‘A few salty sallies from the pages of New York Magazine.’

Last week’s post was sort of a Reader’s Digest of amusing Metropolitan Diary entries written by, um, me. Since you Readers seemed to get a kick out of it, I thought I’d regale you this week with a few examples of stuff of mine that got into New York Magazine. (If I ever get anything into the New Yorker, like my pal Ken, you’ll never hear from me again.)

Remember when I told you that Ad Folks are the funniest people ever? This famous New Yorker Cartoonist used to work at Ogilvy. And I actually know him. Fun fact: he also wears blue glasses (!)

To be honest, I’m really doing this stuff-from-New-York-Magazine thing because I played hooky away from my computer all weekend. I was on a birdwatching trip (honest) to Cape May, New Jersey, and it was kind of hard to think about my blog while I was trying to concentrate on warbler wing bars. (I promise to share wacky birding stories soon; stay tuned for my views on how “birders” are practically sexually indistinguishable — and much much more!)

But for now, on with the wordplay. See, back in my pre-blog days, in addition to sending the odd observed moment to the New York Times Metropolitan Diary, I used to enter these New York Magazine contests. Nerdy wordy people like me just love them. Here’s a recent contest that I looked up just for you:

This is a good one. Wish I’d entered. Too late now (!)

If you won the contest, you’d get a free subscription to New York Magazine. Which was a pretty clever prize, actually. For the magazine and for the winner. Anyway, once in a while I’d win.

One of my favorite contests was the one where you were supposed to write down what a person said, and then what that person was really thinking. My (winning) entry was:

(Says) ‘She looks just like her father.’

(Thinks) ‘Omigod. She looks just like her father.’

Heh heh heh. I amuse myself so.

Now that you know the general gist of these contests, take another look at the title of this post. That was the winning entry in a contest where you were supposed to provide a funny definition of a word beginning with ‘Y’. Thus:

Yachts: many many boats

To be fair, and give punny credit where credit is due, this was something my Mother used to say whenever we passed a place with a bunch of boats bobbing about. (Which, since we lived in the Midwest, wasn’t too often, thank god.) Mom actually has lots (or is it ‘yachts’?) of funny sayings. If you missed my Mother’s Day post ‘Get in the back seat if you want to wiggle your behind’, it’s not too late to check it out here.

Speaking of giving punny credit where it’s due, one of our Birdwatching Gang came up with a pretty darned amusing New York Magazine Contest Entry just this weekend. We were tracking the prothonotary warbler through a swamp near a former bean cannery when David asked (actually, whispered) if I missed running. (I used to be a marathon runner, but we are so not getting into that right now.)

The bird that got our endorphins flowing: the Prothonotary Warbler

When I said no, I’d found an effective substitute in swimming, David remarked ‘Oh, so that’s how you’re getting your endolphins these days’. Good one, David! Now all he needs is for New York Magazine to do that contest where you change one letter of a word to change its meaning (you know; like ‘endolphin’ for ‘endorphin’) — and he’s got a subscription for life, whether he wants it or not.

I’m feeling rather pleasantly nautical right now, what with my endolphins flowing and all (I just got back from swimming), so I’ll end this post with a couple of pictures from a yachting adventure The Dude and I experienced a few years ago. An acquaintance from Sag Harbor had chartered a yacht for the day and needed a quorum (or maybe just ballast). So we got invited along, even though we knew, like two people. Though I did feel a definite kinship with the boat itself, since it flew a Swedish flag.

The Dude, digging the yachting life while not thinking of New York Magazine contest entries

Me on the yacht. Feeling the wind of many many boats in my hair. And the thrill of being published in my soul. Thanks for reading, People!

New York City. May 2016