Iguanas — will never forget being in St a John VI and a woman began screaming. She was eating a candy bar and an iguana leaped out of a tree onto her and took the candy.
4
A shame the NYT has removed Metropolitan Diary from out-of-state print versions of the newspaper. I just stumbled onto it here. Have not read the column since it vanished on Mondays. Pity.
25
@me Yes, I have to read it on-line, too. I always search for it, one of my favorite sections.
7
Agnes Lee, every week I am amazed by your fabulous drawings. They perfectly capture the story visually. However, and this is just a little aside, it seems that the New York Times is sometimes printing your drawings in the reverse, ie as the mirror image. In this week's stories, the iguana is drawn on the man's right shoulder, but the story mentions the left shoulder. In "Drizzily Sunday" diary entry on August 11th, the patrons described at the Cafè Luxembourg on the left and on the right of the writer were reversed in the story. However, I have always had to pause, when considering right from left and I need to repeat to myself: left to right in order to make it right! :)
22
Dear anne in Rome,
I noticed the same thing! I almost wondered if I had my glasses on upside down. But right to left or left to right, Agnes Lee’s illustrations add a lot to the Metropolitan Diary.
Dean from CT
Sent from my iPhone
14
@Dean Dear Dean,
Absolutely, her drawings are wonderful.
All the best, Anne
10
@anne
The Dave Berg illustration is so good! It just swept me away with Mad nostalgia.
6
Paul Keeper's story reminds me of a summer afternoon, 50+ years ago, when I was bumming around Midtown with a friend from the old neighborhood in Brooklyn. "I know someone who has an ad agency around here," he said. "Why don't we drop in?" We did, and spent the next half hour shooting the breeze with Jerry Della Femina.
18
Go clipless. You'll never go back.
8
I, too, am bothered by the iguana story. The reason that lizard was hugging the owner’s neck so attractively is that the poor creature was trying to absorb what small bit of warmth it could. It was likely torpid from the chill, and miserable in the wind. Absolutely inappropriate way to treat an animal.
Pets are not accessories. Shame on anyone who treats them as such.
46
Would the Mad Magazine visitor have just come from Kutz Camp in Warwick, NY? It is legendary,even out here in flyover country. Sadly, it closed for good this summer. The writer of the Mad vignette may find a FB page dedicated to it, and all its memories.
12
Yes, Kutz camp it was!
9
@Paul Keeper Yay! There's a FB group now dedicated to its alum. It's called UJR Kutz.
3
Elissa...I think it was Geraldine Chaplin in Dr. Zhivago and oona in GOT.
4
@David
Hi David,
According to the casting info, you are right. Beautiful Oona was Chaplin's 4th wife and granddaughter of Eugene O'Neill. Her daughter Geraldine was an exact look-alike and so absolutely lovely in the David Lean movie of Dr. Zhivago (alas, she did not "age well"); but it was Julie Christie who had the chemistry with Zhivago (and with Omar Sharif). He was so absolutely handsome that even I think he deserved 2 wives!!
Elissa
8
My brother and I used to get shipped up to my fathers parents for the summer (56-62 ) in Cheraw South Carolina . I remember going to the drugstore downtown and getting Mad and it being the best part of the summer . I always think of something like “ it’s crackers to slip a Rozzer and fits “ .
10
@Theopolis I believe the phrase we are looking for is "it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide" (don't bribe a cop with counterfeit notes).
The boys' visit to Mad magazine's offices reminded me of the week I spent job-hunting in New York in 1968, hoping to move here from South Carolina. For a couple of years I'd had a subscription to Variety, and yearned to work for the show-biz icon--with my degree in journalism, I was looking for something apart from the ordinary. I had no problem walking right in and having a friendly chat with the news editor, but there were no openings and I didn't stay long. Still, it was a memorable visit to one of the old-fashioned, gritty New York newsrooms that I've never visited again, except when watching noirs on TCM.
25
On the M72 touched me. Regardless of it being a uncrowded Sunday, there was once a time when many considered common courtesy just the normal and respectful thing to practice. A good habit doesn’t require a justification.
