Wit and Wisdom of New Yorkers, Part XI

Comments among New Yorkers that I feel sure I would have overheard at public places had I continued to reside in New York City, New York, ever since 1986, include:


---"Personally, I feel that our Governor up there in Albany should release to our news media every day on a year-round basis the daily menu plan for the Governor's official residence. As a taxpaying New Yorker, I want to know exactly which dishes and beverages the Governor and his wife are choosing to eat and drink for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. To me, that's the least they can offer me in the way of accountability from up there in Albany. I want to make sure that they are showing financial restraint, including in their eating habits. For instance, I don't see any need for our Governor to ever serve caviar to anyone. It's too expensive, from a taxpayer's standpoint."


----"Myself, I could care less about whether our Governor in Albany shows financial restraint in his gubernatorial kitchen and dining room. I'm a gourmet-dining New Yorker, and I want to see our Governor publicizing gourmet foods and beverages as much as possible. In fact, if I like as many as 50 percent of his menu choices, which is a very high percentage since I'm somewhat of a culinary snob myself, I might even vote to re-elect our Governor at some future date."


----"To me, the primary advantage from our Governor releasing to the news media his daily menu plan for his official residence is nutrition education. Think of all the New Yorkers who don't pursue a well-balanced diet. If we had our Governor publicizing the fact that he pursues a well-balanced diet up there in Albany, this could remind millions of New Yorkers to do likewise in their own home. It could virtually eliminate malnutrition overnight, since our Governor is the primary opinion leader and educator for our entire state."


---"One of the questions I've always wondered about is whether the Governor of New York has a special hotline that connects him with the Mayor of New York City at all times of the day and night. Personally, I feel that a hotline service of that type could be a life-saver. The relationship between the Governor and the Mayor is a bit like the relationship between the President of the United States and the head of state in Russia, the primary difference being that there's no risk of Albany nuking New York City, or vice versa."

----"I always dread those years when none of our New York pro athletic teams wins the world championship in any sport. Whenever that happens, everyone here in Manhattan seems to get irritable about five times more often on a daily basis. I'm sure our homicide rate increases, too, whenever we have a tragic situation in which none of our pro athletic squads earns the 'best in the world' title. It would not surprise me, in fact, if some defense attorney here in Manhattan has used the 'We Didn't Win Best in the World in Pro Baseball' defense for explaining why his client went deranged and turned violent a matter of hours after learning that the New York Yankees had been eliminated from the playoffs that year."


----"As a furniture salesman here in New York, I love Valentine's Day primarily because it gives me a great gimmick for selling love seats. Typically what I'll emphasize to younger couples is that the very idea of going through an entire Valentine's Day without having a love seat for two in their own home is unthinkable to the point of outrageous. I have sold as many as 200 love seats in the two-week period leading up to Valentine's Day."


----"Personally, I always feel like a complete ignoramus whenever my cousin and her husband from Pittsburgh ask me if I can recommend a live theater here in New York that is the best one for a Valentine's Day play-watching experience. I simply don't know which live theater here is the 'most romantic' place for a married couple on Valentine's Day. Maybe if we had a live theater here named 'Valentine' or 'Valentino's', that would help me to remember which one to recommend to my cousin. I love a good mnemonic device, it helps me a lot whenever I get questions from my out-of-town relatives who all expect me to be an expert on New York."


-----"I keep expecting some Food Channel television crew to visit our Governor's residence up there in Albany and explore what's exciting in the gubernatorial kitchen these days. It might be fun to watch a show like that, particularly since I don't recall off-hand the name of the current head chef for our Governor up there in Albany."


----"One of my neighbor's favorite jokes is that Albany, New York, and the European nation of Albania have a lot in common. His punch line is that they are both spelled nearly identically, so that proves his point. My response to my neighbor is that he has an urgent need to enroll in a drug-treatment program, once he's finally figured out which drug he's addicted to.  In fact, I can't recall the last occasion when I thought to myself, 'Gee, my next-door neighbor is actually sober and talking rationally today.' My always-high neighbor habitually comments to me that he expects fo find an Albanian restaurant the next time he visits our capital city of Albany. So I keep telling him that there would not be any demand for an Albanian restaurant in Albany,  since  the percentage of New Yorkers of Albanian ancestry is probably far less than 1 percent. Our conversations always end in a stalemate, since neither of us is willing to concede defeat on that point."


---"My girlfriend is an architecture fanatic, so I promised her that I would take her to a heart-shaped building on Valentine's Day. To her, nothing could be more romantic than to dine in a building in Manhattan that is shaped like a giant human heart. My only worry is that maybe I won't find any building here that meets my girlfriend's specifications. Maybe I could do a Google search for a store selling a heart-shaped bed as an alternative.  That might help my girlfriend to overcome her disappointment if I don't find her a heart-shaped building here in Manhattan."


---"My friend  Paul always argues with everyone about which of the television chefs is the best. He keeps saying that Chef Ramsey is his all-time favorite. But a lot of New Yorkers strongly disagree with Paul, and it turns into quite a violent debate every time. Personally, my own response is to ask my friend Paul which of the television chefs has actually inspired Paul to improve Paul's own cooking style inside Paul's own kitchen? Paul invariably replies that he himself does not cook, but he's hoping that five years from now, all that 'Food Channel' television watching he's doing will eventually help Paul to learn how to boil his first-ever egg. So the truth is that Paul is like a kindergartner in the kitchen, and the chefs he professes to have strong opinions about are all PhDs in culinary science. I have lost a lot of respect for Paul, ever since he turned into a Food Channel groupie who never actually cooks in his own kitchen."

----"My friend Gigi is so particular about what she eats that when I recently treated her to a meal in a favorite restaurant of mine in Manhattan, Gigi expressed astonishment to our waitress that the restaurant did not offer any heart-healthy margarine containing plant sterols as an accompaniment to the complimentary bread served there. Then Gigi launched into a fanatical speech right in front of our waitress about how crucial it is to eat heart-healthy margarine containing plant sterols, if you want to avoid having a heart attack here in New York. Our waitress seemed to be very embarrassed by Gigi's outburst, so I apologized to our waitress on Gigi's behalf.  I politely emphasized to our waitress that Gigi has never been able to forgive New York for being the city where her father died of a heart attack at age 45, which accounts for Gigi's zeal on behalf of her 'plant sterols in margarine' crusade. Then I made a point of tipping our waitress 30 percent, in the hope that she won't complain to the manager about our party. I value being able to dine there in the future."


----"Wouldn't it be great if Mayor Bloomberg would insist that all of the buttered popcorn being sold in movie theaters here must contain a heart-healthy melted margarine  that's low in saturated fat and contains plant sterols designed to prevent cholesterol buildup."


----"I find it tragic that the primary theme for Oral History Interviews of New Yorkers these days seems to be their various bizarre tattoos emblazoned on their body and why they chose each of those tattoos for themselves. Can you imagine how vomit-inducing and depressing it would be to attend a factual documentary movie here that exclusively features videotaped oral-history interviews of 30 different New Yorkers talking about their own tattoos and body piercings on their own bodies and what each of those tattoos and body piercings signify, according to each of those New Yorkers."


