10 Observations From My Trip

1)All New York dog-walkers wear the exact same expression, a look that says, “Why the fuck do I own a dog in New York City?”


2)If you spend four 10-hour days listening to Robert McKee spike his lecture with the word “fuck” with the same panache that Emeril spikes his recipes with garlic, you will find yourself using it, too. And just when you’d broken the habit.



3)New York street vendors display a business agility that is the envy of every Fortune 1000 corporation in the world. The same seller who hawks “I heart NY” t-shirts on a sunny Sunday afternoon magically becomes an umbrella vendor on a rainy Monday morning.

4)If you get there infrequently enough, and you want to badly enough, you can continue to walk around Manhattan on a sprained ankle. It may not be the smartest thing you’ve ever done, but it does allow you to finally see the Alice In Wonderland statue in Central Park like you’ve dreamed of doing for 30 years.


5)Being an NYC cabdriver requires split-second reflexes. Being a passenger requires Valium.


6)An evening in the Blue Bar at the Algonquin Hotel, haunt of 1920’s literary luminaries like Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woolcott and Peter Benchley, is an excellent way to spend your last evening in the Big Apple. Especially in the company of the woman who writes this blog.


7)People who rarely fly are not appropriate candidates for the “Expert Traveler” queue through the TSA checkpoint at La Guardia. Please be aware that she didn’t choose this line on a weather-delayed Monday morning, though. She was ordered into it by the TSA hall monitor. So get off her ass.

8)Despite, or perhaps because of, the apparent misery of having a dog in New York, people leaving New York will bring along a dog in their carry-on.

9)Idiotic fellow passengers will cover for the perp, pretending through an hour-and-a-half of the tarmac delays not to hear the little fellow whining and even occasionally yipping while his owner does her imitation of the little old lady in Goodnight, Moon.

10)These passengers will be rewarded for their kindness when the stresses of being a pooch-in-a-bag plays havoc with his digestive track, causing him to let loose a veritable cloud of dog farts within the confined atmosphere of the plane.