10
@John Doe They were married.
1
This is not criticism, but since this week we are analyzing the feature itself: I do read it, but sometimes it very strongly reminds me of another feel-special column, and (gasp) that in the Reader’s Digest. I think called Life in These United States. My dad had a subscription, and I, who read Mad and was more aligned with it’s own wonderfully sharp take, was afraid that any of my friends might see his oh-so-unhip mag at the house. It all crashed into revelation when I was invited years later to a party at one of the Digest’s editor’s, and found out that they were more seriously sophisticated in the literary realm than imaginable. Of course, it had to be exactly that. A lesson.
35
I loved reading “ The lighter side of “ and “ The Un caged “ . However I found the behaviour of that lady was very very harsh to a fellow passenger in the story “ On the M 72. The advice given to be good but not too good is very sweet in the story “ The lighter side of “. The story “ Un caged “ points the significance of interacting with the people. It’s so sweet of the fellow cyclist to pinpoint where exactly the problem was.
6
@Sivaram Pochiraju
You may have missed the end of the M 72 post - the chastising woman was the man's wife.
8
@nom de guerre : Thanks for your reply. Sure I missed reading the end of M72 but it doesn’t mean wife should castigate her husband in public. It was definitely rude.
5
All of NY is a story. Just walking on any street for 5 or more minutes, one can collect stories by watching people talking, passing comments, racing across streets, children, especially children playing eye games with others, nannies, parents and grannies who have the time of their lives with their grandkids. I especially like the way you can get into a conversation immediately about anything happening on the street with any New Yorker. We love to talk, critique, complain and above all, give directions. Have you ever seen people studying maps and someone, usually uninvited, comes over and asks to help them? It happens all the time, even with GPS.
This is why I cannot leave the city. It's the most alive place on the planet.
58
@Marian Passidomo
Exactly! This is why many of us love to live in New York City.
4
@Marian Passidomo
I am a frequent visitor lucky enough to have had a relative and now a friend to stay with. Everything you say mirrors my experience walking down any street, the bus, the subway, sitting on a bench in the park all provide wonderful experiences. The feeling of energy and humanity is so vibrant. How I wish I lived in the city.
3
To Sara in Cleveland and to Anne in Rome,
Please know that I sent replies to both of you late last Friday afternoon, but neither appeared in print. Another instance of comments vanishing into the vast ether of cyberspace.
Sara, I too love both the Barchester series and the Palliser/Parliament series of Trollope. Does he unite them in more ways than the Thorne family and Archdeacon Grantley's daughter Griselda, who marries Lord Dumbello, desiring a romantic attachment with Plantagenet Palliser?? I can't think of any other links; can you?
Anne, although we never got to Italy this summer, I do hope you may seriously be thinking of a trip to nyc in December and would love to meet and see some wonderful sites then if you come.
And Allen, my friend, if you are still in a nostalgic movie-collecting mood, your apt description of one as a "quilt" reminded me of a charming, "indie" movie of the type not made much any more: How To Make an American Quilt. Big name stars here: Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Nelligan + Wynona Ryder and Jared Leto as the two potential young lovers. From Jane Austen to George Eliot and Henry James and Wharton through Trollope until near the end of the 20th century, who a young girl marries is such a major theme. Now, less than 20 years into the 21 century, women have assumed "agency," and the idea seems a bit quaint, old-fashioned, dare I say, hardly relevant?
Best wishes,
Elissa
9
@els
Elissa, I wish I had your encyclopedic memory (for Trollope, train movies, and other topics). I don't remember other links but just did a little Google research and found that the Duke of Omnium was introduced in Framley Parsonage, and that Plantagenet Palliser and Lady Glencora first appeared in The Small House at Allington. News to me, though I read both series about 30 years ago.
Best,
Sara
3
@Sara
Hi Sara,
This was the summer I promised myself time to reread both those Trollope series and also start on my ~20 novels by Disraeli of which I've only read Coningsby, but then I got deflected by both a work project and then the 4 new A. McCall-Smith novels and the 6 Dublin Murder Squad series, of which I am on book 6 now. In 2 weeks, Alan Furst's new WW II noir Paris intrigue thriller/love story comes out, and I fear I'll never catch up.