----"Whenever I try to discuss philosophy with other New Yorkers these days, they invariably volunteer that they regard the tattoos on their own bodies as the most  profound philosophical statements they are making to the world. They claim their tattoos are the deepest and most educationally-substantative intellectual property that they own. I find that pathetic and very tragic!"


----"I recently attended a college philosophy class here in New York, only to find that the professor turned the entire class session over to the students. The instructor asked each of the students to take turns standing in front of the entire class and showing each and every one of their own body piercings and tattoos to all of their classmates, regardless of whether the body piercings or tattoos were located on or near the breasts or genitals or buttocks or belly button of the student making that presentation. Each student as part of his presentation before the class also explained the deeper philosophical meaning behind each of the body piercings and tattoos that he pointed to on his own body. I found that class session obscenely and scatologically unenlightening and revolting, and I told the instructor so in very blunt terms. He responded by warning me that I am at risk of myself getting expelled from City University of New York, if I ever again talk to a professor there in a disrespectful manner like that."


----"Theodore is an American History scholar at Columbia who's very obsessed with his academic specialty. When he recently told me had an urgent need to rent a canoe, Theodore offered me a very odd explanation for that latest whim of his. He told me he is fascinated by the 19th Century United States Presidential campaign that featured the nationally-publicized slogan, 'Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.' Theodore added that he thought it would be great fun to rent a canoe here in New York City and replicate what it was like to dwell in 19th Century America while pondering the significance of canoes in a Presidential campaign of that period. I happen to regard Theodore as a bit on the solipsistic side, but everyone else is more blunt about it.  They say he's very strange. Personally, I'm always relieved whenever Theodore volunteers a statement to me indicating he is possibly aware that he currently dwells in 21st Century America. That shows he has some degree of interest in the world of today, however boring and insipid our 21st Century world may seem to him."

---"When I moved to New York in the 1970s, I thought of this entire state as being a one-river state. I guess I was naive that way, but the only river out of New York I had ever heard of was the Hudson.  Today, I'm much more sophisticated and knowledgeable. I could probably pass a multiple-choice test on New York State's rivers and lakes, provided that you give me the correct answer as one of the options for each and every question in that test."


----"Personally, I make a distinction between the famous New Yorkers who are directly contacted by a book publisher asking them to write their memoirs ASAP, and the famous New Yorkers who never get that kind of phone call request from a book publisher. I can't decide which is better. The retirement income from writing your memoirs would be nice. But would you really want to spend your retirement years slaving over a tedious book-writing project?"


----"One of the fun facts about New York City I have never learned is the best site in all of New York for directly observing the sunsets and sunrises outdoors. I've lived here for five years, but no one has ever told me they wanted me to accompany them on an outing to directly savor the finest sunsets and sunrises in New York City of today. You would think that the longtime residents would want to share that special pleasure with relative newcomers such as myself.."


---"So tell me, which museum in New York City charges the highest admission price? When I finally do turn into a billionaire here someday, I'll make a point of visiting that museum at least twice per year. Getting credit for being a cultured gentleman is very important here."

----"My sister is so earnest about her life that she recently purchased a guidebook on how to pursue a completely celibate lifestyle as a New York single woman. She spent $20 on that guidebook, and I asked her which chapter in the guidebook had been the most useful to her. She replied that she especially liked the chapter on how to avoid landing a romantic date in New York City.  She is wearing a lot more pantsuits these days, since she read in the guidebook that if the men of New York see her in a pantsuit, they are less likely to ask her out on a hot date. Her legs are completely concealed by that style of fashionwear, which makes it all the harder for the single men of New York to undress her in their imagination. Her pantsuits give her an asexual image, according to my sister. My reply to that is that many of the single men of New York are sexual maniacs. If they see my sister in a pantsuit, they will merely interpret that as my sister playing it coy and hard to get, when she's actually inviting them play Casanova with her, according to these oversexed bachelors of New York City."


----"So tell me, which food or beverage do you see on the menu of this Manhattan restaurant that reminds you of President Obama or First Lady Michelle Obama?"


----"My nephew is such a New York chauvinist that when he recently got hired to deliver pizzas to Manhattan  households, my nephew refused to deliver any pizza that was labeled as Chicago style. He said it would be degrading to him as a New Yorker to deliver any Chicago-style pizza to anyone."


----"My eight-year-old son, Peter, recently embarrased me at the dinner table by asking me to please explain why Lake Erie is a great lake. My reply to Peter was that the term 'Great Lakes' is merely a figure of speech. It does not guarantee that any of the lakes in that group are actually great. If you asked me what makes Lake Eerie great, I would have to admit that I don't know the answer to that question. There is probably a Lake Eerie Tourism Bureau, though, that could provide me with a nice reply to that type of question."


----"My 9-year-old son, Eric, recently asked the funniest question at the dinner table. He asked me to please explain why Lake Eerie is called that. Eric added that iu his opinion, they should have just called it 'Lake Odd' instead."

----"That man over there is an expert on sociolinguistics, and he maintains that New York City residents are 10 times more likely to verbalize misanthropic words in their leisuretime conversations than they are to verbalize philanthropic words. I can't wait until his book on that subject gets published. It will be a best seller here, for sure."


----"You would expect to find the finest sociolinguistics research institute in the entire world here in New York City, since our city offers the greatest variety of raw material in the entire world for that topic area. So why is it that I myself have never heard of any top-ranked sociolinguistics research program here in New York? Is it because our city's cultural and educational leaders are somehow blind to our city's greatest areas of potential cultural and intellectual strength?"


---"My 12-year-old daughter, Anna, delighted me the other day. She told me she is studying about liberty and democracy in public school here, so she would like me to buy for her a miniature version of  our city's Statue of Liberty. Anna plans to keep her miniature statue on display inside her bedroom at all times. Annna says she feels very sure that she'll earn better grades in her social studies classes if she has the Statue of Liberty presiding over all her homework pursuits whenever she sits at her desk inside her bedroom."

Wit and Wisdom of New Yorkers, Part X

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

---"I'd like to invite the head of one of the U.N. delegations to my next cocktail party, but I'm afraid that he'll bring foreign spies with him to my party. I don't want any foreign spies taking secret photographs of myself or my Manhattan home. Maybe I should contact the head of the foreign delegation I admire the most, and then make a special request that he please refrain from bringing any of his foreign spies with him when he attends my next cocktail party."


---"I always hate it when I have this really good relationship with a delegate from a foreign country at the United Nations, only to learn that his country plans to transfer him back home the following week. I feel like organizing a petition here, urging that foreign country to please keep that individual in their UN delegation, since he's urgently needed at all of my Manhattan cocktail parties. He's the life of my parties, in fact. But then it dawns on me that maybe it wouldn't be a successful petition if I use that angle. Some official of his foreign country would want to know why he was spending so much of his time here attending cocktail parties."


