for everyone?"

---"To me, the biggest surprise about New York City is that there is no restaurant here named 'Marvin Gardens' that features a beautiful indoor atrium and heavenly food that everyone in that restaurant can enjoy. That restaurant would have lots of popular appeal, since millions of Americans who enjoyed playing 'Monopoly' in their youth have had fantasies about enjoying a personal visit to Marvin Gardens."

---"I wish our mayor would keep a daily public record citing the age of each constituent of his whom Mayor Bloomfield granted a one-to-one meeting with at City Hall that day. I'm worried that New Yorkers under 18 may be under-represented in those individual meetings with the Mayor, which comprises a form of defacto disenfranchisement of that age group from dialogue opportunities with our City's top official. I also worry that the New Yorkers over age 70 are not getting enough opportunities for one-to-one-meetings with our Mayor. Either type of age-related discrimination by City Hall would pose a major concern for me."

---"Whenever I mail a thank-you card to a new acquaintance I've recently met here in New York, I always use my post-office box address as my return address on the envelope. This protects my personal safety in the event that the new acquaintance proves to be untrustworthy. My only worry is that if the guy I sent the thank-you card to is a stalker or criminal type, he might do some research to find out the postal station where my post-office box is located. Then he might hang out at that postal station in order to catch me by surprise as I casually pick up my latest mail delivery there. Nothing could be more enraging to me than to pick up my latest PO box delivery at the postal station only to be approached by a guy trying to kidnap me and ordering me at gunpoint to walk with him to his car!"

---

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."