But Trollope is special and to be savored. His characters are like good old friends and those friendly relatives we see once or twice a year at holiday gatherings and weddings.
As you wrote, Alice V. makes the correct match in the end and so, I think does Lady Glencora: she and PP truly come to love each other deeply; without her, he'd never have become the Prime Minister. Poor Lady Laura married herself to a psychotic ogre, though; and Phineas Finn and Madame Max might do well in the bedroom, but I just don't see them in a satisfying marriage.
I wonder what Trollope would have made of our society today??
Best, Elissa
5
Elissa, I’ve read all the Trollopes and recall the characters you mention but am not conversant about them as you are! I had to laugh because a friend of ours thought another friend’s wife would like the books as much as he and I did. But it turns out not everyone does. Maybe an Israeli has a hard time relating to Trollope!
4
First: Mad Magazine, such an important influence on me and most of my generation. Anti authoritarian and revolutionary too!
Second: that iguana shouldn't have been outside on such a very cold day. The ones in S. Florida are notorious for freezing solid and falling out of trees during the (comparatively) light freezes there.
Third: Can I just get on my soapbox for a minute about people who buy exotic pets? Usually ripped from their native habitat, in many cases the mother killed to obtain the babies, and so many die due to poor care and feeding. The man mentioned in the article may be a wonderful, caring owner, but he makes a bad example to those around him.
51
@RLiss, I agree about the inappropriateness of taking that lizard about in the cold, and wearing it for kicks. Pretty awful. But iguanas are easy to breed. Not likely to have been “ripped from their native habitat.” And not really exotic, either, in the strict sense (although they are lumped into the exotic pet category by vets and pet stores).
8
Passion, it turns out that certain pet iguanas which were let loose or escaped are doing so well they are now threatening habitat and other creatures in Florida. The authorities there have told everyone to kill them on sight because they have become so destructive in so many ways. Like the pet pythons now rampant in the Everglades.
6
@RLis
Cities introduce a traveler to small atrocities one wouldn’t see at home. Pets dragged onto subways and Metros are the worst. This summer I watched in horror as a couple dragged their tiny dog down a hot sidewalk, seemingly unaware his tiny legs couldn’t carry him as quickly as theirs. Pets dressed like dolls with fake sun glasses and nails painted to match, strapped to the chest of some fool. Now, your tiny horse can fly United with you so you won’t be afraid. Unfortunately, the rest of us watch with baited breath.
10
I really liked Fellow Travelers. Ms. Milburn's story made me feel like I was riding with these fellow travelers.
I enjoyed the Lighter Side of....I used to read Mad Magazine all the time when I was a teenager, oh too many years ago. I was sad to read that it will no longer be published.
28
Though I've lived, loved, labored and occasionally languished in San Francisco for 37 years, I relish these New York stories. Today's M72 dispatch is a treasure, although I saw the "punchline" coming from three stops away. Thanks and keep them coming!
46
@Katherine Brennan, having been married for 30 years, to the same man, I saw it coming as well. Marriage can be like that.
12
@Katherine Brennan, I loved M72 too. Although I'm becoming the man in the story as I approach 80, I did not see the "punchline." I loved the story so much that I read it to my wife but had the good sense not to mention my thoughts about the behavior of the characters in the story and ours. She's as bright as can be, so she knows that I know that she knows...
19
Good stories this morning !
"The Lighter Side of ..." and "On the M72" were my favorites.
10
Years ago pushing my then 2 year old daughter down Second Ave I spied a young man in a t-shirt with an Iguana on his shoulder. I called him over and encouraged my daughter to pet the Iguana. She recoiled as he leaned closer but reluctantly touched the Iguana's body. As we strolled off she looked up at me and said, "Mommy, I'd really rather have a bunny". It all worked out. She is a veterinarian.
151
@Former Jersey Girl
Darling story.
A word of warning for parents, children should always wash hands after touching reptiles as they can spread zoonotic infections.