----"If you ask me which type of novel is the best genre to write here in New York, I'd say spy novels for sure.  New York City is full of foreign spies and foreign citizens and legal as well as illegal immigrants from dozens of foreign countries. This is the perfect city for imagining a world of infinite deceitfulness and manipulation. New York City is the perfect spawning ground for paranoia and conspiracy theories of every type. Never trust anyone, that's the credo we all live by here.  Even your mother could turn out to be a spy for a foreign country, if you're not careful."


----"I can't tell you how many times I've been out on a hot date here with some handsome single gentleman, only to have him begin to fondle my breasts and suddenly ask me, 'Are you sure you're not a double agent?' That is always a big turn-off for me. I don't like the idea of going all the way with a guy who accuses me of being a spy for more than one country."


----"I think all of the  female spies who live here in New York identify with Catwoman from the Batman movie series. No matter which country we represent, we all feel rather sly and feline, as if we spend much of our life climbing buildings at nighttime with our sharp claws. It's not that I like Catwoman. I am not fond of her. But I can see why many people would compare me to Catwoman if they saw me in the middle of my latest sly tricks on behalf of my foreign government."

---"I think any true New Yorker attends at least one Crime-Prevention workshop here every six months. It's one of those time-honored rituals of being a true New Yorker that you cannot escape."


---"Personally, what I need the most is a specially-designed doormat in front of my apartment unit that secretly photographs anyone who stands on that doormat in front of my apartment unit. No member of the criminal element would ever guess that he was being photographed as he stands on my front doormat. The only difficulty would be the angle of the photograph, since it might tend to obscure their facial features. That's the technical problem I haven't found a solution for yet."


---"I can't decide whether the private detectives here in New York are failed investigators for NYPD, or NYPD investigators so successful at what they do that they started a business of their own."


---"I think every New Yorker senses at least once per week that they are being trailed by a stalker. That is one of the leading incentives that many of us have for suddenly entering a sandwich shop at 9 p.m. and ordering something to eat, even though we're not hungry. We want to find out whether the suspected stalker enters the sandwich shop after we do. If he does, at least we can see him better in a clean well-lit place, and we can then dial 911 to give NYPD a full description of that suspected stalker."


---"When I told my wife that I suspect I'm being stalked by someone, she laughed right at my face. Then she said, 'Why would ANYONE have any interest in you? You're very lucky you somehow talked me into marrying you, since otherwise you would have elicited zero interest in you from everyone else on this entire planet! And don't take our marriage for granted, Fred, since I could demand a divorce from you tomorrow morning, as thoroughly unenjoyable as this marriage has been for me. Being married to you is complete Dullsville for me, and we live right here in the most thrilling city in the entire world----Manhattan!'"

----"Harold and Samantha can't even decide on which restaurant to celebrate their wedding anniversary at. To me, that's a bad sign about the future of their marriage. Maybe they should have their wedding anniversary meal catered to them inside their home. That way, they could avoid having an argument over which restaurant to dine at. But it's unlikely they could even agree on a caterer. The last time I heard Samantha and Harold say 'yes' to each other about anything was their wedding ceremony. That was five years ago. But even at the time, I noticed that neither of them sounded convincing when they said 'I do'."


----"Can you imagine what it would be like to have a career as a stock market investor on Wall Street. Whenever your stocks go way up, you're expected to celebrate by getting drunk with your client. If you have several straight weeks of financial success for your client, that could give you lots of nasty hangovers."


----"One of my all-time favorite heroes here is Yogi Berra. I love the name, it sounds like something from a children's fairy tale.  I think that's one of the leading reasons for his success here. Children think of Yogi Berra as a huge bear of a guy. There might as well be a Yogi Berra Half-Human and Half-Bear stuffed animal on sale at Schwartz's toy shop here in Manhattan. The Yogi Berra Half-Human and Half-Bear doll would go over real big as a Christmas present here."


---"You'd be surprised by how many of the adult New Yorkers are also terrified by the night here. In fact, many of our city's adults choose to sleep with stuffed animal toys on their bed to ward off burglars and rapists. To me, the ideal stuffed animal toy would be one you could put on your bed at night that secretly videotapes any intruder situated anywhere in your bedroom during your sleep. But unfortunately, I don't know of any stuffed toy on the market right now that will do that for you. I love the idea of an electronic watchdog you don't have to feed. Just think of what a life-saver a toy of that type could be, especially if it makes an automatic 911 call  to NYPD immediately after an intruder is spotted in your bedroom!"

----"I'm new to New York City. Would you please tell me where I can find the public statue of Simon Bolivar along the Avenue of the Americas here?"


---"I've heard so much about lung cancer here, that I'd like to rent a lung purifying machine that will clean out my lungs whenever I'm sleeping inside my Manhattan apartment.  Do you know how expensive it would be for me to rent a machine of that type?"


----"I don't know why you're so obsessed with deep-dish pizza. You're the first person I've met here who actually pulls out a ruler to measure exactly how deep your deep-dish pizza is. I often get the impression that you won't eat a deep-dish pizza unless it's at least six inches deep. Is that correct?"


---"Ted told me yesterday that he can't decide whether to leave behind his intellectual property to Princeton or Yale. I was amazed to hear Ted talk that way. Ted is the walking antonym of the word 'intellectual,' so it's a complete shock to me to hear him claim to own any intellectual property."


----"My cousin Edgar tells me he feels vindicated by  the intellectual property rights judgment in his favor that he recently had in federal district court here. For decades, everyone in New York loved to ridicule Edgar by calling him a moron. Now a judge has ruled in Edgar's favor, which means he is now officially a man of keen intellect. With help from the judgment he won, Edgar can afford to retire at Miami Beach.  I'm very happy for Edgar. In fact, I plan to ask everyone I know if they have heard about my genius cousin Edgar who recently won a major intellectual property judgment here in New York?"


---"I'm very into aroma therapy, so I need to find the most up-to-date and authoritative online data base that cites each of the outdoor and indoor sites in New York City where the aroma therapy benefit from sniffing with my nose is the greatest. I'm assuming that Central Park will be the most frequently cited location at that aroma-therapy data base for New York City. Is that correct?"


---"I find it odd that I ride in subway cars at least 10 times per week, but I've never once spoken with any of the conductors of those subway cars. Maybe there should be a special 'Get to Know Your Subway Conductors' reception here in Manhattan. The least I can do is attend, and thank them for keeping the subway cars on the track. To me, that's a fair bottom line on the subject of what I should be grateful for here in New York. I always appreciate riding in a subway car that doesn't derail during my ride."


----"Everyone asks me what I would want in a dream apartment here in Manhattan, and my answer is always the same. To me, the best possible apartment situation would be one in which all of the other tenants are law-abiding non-smokers, and there are at least five indoor racquetball courts at my complex. In the middle of a snowstorm, I could stay right at my apartment complex and still get a great cardiovascular workout from playing racquetball."

----"One of the statistics about New York City that I would dread reading is the percentage of all adult residents here who have never once traveled to Canada during their leisuretime. To me, a statistic like that tells you a lot about the level of interest in our neighbor to the north that New Yorkers reveal."


----"Whenever my friends ask me why I haven't been a CEO of a corporation yet, I always reply that I'm flattered that they regard me as being CEO material. Then I ask them to please write me a signed letter of recommendation in which they cite the specific attributes and accomplishments of mine that they feel make me a fine CEO prospect here in New York."


