!METROPOLITAN DIARY
Regular’s Review
Dear Diary:
Some years ago, I had a Saturday afternoon subscription to the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center for several seasons. At every performance, I sat next to an older woman who said she had been attending the opera for decades.
One afternoon, we were presented with an avant-garde, atonal work featuring, among other things, singers dressed as large, iridescent worms that writhed across the stage. I noted that my neighbor had fallen sound asleep and was snoring quietly.
When the performance ended, the audience responded with what might best described as polite applause mingled with some not-so-polite booing that was loud enough to wake my seatmate.
“Oh, God,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes, “please tell me there isn’t a second act.”
— Stephen Phillips
On Second Thought
Dear Diary:
In the spring of my senior year at SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx, beneath the Throgs Neck Bridge, I and the other N.R.O.T.C. cadets were invited aboard a brand-new Navy destroyer that was making a port call in Manhattan.
After the tour, we changed and headed out for an evening on the town. I left my uniform in a cheap-but-nice-looking fake leather bag in the back seat of a classmate’s VW Beetle. At the time, I was not concerned that the door locks didn’t work.
When we got back to the car, it was immediately apparent that my bag was missing. What took a while to figure out was that the thief had apparently had reservations about stealing a Navy uniform.
It had been placed in a Gristede’s bag and returned to the car.
— Robert Fey
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/02/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
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