10
Hats off to the sketch artist for these Diary submissions!
85
The MAD magazine story is a keeper. The satirical and powerful can be very kind.
Loved all the stories today.
I am not a New Yorker but visit often. For some reason none of my submissions were ever accepted. I thought they were good. Maybe this will be accepted?
64
@Art Seaman
Totally agree, Art, about that great Dave Berg story. Reading it and what other MD commenters had to say about MAD Magazine suddenly made me quite sad. With its "passing" (in addition to the obvious need for political/social satire more now than since 1968) and as the "baby boomers" age, how many will realize what a deep influence this graphic monthly had on American culture for about half a century. Teens today and most of the "millennials" have never heard of it. Both Mad Magazine and Jean Shepard will soon become 2-line footnotes in sociology and history master's theses about mid-20th century American life, along with the "tv-dinner" and those awful pineapple-jello ring molds. I suppose the Columbia Jestor and Harvard Lampoon are the closest to Mad left, but they lack the graphic punch.
Elissa
37
@els
I would offer that "teens today and most of the "millennials" have little sense of either satire or the absurd, both of which are needed to survive reasonably sanely is today's world. "MAD" will be missed...
30
@els Ah!! Jean Shepard. Neighbor -- two towns west. The Bumpers from Hazard, Kentucky. Yes, it really exists.
16
That iguana guy has been in the Village for years. Perhaps why others didn’t seem surprised?
46
There is something in me that wants to look for a common theme in all five Metropolitan Diary entries. Perhaps I’m stretching this a bit, but one theme for today could be “travel” in different forms:
Number 1: Travel by foot near Washington Square Park;
Number 2: Travel by air (we assume) on the way back to Houston;
Number 3: Travel by bus on the M72;
Number 4: Travel by train while observing other passengers; and
Number 5: Travel by bicycle.
Thank you, Metropolitan Diary, for taking my mind away from the G7 meeting, from firearms, from the war on drugs, and from fires in the Amazon. You’re a breath of fresh air.
Other commenters have named other breaths of fresh air in the NYT: One is “Tiny Love Stories” and another one is “Modern Love.” I would also add the columns by Jennifer Finney Boylan.
Dean from CT
Aug. 25, 2019
97
@Dean, I'm delighted by the elegant "travel by foot" for walking. When it comes up that even McDonald's or Arby's delivers so you don't have to walk two blocks to get lunch and can keep working, I'll say I traveled by foot to get it, even if I really just walked from my desk to the receptionist out front.
There was one all-feel-good Diary week a while back, but I wonder if themes are deliberately avoided for the weekly five picked, though I see connections between stories that are in different weeks very often. When the five stories vary, the diversity of New York comes through, and really clear in the print version where you can literally look at all the evocative illustrations at once. It's like looking at the op-ed page or the front page of the paper, and the subjects are unrelated, yet together they have a global meaning.
Or maybe, from another "lighter side" point of view, when there's a theme you can give us to four of the stories and then there's the fifth as a wild card, it's like that season of Gilligan's Island when the theme song named all those wild, nutty people and then the two supposedly less colorful others who started as mostly being the normal people to fine the straight lines, the Professor and Mary Ann, were "and the rest" in the song. But the two "and the rest" (maybe because the actors were also really funny) turned out to be as key to making the whole picture or tapestry as the others.
15
@Dean
Dean, I've been noticing for several weeks that so many of the MD stories take place on the subway and then thinking of the centrality of all train travel still in our (emotional) lives even though we now travel mostly by car or plane.
There is definitely something romantic about traveling on a train--sometimes even the filthy, noisy, crowded nyc subways--and surreptitiously creating stories about one's fellow passengers the way you and your wife did on that road trip. And then, the train pulls into its station, the other passengers abruptly depart, and our story with them must end. Or does it...
This fantasizing about train/passenger stories has been such a major theme in both British and American movies (most adapted from novels) too. It's easy to "reel" off quite a few from Strangers on a Train, The Lady Vanishes, Brief Encounter (I'm sobbing), Murder on the Orient Express, A Fire Over India (my favorite), 20th Century Ltd, North by Northwest, Giant, The Pineapple Express, even happier ones--White Christmas, Some Like It Hot.