---"The least we could do is invite 10 of the leading CEOs of Canada to visit us here in Manhattan for a symposium on issues that Canadian CEO's face these days.  Wouldn't that be one way to promote more dialogue between us New Yorkers and the Canadians?"


----"My 8-year-old son, Paul, says he wants to see the Canadian Goose Exhibit at the Bronx Zoo, since Canada is in the news a lot these days. Paul says he's curious to find out what a Canadian Goose looks like. I told Paul that we shouldn't make that trip to the Bronx Zoo unless his second-grade teacher promises him in advance that he'll extra credit toward his next report card grade from writing a report about what he saw at the Bronx Zoo with his mother."


----"I wonder what percentage of all of the men of New York City fantasize every day about being either a professional football quarterback or a CEO. Probably 50 percent, but that's just a guess on my part."


----"You'd think the Canadians would come up with a delicious Maple Walnut Cake that they could export to us New Yorkers. But myself, I have never once seen a Maple Walnut Cake from Canada anywhere in the stores here. This is one of the reasons why I don't regard Canadians as being all that aggressive in the marketplace."


----"My 10-year-old son collects autographs from professional hockey players as one of his leading hobbies these days. This means that my son expects me to take him to at least five Islanders games a month here in New York. I try to honor my son's request on that, but I hate watching fist-fights between hockey players during those games. Maybe I should write to Dear Abby about this parenting dilemma."


---"I think every New Yorker has fantasies about taking a 3-day-weekend trip to the source of the Hudson River somewhere upstate. You can never fully appreciate the Hudson River until you have visited its source, gazed at it with awe, and camped beside it."


----"I need to ask my cardiologist if he knows of any Dutch dishes I could ask for in a restaurant here that would allow me to celebrate our city's Dutch heritage without giving me a heart attack."


---"To me, one of the best ways for New York City to highlight our Dutch heritage would be to build lots of designer windmills near the entrance to our city. A big sign could declare, 'We New Yorkers Go Dutch When It Comes to Energy: Windmills from the Netherlands Are Our Favorite Electricity-Generating Stations!"


----"I would love to find out the favorite dishes of New Amsterdam's Dutch Governor back in the Good Old Days when we were a colony of The Netherlands. I don't remember reading about his favorite foods and beverages in any recent food-section article in the 'New York Post'."


----"It would be fascinating to learn which types of breads the Dutch ate during the period when they ruled over New Amsterdam here in the 17th Century. For all the years I've lived here in New York, no one has ever once invited me to break Dutch bread with them. I wonder what might explain that big void in my dietary lifestyle as a New Yorker."


----"I think anyone who lives in New York wants to find out which of the buildings here were designed by a Dutch architect. That type of information gives you a stronger and deeper sense of our Dutch heritage."


----"With all the Dutch heritage here, it's odd that I don't reemember seeing the Dutch flag whenever I walk around Mnahattan. Maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough for it. In fact, I don't even remember what the Dutch flag looks like, so even if I ran into it in broad daylight, I might not recognize it."


---"Find out the day of the year when this community was first called 'New Amsterdam', then head for the Dutch Embassy on that day of the year. There's a chance they will be sponsoring a 'New Amsterdam Heritage Party' in the Dutch Embassy that day, and they might even let you attend their party, especially if you claim to have some Dutch ancestry. But it's best not to lie about whether you have Dutch ancestry. If your last name sounds very Scottish or very English, they might turn you away if you declare to a Dutch Embassy official that an ancestor of yours designed the first-ever dike in the history of  The Netherlands."

----"As much as my business in Manhattan depends on having a reliable and honest and speedy courier at all times, I feel there should be an annual Courier of the Year contest here to honor New York City's very finest in that category. My only concern about it would be if someone gets named the speediest and best Courier of the Year, only to later confess to the 'New York Daily News' that he is a speed addict or heroin addict. There must be some way to limit the annual contest to couriers currently employed in New York City who do not consume ANY illicit drug of any type, and who aren't current drug addicts."


---"Everyone here always asks me for my favorite anecdote about my famous ancestor, and I'm always stumped by the question. I never met my famous ancestor, since he was alive in the 1600s.  My favorite thing to say about him so far is that he may have been the only governor of Massachusetts who was not corrupt. That always gets a good laugh at parties here whenever I use that line. But it may not be fair to all of the other Bay State governors. Maybe what I should do is contact the best historians here in New York, and ask them for their favorite anecdote about my famous ancestor from the Bay State. That might give me the type of colorful comment I could use that works well at parties here."

----"I'm a New York chauvinist. The only postage stamps I collect are stamps that highlight someone who lived in New York State. If they lived in New Jersey or Pennsylvania but not New York, they are excluded from the scope of my own collection."


----"I'm among those New Yorkers who are skeptical about the contributions to society being made by those who support themselves financially merely from earning a financial return on their Wall Street investments. I tend to think of a career in terms of muscular exertion and perspiration and bold creativity and tangible accomplishments. What the investors do is way too passive for my tastes."


----"I have never even thought of approaching one of of those guys who explores below manhole covers for a living, and then inviting him to lunch here in Manhattan. Since I'm not running for political office,  it never pops into my head that I need to garner the manhole-cover workers' vote. One obvious concern I'd have about meeting a manhole-cover worker for lunch is that he would probably have so much filth on his body and uniform that it would not be conducive to meeting him for lunch inside a restaurant. I could not even fake an appetite for my meal, if I sat across the dinner table from a manhole-cover-worker."


---"I think every New Yorker carries with him at all times as background autobiographical information the highest floor of any building here that he has ever  reached in person.  A lot of us New Yorkers secretly fantasize about climbing to the top of Mount Everest.  Since that moment of triumph never occurs for most of us, we console ourselves by boasting to acquaintances of ours that we have reached the 60th floor of a prestigious tall building here in Manhattan. We New Yorkers feel as if that phenomenal climb of ours, so to speak, is the closest we will ever come to a major athletic feat. However, we're also aware that we consumed zero calories from riding an elevator to the top of that skyscraper. So we feel a bit like fake athletes. We're phonies, if you will."

----"So tell me, what percentage of your friends here are world-famous?"

----"So tell me, how many times has your face or full legal name appeared on the front page of 'The New York Times'? That, to me, is a bottom line that every New Yorker asks himself to figure out whether he's got stature. When your answer to that question is 'zero', you feel a bit like a nobody. But you can always join a New York Nobodies Association as a dues-paying member, since there probably is a civic group here for nobodies."

----"I'm new to this city, and I'm looking for the spot here where the view of the Hudson River is the most breath-taking. Where in New York City should I go for that?"


---"I need to find out how many miles my family and I have to travel from Manhattan to find a swimmable river? I promised my two young children that I would give them both a chance to swim in the river. But then I realized that I don't remember seeing any roadsign here that declared, '50 miles to Nearest Swimmable River'.  So I'm completely in the dark on that subject."


---"I think any New York parent yearns for a first-rate New York State almanac that provides fully up-to-date factual information citing which rivers and lakes of our Empire State are, in fact, currently safe to swim in. I would hate to let my two young children swim in a lake, only to find out that its waters were so polluted they were harmful to my children's health."


