Overheard in New York

I really like overheardinnewyork.com. This site is truly hilarious, but more so, I think, for those of us who live here. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it basically invites New Yorkers to report the things they overhear on the streets and subways. Luckily for the site's owners, there is never a shortage of entertainment to be found in our fair city.

New York is probably the only city where tourists feel like their trip here has been a success if someone tells them to f*** off. That's just part of New York's charm. And it really boils down to one basic truth, which is this: We are always touching each other.

What do I mean by this? Unlike other cities, like LA, where when more people move to the city, it actually gets bigger (heard of "urban sprawl"?) New York, for those of you who don't know, is an island. This means that it cannot get any bigger. Unless we build a land bridge to New Jersey, we're stuck with the space we've got. When more people come to Manhattan, they've got no place to go but your lap. When you're trying to read the paper. Sandwiched between Fatty McFatterson and Smelly Smellingson. On the "express train." Which has taken 28 minutes to move roughly 18 inches.

Being New Yorkers, we do the polite thing, which is to push, shove, elbow, muscle and maneuver for that elusive shard of personal space. Most of us have given up and are resigned to the fact that we must tolerate being grazed the occasional roll of back fat or the odd wet umbrella.

This is not to say that these things do not take their toll on us. We have become so accustomed to everyone being all over everyone, all the time, that we've simply given up on discretion. Why bother trying to use the inside voice to talk about your mysterious rash when the guy next to you is four inches away? So, we get on with it, not caring who's listening.

So, the people at overheardinnewyork.com decided to ask New Yorkers to report on those precious snippets of conversation that pepper our daily lives. There are some true classics on there. I look forward to checking out the book when it's published, no doubt so that Baldy McBeerbelly can read over my shoulder on the V train.

To him I say, "F*** off."

Too literal for their own good.

Off the top of my head, the worst commercial was the one where the man woke up in bed and found the king, or any strange man wearing a plastic mask, sitting in the same bed offering him a breakfast sandwich on a plate.

They took the idea of "waking up to Burger King" waaaaaaaaaaaay to literally.

On Kings and Queens

Rob, are you referring to the one in which the Burger "King" is superimposed over footage of what looks like a Niners/Cowboys game, feeling up the guy just before the hike? Or the ones where he turns up in really disturbing places, like bed? I wonder what kind of message Burger King is trying to get across here: We'll ply you with oily burgers until you've passed out into a food coma and won't notice when a man in tights and a plastic mask (potential inspiration for the villain in the next teenage slasher flick?) kills your wife and climbs into bed with you, shortly before he pulls out his French fry dagger of death and castrates you? The mind does reel.

On that note, check out subservientchicken.com. There, you'll find a chicken/gimp in an eerily amateur-porn-video-like setting willing to obey your every command, which you can type in and click "submit." Then watch the chicken/gimp bow to your every whim. The site also features photos of the chicken/gimp sprawled in various positions on a shabby red couch, exposing pretty much everything a chicken has to expose, which until now I believed was pretty much nothing. But thanks to Burger King -- in small type at the bottom of the page you'll read "© 2004 Burger King Brands, Inc. All rights reserved." -- chicken is the new kiddie porn. Are you listening, R. Kelly?

Anywho, to answer your question, Phil, how could I possibly think about going back to the whispering redwood forests and majestic cliffs of coastal Northern California when I've got pregnant teenagers and their small but surprisingly loud grandmothers in Queens?

Reality Check

Am I the only on who's really creeped out by the latest series of Burger King commercials?

I like the South but LOVE New York

I love visiting my brother in North Carolina but I could never live there. I need a city with a large media center, something with a pulse. Bosten, yes. San Fran, if I won the lottery and could buy a blue Mazda Miata. LA? To sprawling, I think.

Atlanta? No friggin' way.

Elina, are you a New Yorker these days or do you see yourself back in the Bay Area one day?

American Idol almost makes me like the South.

Did anyone watch American Idol last night? It was in Greensboro, N.C., so basically, one of those places that sounds familiar, but no one really knows where it is or goes to visit. Kind of like Laramie, Wyo. or "Montana."

Anyway, I generally don't like the South. They talk funny, dress funny and vote funny.*

My experience with it includes parts of Texas (Austin), Oklahoma (Moore) and I've driven through Missouri. That makes this California-cum-NYC girl an bonafide expert on all things Southern. But I learned a few things about the South when I was there:

1) A "good old boy" is someone who drives around in a rusty truck with a gun, drinking.
2) In a New York City restaurant, we are told that it might be a few minutes before we get a table. In Texas, we were told to leave our weapons outside before we can get a table (I'm not making this up. There was a sign.)
3) Southerners tend to know the exact population of their home town, and whatever strange thing it's known for. "I come from Chickapee, Missour-ah, population 56. Last year we raised the fattest pig in the whole United States!" Great. Remind me to add that to my next vacation itinerary.**

Anyway, getting back to American Idol.

Each new contestant was more disarming than the previous one. Fox has really perfected the art of tear-jerking, through the careful application of soft lighting, slow piano music and camera angles that feature the person's profile as they look wistfully off into a future away from their life of hay bales and large gold belt buckles.

My favorites:

1) That blond girl who lived with her grandfather. How cute was that shot of them back home in Whatevertown, Small State?
2) That girl who had been to 65 foster homes. Then she married, as a curious number of Southern girls do, a "good old boy" and had three kids with him. He left (surprise, surprise), so she did what any single mother with three kids would do: She tried out for American Idol.
3) The girl who showed up with 82 of her closest family members. That's something about the South that you just don't have in Manhattan: Families. I think the city actually eats people older than 50, so when most people turn 40 or 45 they move to the less life-threatening suburbs of New Jersey, until it's time to die. Then they move to Florida.



*This is not to say that the South doesn't have its share of redeeming qualities -- Texas has great barbecue ribs. But I'm not entirely sure if the ribs I ate weren't from the body of a Democrat some "good old boys" found wandering around lost on his way back to Boston.

**Interesting story: Driving through Texas with my boyfriend a couple of years ago, we kept seeing signs for a town called Groom, Texas which boasted having "the largest cross in Texas" and that we should "prepare for a religious experience." Sure enough, we drove past the largest cross in Texas, which was in fact very large. Our religious experience consisted of: Me: "That's a large cross." BF: "Yup."

Oh! Oh! Oh!

Dibs on the window seat!

Let's see where this goes, shall we?

Take it away, guys.