In fact, where would novelists and screenwriters be without groups of traveling strangers whose lives somehow become intricately intertwined??
Best, Elissa
23
@Dean
Of course, I left out THE most romantic (but, of course, unhappiest) of endings involving a train in a novel and its film version with the gorgeous Claire Bloom--Anna Karenina.
Second runner-up, but perhaps even more romantic with several long train scenes, my other all-time favorite (have I named 3 favorites already?), Dr. Zhivago...
And Allen, I do take your point and agree about the shallowness of celebrating only a person's appearance rather than inner beauty. But who can resist being smitten by Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, and Oona Chaplin. >)
Finally, my mistake earlier: Flame Over India is the correct title.
Elissa
16
I'm afraid the bus story was well predictable.
14
I enjoyed it.
27
Dear Paul,
Your entry about the great adventures in Manhattan you enjoyed in 1969 made me think of two things.
The first was the issue of Mad Magazine that I vividly recall seeing at the newsstand/candy store just north of the northwest corner of Broadway and Isham Street as I was going to school just a day or two after the 1960 election. The cover of Mad blared “Congratulations President Kennedy” with a large picture of JFK. I thought “how in the heck did they do that?!” I learned how when I turned the issue to the back cover and saw an equally large image of Tricky Dick and “Congratulations President Nixon.” Just the usual inventive genius of the “gang of idiots” at Mad.
The other thing your entry brought to mind was a scene in the movie “A League of Their Own” in which two boys approach Tom Hanks’s manager Jimmy Dugan outside the ballpark and one of them asks him to sign his baseball. Dugan takes the ball, writes on it, and hands it back. The boy stares at his baseball and exclaims: “Wow! Avoid the clap. Jimmy Dugan. Wow!” As the boys are heading off Dugan calls out after them: “That’s good advice!”
Be good Paul—but not too good—and be well. Thanks for sparking my own memories.
Allen
53
@Allen: Thanks Allen. I remember that 1960 election cover too. I was just about to turn 10 when Kennedy won. My dad worked on his campaign in Virginia, had a PT-109 tie clip that he wore for years. It was the first Presidential election that I remember. I also remember learning the little ditty "Whistler while you work, Nixon is a jerk." It was years later that I learned the Republicans used the same ditty against Stevenson just a name switch. I wonder how many campaigns that ditty had been thru before I heard it.
24
@Allen Well, in this case they were prescient. :)
3
I started silly substitute lyrics for "On the M72" - but the real title of this hit movie song is perfect.
"Move Over, Darling" - Doris Day 1963
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bh5DRGvgCE
[PS. "Move Over, Darling" was actually a good movie, which was based on Tennyson's "Enoch Arden"]
14
@Freddie
I'll watch anything if Doris Day is in it!
2
There’s always been more to the city than meets the eye.
19
In the fall of 1987 I was going home on the E train from the World Trade Center, transferring at 74th and Roosevelt to the 7 train, to get to my car parked at Shea Stadium. Since I got on at the first stop I always got a seat.
As the trained filled up an attractive young women stood above me and a man standing next to her was hopelessly attempting to get her attention. The woman, clearly out of his league, ignored him with aplomb as most attractive woman do.
When the train entered the tunnel under the East River, the man lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke directly in her face. The woman and everyone in the subway car didn't flinch.
For what seemed like an eternity, the doors finally opened up at 23rd St and not 1 but 3 undercover Transit Officers surrounded the man and escorted him off the train without incident.
Needless to say everyone was quite impressed.
135
@mlb4ever - I know that Metro North and Amtrak had smoking cars at one point, but wasn't smoking on the subway trains always illegal?
It could be that the man was probably just nabbed for smoking, because the conductor could smell the smoke.
12
@Freddie, definitely not always illegal and even after it was banned, some people continued to smoke. I remember really unpleasant commutes in the 70's and 80's in smoke-filled cars.