---"My next-door neighbor tells me he is new to New York City, so he needs to find out which  types of fish he can catch in the Hudson River. I tried very hard to take his question seriously, since I wanted  to come across as polite. You never know when your own  life depends on a 911 call to NYPD from a vigilant neighbor, so it's best to stay on good terms with as many of your neighbors as possible. All I could think of telling this new neighbor of mine is that I've got the phone number for the city desk at the 'New York Daily News,' and I'm very sure that someone there could tell him very quickly which types of fish he can catch in the Hudson River, even if that requires driving upstate to find a fishable stretch of the Hudson


---"As a New Yorker, I find it very ironic that the people of Pennsylvania claim to have a monopoly on Dutch heritage.  They refer to the Pennsylvania Dutch as if Dutch Americans can only be found in their state, which I find very offensive. To hear these arrogant Pennsylvanians talk, it's like none of the people of their state have ever heard about 'New Amsterdam,' or about the Governor of New Amsterdam, Mr. Stuyvesant. I forget his first name, since I was never on a first-name basis with him, and in fact I wasn't alive at the time.  His last name, in any case, is very well known here in New York. So it really rankles me when these Pennsylvanians imply that if you want to explore Dutch heritage, you have to visit Pennsylvania and bypass New York. I feel very sure that New York City has better Dutch restaurants than Philadelphia has. But I don't claim to know the name of our Dutch restaurants, I admit that we could do a better job of promoting them here. For all I know, our five-star Dutch restaurant in New York is called

'Stuyvesant', in honor of our very fine Dutch Governor from the 17th Century."


----"Every time I come up with a bold and original new idea for a three-day weekend outing, I arrive at my destination and the first thing I see are 20 New Yorkers staring at me. It always turns out that they immediately identified me as a fellow New Yorker. Then one of them says to me, 'You need to come up with a more original idea than that if you want to get away from your fellow New Yorkers for a weekend.'"


---"As a linguist here in New York, people often ask me which northeastern accent I enjoy listening to the most, when I travel around this region. I happen to think the Connecticut accent is underrated, and deserves more recognition than it currently gets. But I'm not denying the appeal of the Boston Brahmin accent. From a linguist's perspective, those Bostonians can certainly be charming to the ear."


---"He is very rare for a New Yorker. No one here ever accuses Jeff of degrading or humiliating anyone. To me, that's quite a rare trait in a New York single gentleman. Maybe Jeff should write a new guidebook on how to avoid degrading or humiliating your fellow New Yorkers. There would probably be a huge market for a book of that type here."


---"Richard is so thoughtful that he always thanks the doorman in the lobby of a New York City professional building whenever Richard enters that type of building. Nine of every 10 New York men don't bother thanking the doormen when they enter a classy building here, so that's one of the reasons I rate Richard among the most thoughtful of all New Yorkers in the year 2013. If there were a 'Most Thoughtful New York Single Gentleman of the Year' award, Richard would definitely be chosen for that honor.  He would also write and send a very nice thank-you note to the civic group that bestowed that local honor on himself."


---"I'm torn about whether to refer to a female doorman at a professional building here in New York City as a 'doorwoman', a 'doorperson,' or a 'doorman'. What do you think is the best thing to call her?"


---"I think a lot of New York single women are terrified by the idea of ever saying 'you're welcome' to any male acquaintance whom they encounter for the first or second time in their personal life. If a woman here says 'you are welcome' to a man, he will immediately interpret that as evidence that she is a human 'welcome mat' whom he can walk all over at the earliest opportunity."


----"Date rapes are so common here in New York that I prefer to think about the occasional dates here that don't feature rapes.  Maybe there's a need for new research institute in Manhattan that's called, 'Center for the Study of Rape-Free and Strictly-Mutual-Consent Romantic Relationships'. The New Yorkers who would qualify for being studied by a research institute of that type might appreciate getting recognition for their honorable style."


----"I find it very odd that Irving has been wearing Brooks Brothers suits for many years here in Manhattan, but he is not on a first name-basis with either of the two Brooks Brothers or their offspring. I'm assuming it was two nice gentlemen by the last name of Brooks who started up that fashionwear company in our Greater New York metro area. I found out about Irving's surprising ignorance when I asked Irving to tell me which of the two Brooks Brothers he admires the most. Irving replied that he has not bothered to search for a biography on the Brooks Brothers. He has read the biography on the Wright Brothers who pioneered the field of aviation, Irving says, but he's never once seen any biography about the Brooks Brothers. Irving emphasized to me that he regards the Brooks Brothers as lesser figures in American history than the Wright brothers were. So my immediate reply to Irving was this: How often does he wear a Brooks Brothers suit? Three times a week, he says. So then I asked Irving how often does he fly in an airplane. Once per month, Irving says. So then I said to Irving that he's just admitted to me that the Brooks Brothers have more to do with Irving's everyday life than the Wright Brothers. Irving hates to lose an argument, so then he shoots back at me with an angry reply. Being married to me is no fun, he says, since I'm too much of a debater for Irving's tastes."

 

Wit and Wisdom of New Yorkers, Part IX

Had I remained in New York City ever since the mid-1980s, I feel very sure I would have oveheard the following comments by New Yorkers chatting with one another at public places:

---"My relationship with caraway seeds runs very deep. As a Jewish New Yorker, I always find it very special that the type of rye bread I eat is named after all the people of my ancestry. And the caraway seeds are a hallmark of Jewish Rye Bread. This reminds me that I need to find out who the nearest caraway-seed farmer is. I have no idea whether his farm is situated in upstate New York, New Jersey, or Pennsyvlania. The least I could do is send him a Channukah Card this Holiday Season, to show my appreciation for his fine contributions to production of Jewish Rye Bread. Without his caraway seeds, I shudder to think what Jewish Rye Bread would be like."


---"One solid  fact about myself is that I have eaten millions of caraway seeds in my life as a Jewish New Yorker. I do that just by eating Jewish Rye Bread. In fact, that's the only context in which I ever eat caraway seeds. I'm hoping that some medical research study will identify five significant health benefits, including increased medical longevity, from eating millions of caraway seeds during one's lifetime."


----"I find it curious that we refer to  Rye Bread as being Jewish, but we don't refer to any particular bagel as being Jewish. As a Jewish New Yorker, I would prefer to eat rye bagels with caraway seeds in them. For some reason, though, I don't seem to find Jewish Rye Bread-style bagels at the bakeries here where I shop."


---"Your cousin is so Jewish that when she got married, she insisted that they sprinkle caraway seeds instead of  rice on the wedding couple.  Brenda said that caraway seeds are very sentimental for her, since she remembers eating Jewish Rye Bread with caraway seeds on a year-round basis ever since she turned age 5."


---"Paul is such a health-foods fanatic that he insisted on having brown rice showered on himself and his bride at their wedding. Paul said he did not want to promote white rice at THEIR wedding ceremony, since white rice is much less healthy for you than brown rice is."


