Metropolitan Diary Analysis: 2006-04-17

Today's Metropolitan Diary

• Conductor asks girlfriend to marry him at the end of a performance. Audience applauds. Category: New Yorkers Aren't So Bad, After All
• Passerby assists woman in SUV by throwing away McDonald's bag for her without being asked. Category: New Yorkers Aren't So Bad, After All (Precocious NY Kids is probably not the right choice because first, the woman is driving an SUV, and second, they went to McDonald's. Catch my drift? I'm a snobby New Yorker like that :)
• 6-year-old brat complaining about having to take the bus instead of a taxi is silenced by reference to appearance of this story in Metropolitan Diary. Category: Precocious NY Kids (A 6-year-old recognizing a reference to the NY Times Metropolitan Diary? Complete slam-dunk for this category.)
• Overhearing someone mention "an exhibit of Dada at MoMa" amuses an old(?) lady. Category: Amusing Misspellings (More like "Bad Puns", but no other category is even vaguely close... plus I don't want that commenter from Illinois to get on my case about the overuse of the "Rubes in the Big City" category again)
• Man dials a third-party Directory Assistance, which refuses to give him the number for Verizon. Category: New York Eccentrics (Not sure where else to put it. I interpreted this as an old man put off by the annoyances of the modern world, so it seems that of my imperfect set of categories, it is best to think of the automated directory assistance as an eccentric New Yorker. A very specious choice, I admit, but my only other choice was "Jaded New Yorkers" -- as in, inured to the annoyanced of modern life -- but if the writer was jaded by it, why would he write in about it? OK, enough meta-commentary, it's NY Eccentrics, deal with it!)
• Fellow museum patron suggests that Egyptian female pharoah Hatshepsut could have been an asset to the Democratic Party. Category: New York Eccentrics (Yeah, this is also a specious categorization, but I feel it's eccentric to make this claim to a stranger in a museum.)
• Old lady seen jogging in Central Park while carrying shopping bags from fancy stores. Category: Oh, Those Fast-Paced New Yorkers! (The typical category used when people notice New Yorkers "multitasking".)

Totals for this Metropolitan Diary:
Amusing Misspellings: 1
New York Eccentrics: 2
New Yorkers Aren't So Bad, After All: 2
Oh, Those Fast-Paced New Yorkers!: 1
Precocious NY Kids: 1

Totals for year to date:
Amusing Misspellings: 9
Jaded New Yorkers: 19
New York Eccentrics: 16
New Yorkers Aren't So Bad, After All: 7
Oh, Those Fast-Paced New Yorkers!: 10
Precocious NY Kids: 19
Precocious NY Pets: 5
Rubes in the Big City: 11
Single New York Woman's Perspective: 3
WTF: 2