9
@arkaydia, thanks for that information. I've been googling about smoking on other trains, and it looks like it's happened pretty often that a nonsmoker got stuck with the only still-available seats being in a smoking car on some long train trips! I'd probably have wanted to call ahead that I'll be late if it were at all possible, rather than be in the smoking car for a few hours, but I don't recall if I even had a cell phone in the 1980s.
But I wonder how the guy that mlb4ever described as blowing smoke in the lady's face got such quick reaction from transit police - back before internet, too.
11
Dear Kathleen Milburn,
Your Diary entry, “Fellow Travelers,” sparked a memory for me. You observed the other travelers on the train from behind your dark sunglasses. Each person could have been a character from a story, each one with a personal history, from the thin woman in the thin cotton dress to the two men standing and talking near the door.
In the mid 1990s, my wife and I drove from Connecticut up to Freeport, Maine, for a weekend of shopping at L. L. Bean. We stopped at a restaurant in Massachusetts for lunch. There were 7 people sitting at a table near us. They appeared to be a family: Mom and Pop, two kids, possibly an aunt and uncle, and maybe a cousin.
In order to pass the time, we began to pretend that they were characters in a novel and we were making up all kinds of details about them. Were they on their way to the beach? Were they on their way to rob a bank? Were they traveling to a birthday party? Had they all just been released from prison? The more we talked about them, the more animated we became, pointing at them and smiling. (Yes, we did get carried away.)
Finally, the man (or “Pop” as I had named him), walked over to our table and asked, and not in a friendly way, “Would you like to join us?”
We quickly finished our meal and we beat a hasty retreat. Next stop was Freeport, Maine. And no, we never did that again.
Wishing you safe travels,
Dean from CT
Aug. 28, 2019
45
@Dean
Oops. Typo. It's August 25 today, not August 28.
Dean from CT
3
@Dean
Ah, the difference between Massachusetts and NYC. Here, even in the '90s, within a few minutes, I bet you would have gotten a sharp (if not profanity-laden), "you lookin' at ME? I KNOW you're not looking at ME."
13
Dear Dean,
Your comment on Kathleen’s Diary entry and description of the time you and your wife wove a quilt of stories about the seven people seated near you in a restaurant immediately brought to mind two films I’ve always enjoyed.
The first—a great film about growing up in Manhattan in which two imaginative adolescent young women use the city as a kind of playground for their adventures—is 1964’s “The World of Henry Orient.” Marion and Val start making up stories about would-be concert pianist Henry Orient (played by Peter Sellers) and following him everywhere he goes, from Central Park to his apartment and elsewhere, with ultimately a very abruptly sobering result. I’ve always thought it a wonderful little film with great shots of the city.
The other is a film from 2000 set not in New York but in Pittsburgh entitled “Wonder Boys.” There is a great scene in a bar in which creative writing professor Grady Tripp (played by Michael Douglas) and his book editor Terry Crabtree (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) begin spinning a story about a man sitting across the bar whom they name Vernon Hardapple. They are soon joined by student James Leer (played by Tobey Maguire) who, without missing a beat, picks up the story and begins to run with it himself. It is a delightful little film and an hysterically funny take on the world of academe. Vernon actually
becomes a character in this crack-brained story, demanding that the others “Stop calling me Vernon.”
Be well Dean,
Allen
24
I love the reminiscence about Mad magazine : )
71
@Antonio Butts, I loved that visit they had at the Mad offices with Dave Berg too. And it was coincidental that the next two stories were about people-watching on the bus and the train, because I'd been humming one of my favorite Mad Magazine parody lyrics - which was"People, people who watch people, are the nosiest people in the world."
(And that also brought to mind their epically funny "On a Clear Day, you Can See a Funny Girl Singing Hello Dolly Forever."
Since Streisand and Matthau famously clashed in approach to the work during filming yet outwardly were able to be pretty darn civil about each other when their mega-budget film came out, there was bite to lines like Dolly saying "I'm performing at a college event next week," and Horace answering "That ought to be a riot.")
30
@Antonio Butts Yeah, it's one thing that brought my brother and I together. I vividly remember "Botch Casually and the Sumdunce Kid."
17