----"You would expect every true New Yorker to be someone who collects coins for a hobby that feature the Statue of Liberty design on them. Myself, though, I have yet to meet any New Yorker who has ever once told me that collecting Statue of Liberty coins is a hobby of his. Isn't that odd, when we have millions of people in this metro area and no one I've talked with has come up with that obvious idea for a hobby?"


---"I still have mixed emotions about the name change from LaGuardia Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport. Kennedy was assassinated. Mayor LaGuardia died of natural causes. When you're flying across the Atlantic Ocean in a commercial plane flight from New York City to London, you hate to think about anyone gettting shot down. I try to focus my mind on the famous book that John F. Kennedy wrote, 'Profiles in Courage,' instead of that tragic day in November of 1963 when President Kennedy got assassinated from taking part in a parade in Dallas."

---"My only problem with the sidewalk vendors here in New York is that there is nowhere to sit down after I buy a food item from their cart. I take pride in my table manners, but when there's no table it makes manners an impossibility for me. What usually happens is that I start to take a big bite out of the pretzel I just bought, only to have a smelly homeless person in ragged clothes bump into me. I immediately lose my appetite and then I'm trying to find a trash can where I can throw away the half-eaten pretzel. Often the line of customers in front of the vendor is so long that I can't hand my half-eaten pretzel back to the vendor and ask him to take care of it for me. So I end up carrying a half-eaten pretzel in my hand for a block or two as my search for a trash can continues. 
"At that point, another homeless person sees me with the half-eaten pretzel in my hand and he begs me to hand it over to him, since he's starving and at risk of dying from malnutrition if I deprive him of the opportunity to eat my half-eaten pretzel, he tells me. I fall for the sob story and hand over my pretzel, only to discover with horror that the homeless guy tries to grab my watch from my hand as I'm handing him the food I had just paid for with my hard-earned money. I feel very naive at that point, and I suddenly remember Aunt Jenny's  comment to me that I'm too nice for a New Yorker. I probably am too nice. Maybe I should open up a men's clothing store here that's called 'Nice Guys Finish First.' It would be my revenge on life, you might say, to dedicate an entire men's clothing store here to the theme of getting rewarded for niceness."


----"When I visited the Statue of Liberty, I was expecting to find a tastefully-designed coin-operated outdoor educational videotape machine situated right near that statue that would tell me everything I wanted to know about the history and cultural significance of the Statue of Liberty. To my amazement, I did not find any such 'All You Wanted to Know about the Statue of Liberty, but Were Afraid to Ask' videotaped narrative service at that site.  I would have gladly paid $1 for that educational service, which would have helped to finance more projects for the New York City Parks Department. God knows they are desperate for more money, and could make good use of my $1 donation."


---"Personally, my idea of patriotism here is to offer a $1,000 reward to the newcomer to New York City who writes the best essay explaining why that individual believes that he enjoys significantly more liberty and freedom here in New York City than he did in the place he abandoned to move here. There could be an annual ceremony at the foot of the Statue of Liberty statue, with the winning contestant reading his essay aloud while his stirring words are being televised on public television here in New York."


---"As a non-smoking New Yorker, the tax I like the best is the tax on cigarettes. I have never smoked any tobacco product in my entire life, so I always take great pride in knowing that the SMOKERS of New York are the ones paying that tax---not me. It's only fair that they pay more taxes than I do, since smokers are a big tax burden to our city. They are much more likely to require hospitalization than I myself ever will. Plus, an alarmingly high percentage of all smokers end up in jail, and that's another huge burden for our city's taxpayers."


---"We New Yorkers are always talking about who our favorite television police officers are, but we take pride in not having any real-life relationship with any real-life police officer here. Isn't that very strange, that we love the Hollywood actors playing cops but we wince at and avoid and shun the real police officers as if they were societal pariahs here in New York! Maybe if some of the actors playing cops would hold a press conference in which they announced that they are a personal friend of a real-life NYPD officer whom they then introduce by name and publicly praise at that press conference, that might encourage everyone in New York to try something similar."


---"My 8-year-old son, David, asked the most surprising question yesterday. When I reminded him that our mayor is Mr. Bloomberg, my son replied by asking me how many mayors in all has New York City had? I tried to dodge his question by asking my son if he wanted me to include in my total all of the counterparts to mayors who governed this city during the colonial period when the British ruled, along with all of the political leaders who governed this city when the Dutch ruled here? At that point, my son sighed and said I always make everyting too complicated for him, and he said he had lost his interest in the question because I had given him a headache with my reply. I felt bad for my son, so now I have to find a straight anwer to my son's question. What I need in order to find the simple answer to my son's question is an online 'New York City Almanac', but I don't know where I would find that on the Internet."

---"Do you ever get the impression that those of us who live in Westchester County get overlooked primarily because we don't have any alcoholic beverage named after our county? The Long Island chauvinists love to boast that their entire island gave birth to a new alcoholic beverage. It's their claim to fame, you might say. Maybe we should sponsor a special contest in Westchester County for a new alcoholic beverage, and the winning contestant would agree to have his or her alcoholic beverage officially named  'Westchester County Tea'. It might help to put Westchester County on the map, and God knows we can use all the additional tourism revenue we can get!"


---"I live right here in New York, but you just stumped me by asking me if I know the leading tourism attraction in Westchester County. Whatever that attraction is, it's completely Greek to me. But I refuse to believe I'm the only resident of Manhattan who would fail a Westchester County Geographical IQ test."


---"One of my favorite strategies for re-discovering New York City is to spend a three-day weekend at a bed and breakfast inn right here in Manhattan. My friends all think I'm very strange for doing it, but I always point out that it gives me a fresh perspective on my hometown. I get to meet all these conversation-minded and wonderfully idealistic visitors from out of town, and I get to play the role of House Expert on New York City whenever they raise questions about my hometown. It makes me feel proud to be an unofficial tour guide to New York, merely by spending a three-day-weekend as a guest at a bed and breakfast inn here. Maybe I could find a bed and breakfast inn owner who's willing to pay me a 'tour guide' fee for all the questions from other guests that I politely answer during my stays in bed and breakfast inns here."


----"Whenever I feel like fleeing to the countryside in order to get away from the screaming and noise and madness of New York, I register as a guest at a relaxing bed and breakfast inn here in New York City. The bed and breakfast inns here are designed to help you feel as if you were experiencing the serene purity and beauty of a rural area throughout your entire stay. I wish they would expand into building apartment complexes here that feature the charm of a very calm and quiet rural area."


---"You know it's odd, but I myself don't know which of the bed and breakfast inns of New York City offer the very finest breakfast meals to guests of that inn. Maybe I should ask the friends of mine from out of town who stay in bed and breakfast inns here. They would know more about that subject than I would. In fact, I don't even know any of the innkeepers here. Maybe I should contact the New York City Innkeepers Association, asuming there is one,  and ask if I could attend their next cocktail party that they sponsor. Then I could make a point of shaking hands with each of those innkeepers,  nad I'll tell each of them that I've heard so much about their breakfasts, and which breakfast dish  of theirs do they particularly recommend?"


