Yesterday's insolent poking of the New Yorker resulted in more poking elsewhere: "Setting: The M4 Limited. Dramatis Personae: the commuting population of Manhattan, and a male writer of a certain age, wearing an insouciantly knotted ascot, who appears to have recently traveled to France. The population throws off dozens of make-your-day anecdotes, which the straphanging scribe strains to sample. Writer [thinking out loud]: 'Oh-la-la, this is great material! Certainement, I could get 3,000 words out of this, pas de probleme !"
Adam Gopnik's Metropolitan Diary [Greg.org]