----"One of the dilemmas the bed and breakfast innkeepers here face is that so many of their guests would probably like to drink an alcoholic beverage as part of their breakfast meal at that inn. The problem with that is that if the guest in a bed and breakfast inn gets sloshed at 9 a.m. in the morning, this leaves that guest the rest of the day to suffer from a rather unpleasant hangover here during his waking hours. When he then completes a survey that asks him to describe his most recent experience as a tourist in New York City, he's likely to state, 'I was too drunk to remember anything. Mostly what I remember from my visit to New York is that I will never again drink any  alcoholic beverage in the morning during any of my future visits here.'"

---"It's obvious that many of the people who move here look upon New York City as a place for a fresh start in life. They see the word 'new' in our city's name, and they assume this means that they can successfully evade all their bill collectors merely by moving to this designated 'Fresh Start in Life' zone called 'New York'. In reality, though, the bill collectors will continue to hound them, even after they have relocated here. Their 'Fresh Start' dream was mostly a case of wishful thinking."


---"I would be very reluctant to ever invite Clara to a future party of mine here in Manhattan.  She has this presumptuous habit of approaching everyone she meets at parties and asking if they have heard about herself yet, and if not, weren't they lucky to have discovered her just now?"


---"Whenever I need to get my apartment key or car key duplicated, I spend lots of time attempting to identify which of the locksmith services in Manhattan are beyond reproach. I would hate to ever hand my key to a locksmith who isn't someone of the highest ethical and moral standards. If a locksmith in New York City is 'on the take', so to speak, he might secretly duplicate an extra key from my keychain that he then shares with the Mafia."

---"My cousin Herb tends to be very grandiose. When asked what he would like for his birthday meal, he replied that he would like to be served the most gigantic bagel in the history of the entire universe. Personally, I can't see the point of a World's Biggest Bagel Birthday Meal. But Herb appparently wants to have his name added to the 'Guinness Book of World Records'. That's Herb's idea of an honorable ambition. Well, I told Herb in no uncertain terms that his ambition is absurd and trivial, so trivial that I wonder if he has spent too much of his life paying 'Trivial Pursuit' as his favorite boardgame. Then I asked Herb if he really and truly wants his tombstone to sum up his entire life with: 'Herb Cohen: He Ate the World's Biggest Bagel as His Leading Accomplishment in His Entire Life.'"


---"With all the soap opera stars here who double as waiters in the evening, maybe they should open up a new restaurant in Manhattan that's called, 'Soap Opera Sequel'."
>br/>

---"My friend Suzy takes a very different approach to her celebrity hunting. Whenever Suzy approaches a celebrity at a public event, she tells them she wants to spare their hand from fatigue, so she won't ask for their autograph. She then gives them her personal calling card and asks them to please mail Suzy their favorite recipe for an entree or side dish or dessert item. Then Suzy quickly returns to her humble abode and waits for her latest celebrity recipe. She then adds that to her Celebrities' Faves recipe file and openly boasts to all her friends that she is so close to the celebrities of New York that 50 of them have shared their favorite recipes with her."


---"Maybe there should be an award for Most Cynical New Yorker of the Year, with the prize for that being a full-course meal at whichever restaurant the winner has identified as Manhattan's Worst.  The only problem with that award is that cynics often lie, so the wining contestant might cite their all-time favorite restaurant as the one they dislike the most. They would then boast to all the news media here that they had found a perfect way to cheat in that annual contest without being disqualified for it."


---"You claim you follow city government here, but you don't even know the name of Mayor Bloomberg's pet dog. To me, that's very basic. Even Richard Nixon had his Checkers, and everyone remembers that about him."


---"You call yourself an expert on New York City, but you don't even know which burough here has the largest number of underground buildings. That's yet another reason why you would flunk a course on local geography, if I ever do take a class of that type at CUNY. Maybe what you need is a 'New York City Buroughs Almanac' that ranks each of the buroughs here in hundreds of categories. Then you could memorize the page of that almanac that says, 'Ranking of New York City Buroughs by Number of Underground Buildings'. You could then regurgitate what you had memorized from that page when the question comes up at your next cocktail party."


---"Personally, I don't feel it's fair to compare the Queens with Manhattan. That's like comparing apples and oranges. Come to think of it, I'm not sure which of the two is the apple, and which is the orange. What do you think?"


----"I can't imagine driving a motor vehicle here if you're hearing-impaired. Most New York motorists rely on honks as their leading guide on when to pay attention to traffic signals."


----"My friend Paula swears she is the most Honked Female Motorist in all of Manhattan. Whenever she drives her Volvo around town, she attracts an average of five honks per minute from other motorists. Paula is very glamorous, and she claims that nearly all the honks she gets are flirtation honks from men who want to land a date with her by getting her attention. Paula says what those men are doing is very lousy foreplay, and she refuses to date any guy who honks at her on the roadway. Personally, I question whether all of those honks she gets are flirtation honks. Some of the honkers may be trying to protect Paula from having an accident. In fact, I hate to think of Paula at the wheel turning her head around at a stoplight and shooting the bird at her latest Romeo behind her, only to find out that he had honked at her because wanted to spare her from a head-on collision with a motorist coming at her from the other side."


---"One of the book titles I've always expected to find in the bookstores here is 'Going Bonkers Over Yonkers'. To me, that would make for an instant best-seller. But so far, no one has come up with that great idea. Maybe I should pursue a freelance career as a book-title consultant, and help other New Yorkers turn into millionaires overnight."


----"My friend Anna is so hyper-assertive and self-righteous that whenever she enters the lobby of a restaurant here, she asks the hostess to seat her at a table where the waiter or waitress is someone who never consumes tobacco products during their leisuretime. Anna then adds that she is making that special request for a non-smoker because she wants to avoid financing anyone's tobacco-addiction problem. 'I REFUSE TO BE A TOBACCO-PUSHER!', Anna then shrieks at the top of her lungs to dramatize her point."

---"Perstonally, I thought it was a big mistake for the bride and groom to offer each guest at their wedding a slice of a 16-layer cake. Why should they advertise the fact that she was a 16-year-old minor when she got pregnant by him out of wedlock? To me, it's scandalous that she got pregnant by him during a period in which she could not legally have participated in any mutual-consent sex with any legal-status adult. What this wedding is calling everyone's a attention to is her status as a statutory rape victim who is now being expected to say 'I do' while standing beside the man who raped her."


----"Maybe what we need here is an 'Honorable Immigrant of the Month' award that gets publicized throughout our entire city. We have so many immigrants here who get a bad reputation, so why not recognize and reward one immigrant each month who is someone you're actually proud to call a future citizen of this country.  That monthly award could promote greater harmony among our various racial and ethnic groups."


---"We have so many ne'er-do-wells here in New York that I sometimes suspect they spend their mornings writing 'not-to-do' lists instead of 'to- do' lists. I find it astonishing they are able to make rent every month, as little work ethic as they show."


----"If you get a public reputation for being a personal friend of the top guy in charge of NYPD, it protects you against being harassed by the NYPD officers that he supervises. The officers will figure out that harassing you also offends their head honcho. If your own politics and religion are controversial here,  and yours obviously are, I urge you to develop a personal friendship with our top police guy in New York. That's the best  insurance policy you'll ever find against being arrested on trumped-up charges."


---"My advice to him is that he should give non-anonymous sex a try. He has pursued nothing but anonymous sex nearly all of his adult life here in New York, and it undermines his ability to have a good conversational rapport with anyone. About all he ever says to his sex partners is 'your place or mine', followed by condom quickies that last a matter of seconds.  He never asks for the last name of his sex partners, since he doesn't want to clutter his mind with trivia. For him to actually have a personal conversation with any philosophical depth would be unthinkable.  He proceeds as if life were a simple numbers game, and he is currently perched on the number 500. Tomorrow night, his number will be 501 or 502, depending on how many sex partners he finds in the next 24-hour period. I find that tragically perverse, bird-brained, and sophomoric."

---"You call yourself an expert on New York City, but you don't even know Mayor Bloomberg's middle name. Myself, I always memorize the middle names of all our VIPs. For instance, Richard Nixon's middle name was Milhaus. That was useful info back when our former President lived nearby in New Jersey.  There were probably 50 other Richard Nixons living in New Jersey in those days. If I wanted to give him a phone call, all I had to do was check the white pages for the Richard Nixon with the middle name of  Milhaus."

---"I'm doing a research project about "The New York Times' in which I identify and analyze each newspaper headline of 'The Times'  from the last 30-year period that ended with an exclamation mark. Do you remember the most recent headline of that type that you saw in 'The Times'?"


---"I spend so much  of my time doing research projects at the New York Public Library that I'm turning into a NYPL groupie. The other day, I even had a former schoolmate of mine approach me at Rockefeller Center and she said to me, 'I hear you've turned into an NYPL Groupie'. I was very surprised that she had found out about my library-centered lifestyle. Rumors can spread amazingly fast here in New York, even when you're convinced that you're completely anonymous and no one has noticed you."


---"One of the biggest disadvantages to my romantic relationship with an NYPD officer is that he insists on sleeping in bed with his gun. I always tell him that makes me very nervous,. What if his gun is fully cocked and I grab for it accidentally in the dark when I'm trying to express affection for my boyfriend as we're lying in bed together?"

---"I need to go down to the New York Public Library to ask a research librarian to help me identify the one block of Manhattan where the crime rate is the lowest. I plan to limit my search for an apartment unit to that one block. I know I will sleep better every night from feeling very sure that statistically speaking, I'm safer there than anyplace else."


----"The only contest I want to win is a contest for which the grand prize is ownership of a condominium of my very own here in New York City. I don't need a big condo unit, just one that will hold my various filing cabinets and my home computer system and my futon. I never have any invited guests inside my apartment, so a mini-condo would work out great for me."


---"It seems inevitable that some Japanese company will be offering a mini-condos complex here in Manhattan where each unit is so compact that your closet space limits your wardrobe to 15 or fewer items. Personally, I could handle that, since I feel confident that I can look fashionable with 15 items of apparel to choose from. The only disadvantage would be if some fashion-conscious New Yorker comes up to me and says, 'Didn't I see you in that same shirt just one week ago?' I plan to reply by saying that I liked that shirt so well that I wanted to display it again as soon as my fashion consultant would let me."


----"I stay up after midnight quite a bit, so I keep on hand a list of toll-free phone numbers I can call on a 24-hour-a-day basis. If I'm lonely for someone to talk with at 3 a.m., I just call that hotline service and focus my comments on the topic area they specialize in. That can be a bit challenging, especially if the toll-free number I call is for Bulimia Victims and I don't recall having ever been bulimic myself.   In a case like that, I will tell the hotline service staff member who answers the phone that I am a possible friend of a bulimia victim, and I'm calling because I need to know how I can best help that individual cure themselves of bulimia? Another possibility would be to call a late-night radio talk show and chat with the host of that show at 3 a.m. about whatever pops into my head. I'm not required to give out my last name, so I would feel safe about doing that here in New York. No one would recognize me from my voice, since I have one of those very Brooklyn accents that anyone here could have."

<br/>

----"I finally decided to join a civic group here in New York. To me, it makes good sense for me to join the Manhattan Mini-Condo Owners League that is exclusively for owners of condo units under 500 square feet in size. I love the idea of finding out what other mini-condo unit owners are doing to make the best possible use of their limited floor space. The only dilemma will be when some member of our group is asked to host our monthly meeting. None of us has enough room in our mini-condo unit to hold a major event of that type."


----"Everyone asks me why I finally bought a medical bracelet for myself, even though I hate jewelry and I don't want anyone to

mis-identify me as being someone on the brink of a medical crisis. My reason is simple. If I happen to have an accident or medical crisis near a Manhattan hospital other than the one that has my full medical history, all I've got to do is present my medical bracelet to the ER doctor at that new hospital. That will tell him everything he needs to know about me."


---"Personally, I wish that all of the hospitals of New York City could share medical records with one another about emergency room patients in a matter of a split second or two. But from what I understand, that is not currently the way things work here. I guess everyone is afraid that if all the hospitals of New York City have access to their own complete medical history records, some unethical doctor or unethcial nurse at any given hospital here could use that information to attempt to injure or harm themselves. To me, that's a sad commentary on the bad reputation of many of our city's doctors and nurses."


---"I think every New Yorker feels disliked by at least one medical dcotor and at least one nurse in this city. That is why I don't want my complete medical history being shared with all of the hospitals of New York City. That information could fall into the hands of one of my enemies in the medical community, and they could then try to harm my medical health."


---"With the mini-efficiency apartment I now rent, I have lots of opportunities for looking on the bright side. Why do I need to take a bath, when taking a shower involves a lot less floor space? That's the way I look at it now, since otherwise I'd go completely berserk full of rage from never being able to take a bath anymore in my own apartment."


----"When I host a friend in my mini-efficiency apatment unit, they always appreciate it when I give them the option of sleeping on either my top bunker bed or my bottom bunker bed.  I then take whichever bunker bed my overnight guest didn't want. I feel rather proud about my New York-style hospitality in that way."


----"When my out-of-town friends visit me here in Manhattan, they all want me to schedule a free appointment for them with my favorite Talent Scout here in New York. He then meets with my friends during their visit and tells each of them which talent of theirs he believes is the most marketable here in Manhattan. Sometimes he demoralizes my friends, since he might tell them that their skills are better appreciated back in the town they came from. I always hate that when he offers that evaluation, since then I have to spend the rest of my friend's visit trying to boost his morale. I don't want any friend of mine leaving New York City more depressed than before he arrived here for a job-hunting visit."


---"When my friend from out of town asked me to treat her  to the most delicious New York-style hot tea blend that I know of, I was completely stumped. So I did a Google search, since I wanted to be the perfect host for her during her stay here. I'm very grateful to Google for having saved my reputation as a great host for my out-of-town friends."


----"I want to report a Talent Scout to the New York City Better Business Bureau. The Manhattan guy I just paid $500 to for a Talent Scout evaluation told that he is very sure I have no creative talent at all, and that I should focus my job search on factory jobs or custodial  jobs for that reason."

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!"